AnDread and returning guests Josh Anderson and Matt Connolly discuss John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), mental illness, evil, and the mad psychiatrist Dr. Loomis.
Text at top: HALLOWEEN
Text on left: The Night He Came Home!
Text at bottom: Cast, crew, and production info
- Intro
- Halloween Discussion
- Connections between Halloween, The Thing from Another World (1951), and The Thing (1982)
- Why is Halloween the “best” (or our favorite) slasher?
- Dread
- Atmosphere
- Domestic/small town/suburban spaces rendered scary, vulnerable
- Title Halloween evocative and impactful (as opposed to original title The Babysitter Murders)
- Simple but open to interpretation
- Three strand plotline: Loomis chasing Michael, Michael’s murders, Laurie’s story come together in satisfying climax
- Is Michael Myers a mentally ill human murderer or incarnation of supernatural evil?
- Treated as human and mentally ill but also given vague supernatural aspects
- Determined by Dr. Loomis’s views and English classroom scene (talking about fate)
- Michael as embodiment of male rage
- Intentional ambiguity
- Late 70s and emergent field of forensic psychology to study serial killers – need to explain irrational acts of violence
- Mental illness and evil both try to explain horrific acts that lack a clear explanation
- Michael’s muteness – fear of nonverbal
- John Carpenter’s inspiration from seeing patients’ “schizophrenic stare” in mental institution
- Michael as flicker – unexplainable, can’t be pinned down
- Dr. Loomis as mad psychiatrist
- Do we trust Loomis’s “diagnosis” of Michael?
- Contradictions in Loomis’s theories (clinical vs. folkloric/religious)
- Connections to Moby Dick: Obsessive fascination with Michael like Ahab’s obsession with killing Moby Dick
- Loomis as embodiment of the historical abuses of psychiatry
- Is Loomis right about Michael? Ending seems to endorse his interpretation of him as “the Bogeyman”
- Ties to Frankenstein – Loomis as a mad doctor caricature
- Did Loomis create Michael? Did Michael create Loomis?
- Halloween’s Legacy
- Halloween sequels – even bad ones are fun, franchise endures
- Halloween as “feel good,” familiar
- Halloween 2018 puts new spin, focus on victims, trauma
- Halloween Kills and the New York Times negative review – dismisses horror movies, horror movie fans as “idiotic” and “moronic,” diverse victims don’t mean – use of ableist language to sound “woke”
- Guest plugs
- You can find Matt and Josh on Facebook and Josh on Twitter @catahoulajosh
- Check out the work of Stephen Graham Jones, a horror writer who has covered slashers, werewolves, and much more in his fiction. Josh is a big fan of his stuff and is the secretary of the Stephen Graham Jones Society.
- Josh’s recent publications:
- forthcoming essays on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Thing
- Anderson, Joshua T. “Playing Dead.” Bourbon Penn, no. 14, Sep. 2017.
- —. “Hard Water.” North American Review, vol. 305, no. 2-3, summer/fall 2020.
- —. “Mongrel Transmotion: The Werewolf and the Were/Wear/Where-West in Stephen Graham Jones’s Mongrels.” Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre, edited by Kerry Fine, et al., University of Nebraska Press, 2020.
- Matt’s music forthcoming (2022?)
- Plugs and Wrap-Up 2:27:08
- WEBSITE: freaksandpsychospodcast.com. Please subscribe, rate, and review
- EMAIL: freaksandpsychospodcast@gmail.com
- VOICEMAIL: 614-721-1011
- TWITTER: @FreaksPsychos and @AnDreadtheBlind
- LETTERBOXD: Andread. Disability in Horror list
- DARK MARK, creator of the show’s intro and outro music
- Twitter: @mark underscore longfield
- Letterboxd: Darkmark
- NEXT EPISODE: TBD
- If you find yourself wishing that you were normal, just remember: The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth.
There will be a transcript for this show in the future. Please contact freaksandpsychospodcast@gmail.com for any accessibility concerns.
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