With a classic like Halloween, it’s hard to know where to start…
Why don’t you tell me about the first time you saw it?
I was about 11 or 12 years old. It would have been about
1980is. My friend’s dad might have had it on video… Halloween II was due
so, it had to be about late 1980/1981. It might have been have recorded off
television, but it could have been a video. My friend’s dad would record the
Friday night horror films and on Monday, we’d pile down to his house and watch
them. We wouldn’t tell our parents, of course, we’d just go and do it.
Like ya do…
What do you remember most about it? Wait. A room full of
boys…
The boobies, right? It was the boobies.
You were pretty young… was it very scary at the time?
Well, one of my friends could hear his mum calling for his
tea, which was a sure sign that the movie was frightening. We were all there to
watch horror films so I never understood the boys who couldn’t handle it.
In all fairness, I think Halloween was one of the
films that scared my friends the most, second only to The Evil Dead, which
was an event. It’s funny how it's different when you
watch a film like The Exorcist. We were messing around so when the scary
bits came up we didn’t really care. But with Halloween, it got us right
from the beginning. You knew a film was good if everything went quiet. It meant
that it had gotten our attention.
A room full of boys. That is asking something!
It seems an inane thing to do because everyone knows
Halloween, right, but I have to ask you to give me a synopsis of the
movie.
It’s pretty simple. A child kills his sister and spend the
next however many years in an asylum. He gets out and goes back to his hometown
to carry on his rampage. It was clever when they did the sequel because you
found out that Laurie was his sister.
I know you’re a big fan of John Carpenter’s…
I am.
Do you want to talk about his work on Halloween?
Carpenter was working on a shoestring when he made Halloween. He’d had a couple of films but hadn’t hit the big time yet. Assault onPrecinct 13 was out, and it did okay, but he hadn’t become the powerhouse he would be yet. After Halloween, he couldn’t do any wrong. For the next decade, he was prolific.
You were saying that this was the best time for his music…
It was. The later stuff wasn’t as good. Carpenter’s music
suffered without Alan Howarth. I’d never heard synths used in horror films the way
Carpenter was using them then. It was a unique and distinctive sound. Without
Howarth, it all got very same-y.
We were talking about some of the potential casting
choices for Loomis and about how glad we were that Donald Pleasance landed the
role. Do you want to go back to that?
I’m glad it wasn’t Christopher Lee because he would have
been way too pompous. It would have been nice to keep him in the public gaze,
though. He sort of faded for a while during that period.
Peter Cushing could have been amazing. He had the ability to
poke fun of himself, which Christopher Lee never really seemed to be able to do
but Donald Pleasance made the role his own. I mean, you’re talking about a Bond
villain and yet the thing people remember him for is Loomis. That’s to be
admired.
Some actors get pretentious and complain that it’s all they
get remembered for, but Donald Pleasance said he’d play Loomis as long as he
could.
When we were talking about Halloween II, you said
that Loomis, more than Laurie Strode, was the face of the Halloween franchise.
Do you want to elaborate?
Don’t forget, Jamie Lee Curtis was only in the first two
movies. Loomis was the continuity in Halloweens 4, 5, and 6.
Anyone could be Michael but only Donald Pleasance could be Loomis. They even
had him in the new ones, thanks to CGI. It was a nice touch. Even though he’s
been dead for so long, they were able to bring him back to be part of the new
trilogy.
We’ve spoken a bit about timelines about how the new
timeline takes Halloween II out of the picture. If you do that, you lose
a lot of the Loomis stuff afterward.
Yeah, you do… but it’s not a total waste. The problem with
anything after Halloween II – you knew they’d bring Michael back because
he was such a big money spinner – was at the end, Loomis blown them both to
bits. Except, after that, he’s got a few scars but this explosion that would
have turned anyone else to cinders, he and Michael have both survived quite
well, thanks very much. The lack of damage was just unrealistic. So, I dunno,
maybe rebooting that timeline wasn’t a bad thing.
We could probably talk about Donald Pleasance all night –
we’ve done it before – but we should probably talk about the rest of the cast
too.
I suppose we’re looking at the likes of Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, and Charles Cyphers in particular. Some of them are back in the sequel.
There were a few years between the original and Halloween II. Carpenter
didn’t want to be involved but Moustapha Akkad did. His son, Malek Akkad, is
the one doing the new films, which is nice.
P.J. Soles was a minor scream queen but never a terrific actor.
Nancy Kyes did this and The Fog but she didn’t do much else, which was a
shame because she was the better actor of the two.
What about Jamie Lee Curtis?
This is where we usually talk about the ending…
It left it open. You knew Michael (or The Shape, whatever
you want to call him) was some kind of evil force after Laurie stabbed him and
he kept going. And Loomis did keep calling him evil. You can hear that
breathing as he watches. It’s ominous.
It’s weird that Carpenter is the one who left it wide open because he doesn’t like doing sequels very much. I don’t know why he would have left it open like that if he didn’t want to return to it. I’m glad he did, though.
