Halloween Movie Psychology

Halloween

“They completely missed the boat there, I think. Because if you turn it around, the only girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She’s the most sexually frustrated. She’s the one that killed him. Not because she’s a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy...She and the killer have a certain link: sexual repression.” -John Carpenter

John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween follows the protagonist Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is a high school student residing in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois with her father. After her encounter with the old Myer’s home, she and her friend become the targets of Michael

A panning shot leads the viewers to step into the shoes of a peeping-tom as they stare through a window to find two teens preparing to have sex. The anonymous person enters the home as the camera continues to track up into the bedroom to find a young woman, completely nude and newly sexually liberated. The camera pauses to contain focus on the woman’s body as she brushes her blonde locks back; completely oblivious to the audience she has just gained. The gaze does not last too long as she is then penetrated once more, only this time it is with a knife and she will not reach satisfaction. The use of the male gaze in this scene was to provide a context for what’s to come once a woman has lost her

The second of the four female characters to die is that of Annie. It is only after she agrees to have sexual intercourse that she is choked to death by Michael Myers (the same person who killed the first victim). Annie struggled for a while to be released but ultimately loses the battle, and since she has lost her innocence, she was no longer eligible to be the films Final Girl. The third girl, Linda is strangled by Michael Myers through the use of a phone cord after she engages in sexual intercourse. She too struggled for a while, but also met her defeat. Both of these murders were performed with the use of Myer’s hands; making them seem a lot more personal. “I always believe in following the advice of the playwright Sardou. He said “Torture the women!” The trouble today is that we don’t torture women enough.” -Hitchcock “What directors don’t say, but show, is that ‘Pauline’ is at her very most effective in a state of undress, borne down upon by a blatantly phallic murderer, even gurgling orgasmically as she dies.”(Clover, 235) This speaks true to the ways in which Myers decided to end all three of these women’s lives. The women were half-dressed, sexually freed, and tortured to death. In contrast, the death of the only teenaged boy was succeeded through the use of a knife. Myers’ chose to