31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 31 (Halloween)

Boo.

Really, what else could it have been for tonight? It was always going to be this. We've danced and waltzed for so long around everything and anything, and now it's time to cap it off with one of the greats. We've confronted the ancient ones inside us who demand the Slashing Beasts give us blood, so now we are armed with the power to confront this one. The game-changer. John Carpenter, back before he made visceral aliens, accidentally created one of the most iconic slasher horror movies in 1978. Or... did he? Halloween, in its original form, almost owes more to a thriller than it does to a slasher. Yet, there are kills. Oh yes, how there are kills. Now that we're enlightened, for a few horrible minutes we actually become the slasher. There's no camera angles, no trickery, nothing. Just one continous POV shot as our Slashing Beast snaps and gets a kitchen knife and mask before stabbing his sister to death. She just had sex, see. Is this where it all started? The sins old man Mordecai was blathering on about? Not quite. No, Michael Myers is quite unlike the other slashers. Pamela Voorhees was driven by grief and the voice of her son in her head demanding blood. Jason Voorhees was driven time and time again by revenge for his dead mother. Fred Krueger was driven by revenge against those who burned him alive, taking it out on their children. Even Billy Loomis was driven by revenge against the family that broke his own up... and anyone he and his associate didn't like along the way.

All of these slashers had a certain passion driving their machinations. Yes, even the lumbering zombie that is Jason Voorhees (who we never actually encountered) is driven at some level by passion for his mother. Michael Myers is different. He's the Boogeyman. Dr. Sam Loomis believes that Michael is pure evil, but I doubt it. It's not evil. It's not even an absence of good, precisely. It's an absence, plain and simple. Michael Myers is the Void, he is Entropy, and here in the dead of fall in suburban Illinois circa 1978 Entropy will come for many. Halloween, despite having several deaths, is remarkably bloodless. It still has that slasher spirit to it and sexy teens are stabbed or choked until they die, but there's no joy to it. Especially when Michael kills the dog. The exception is that ridiculous scene where Michael puts on a bedsheet and wears the glasses of the dead boyfriend he just stabbed. It's so goddamned silly. Our final girl this time, dear sweet Jamie Lee Curtis, is outside of the action for most of it. It's only in the last 20 minutes that she discovers the body and confronts Entropy as it tries to stab and choke her out, and she manages to survive long enough to escape it. Was it the Boogeyman? Oh yes, Laurie. Yes it was. I first saw Halloween exactly three years ago tonight. I loved it. I watched it then, like I did now, with the lights off while the sun went down and kids in costume knocked on the door. It was brilliant then, and lord help me it's still brilliant in a lot of ways. It doesn't revel, and Michael never talks so he's not passing judgment on THOSE DIRTY SEXHAVING TEENS or screaming like a petulant little child because his victim got away from him and DARED to taunt him. Michael is just pure Entropy, and Halloween is a pure void of a spooky film wherein people are killed.

And then a sequel happened. God. I dislike Halloween II, and I've seen it twice. Once in 2014 and once again in 2015. I blame Friday the 13th for this. In 1980 it upped the ante on the slasher, gaining its own gravity as it was shoving arrows through people's throats. Halloween II had to follow suit. It picks up right where the original left off, but the same spirit has been abandoned. Michael is still a silent force of entropy, but everything is more contrived. More victims for him to pick off. More gruesome ways to die. He shoves a woman's face into boiling water and cooks her, for god's sakes! Then you have the retcon of Laurie being his sister, which... meh. In the end, Michael blows up and that was to be the end of him. Halloween III has nothing to do with him. People hated this, and he came back. I want to love Halloween III precisely because it's so unloved because A BLOO BLOO IT DOESN'T HAVE THE MASKED MAN STABBING THE SEXY TEEN IN IT. Alas, though it does great things, I can't call it a favorite. Still, what a premise. Bringing back the occult darkness of Samhain via ritualistic sacrifice. Not of the teen sexhavers, but the innocent children who just want to trick or treat in peace. Their very masks weaponized with Celtic energy, ready to melt their heads into so many creepy crawlies and otherworldly monsters. Yikes.

That's it, I think. 31 days of horror. 31 screams to be had. It's been a fun project. I hope your Halloween was good, and I hope your month was good. Rest well, knowing that the terrors are behind you all for another year. Not me, though. I have my own fight ahead. NaNoWriMo, in which 50,000 words of fiction are going to somehow course through these fingers and fire off into a word document. Wish me luck. Facing a Slashing Beast will be easy compared to this. Happy Halloween!