Welcome To Our Nightmare III: Terror, Wooley... and TAKOMA!

I wasn’t gonna watch this this year and certainly not on one of my last three nights...
But it happened to be on ShudderTV the other night and I caught just a few minutes of it while I was getting my shit together to watch something else... and it just sucked me in so hard I almost re-started and watched the whole thing then and there.
So then it got on my radar for the month and tonight I decided to start letting it play just to see if it was the thing over The Fog and Spider Baby and Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and a few other things… and the moment that music started, damn I was hooked. And then the moment the pumpkin faded in I was like, “Ok, rewind it and get ready...”

We all know it, I won't waste time on re-hashing the plot of The Babysitter Murders.
I'll just say what a great vibe this movie has. The look, the feel, the tempo... Carpenter and Hill really knew what they were doing even if they didn't know they knew.
God this score is so good. It’s so edgy for ’78. Really unnerves you before the movie has even started. And then this sort of synth-screech that goes on as young Michael walks through the house is so intense it really keeps you on edge.
I was thinking about how, when I saw this as a kid, nothing quite looked like this. Now, to be honest, I had not seen Clark’s “Black Christmas” or “Deathdream” for that matter, but still, I remember from childhood the scene of Laurie walking across the street to start the Third Act and just how unique it looked and felt (that scene is also in Terror In The Aisles which I watched 1,032 times as a child and teenager so I saw it over and over). And that scene still gives me chills. But it has such a vibe.
And as I was watching it I kept thinking how many scary moments it has. Like just great little chills here and there, if not outright frights, perfectly paced and always hitting you where you live.


This movie has such great patience, such great flow. It reminds me of the thing Trey Parker and Matt Stone say about writing, that all your scenes should be This THEREFORE This or This BUT This. Instead of This and then This and then This…
I've recently re-read a chapter of Projected Fears that is on the impact of Halloween and why? It talks a lot about bringing Horror home to your quiet little neighborhood in the suburbs and I think the scene where Tommy looks out the window and sees Michael just deliberately, nonchalantly carrying Annie's body across the lawn really gets that. It was those moments that got me when I was young every bit as much as the "Can't I get your ghost?" scene. And he talks about how, when asking someone what they thought the scariest scene was it was just Laurie running from door to door screaming for help and no one helping her. He submits that not only was this Horror reaches you out here too but also adults are no help with what you're going through. Interesting.

Well, they call them classics for a reason, and this movie is as good a reason as any. For $300k? Is this the best value in Horror Movie History?
Next time you think you're not gonna watch Halloween cuz you've seen it enough and yeah, it's great, but it's not that great... I advise you to reconsider your position.


Notes:

- Why is it no one could ever move like Nick Castle?
- Everyone forgets that before Halloween II invented "the lore", Michael actually picks Laurie because she walks up to the door of his house and he looks right at her. That's it. She's not his sister, it's totally random. And that's what makes it scary, the randomness of it. It could have been you. And Annie and Lynda get it for their brief moment of harassment when he is following Laurie.
- Does everyone realize that Michael spends half this movie driving a car?
- One of my pet peeves is the, "No don't tell everyone they're in danger, it'll cause a panic, we wouldn't want them to stay indoors or leave and, ya know, survive." But this movie answers that nicely having Loomis explain that if you tell everyone that a nondescript figure in their neighborhood might be an escaped killer then everyone will think they're seeing him in every stranger they see and that will basically act as camouflage for the real Michael with police chasing down all the calls. Makes sense.
- Annie, who I had a big crush on when I was like 12 and 13 (and really until she started looking more like she could be my daughter than my girlfriend) does a really fantastic job of being an annoying teenager. Nancy Loomis was like 28 when they were shooting this and yet she absolutely nails the annoying teenager. I thought she overdid it for a while but now that I've met my friends' teenage daughters, yup, she nailed it.

We get our kicks at The House Of Shock, Cap.

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Love this.

Nobody posted this yet, right?

I mean, somebody's gotta milk the dragon, right?

Dang - Halloween already?

October went by so fast!

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It really did.