Halloween (1978)

Jamie and Caitlin invite special guest April Wolfe to discuss Halloween (1978), and they all survive the whole episode!

(This episode contains spoilers)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef and Best
start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hello, and
welcome to the Beachdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Darante.
My name is Jamie Loftus, and we talk about the

(00:21):
portrayal of women in movies all the time, but also
on this podcast, which is what it's about. H I thines,
this is our best interest. So good. It's Oh, it's
spooky sperience in this scary month. It's Halloween. We Uh
this was a requested episode, was it not? Yes? People? Actually,

(00:42):
I don't know if this if people wanted this one
or not, but there is a Halloween coming. Sorry, I
didn't want this. What you're getting it. It's a free product.
You know, you have to listen to it. We are
mostly doing this because of the Halloween film that is
opening tomorrow. Assuming you're listening to this on the day

(01:03):
that this podcast episode comes out. With Jamie Lae Curtis
herself the Queen. She's back Scream Queen Icon. She was
also in Scream Queen's Yeah Wild. Anyways, Caitlin, before we
get into it, do you have a plan for your
Halloween costumes this year? I have started doing a thing

(01:24):
where I dress up as my own couple's costume. Oh yes,
I was so. For example, last year, I was both
Marty McFly and his girlfriend Jennifer in one outfit. So
I think I'm going to do the same thing this
year with materials that I already have. I have everything
I need to do both a Wayne and Garth from

(01:45):
Wayne's World, so I might do that. That's great, that's inspired. Um,
and yeah, I'm just gonna that's gonna be my my
new thing because a few years before that, you know
how people will dress up like as catch up and Mustard,
while I dressed up it's just catch up. When years
was like, need no mustard, And then the following year,
I dressed up as a mustard and I said, I
don't need no ketchup. So and now I'm just combining. Basically,

(02:08):
I'm going to be single forever is the theme of
my costume. I am going to be the Bobba Duke.
I guess that's so, I'm gonna be Boba Duck. I'm
going to try really hard to be the perfect Boba Duke. Great, well,
that okay, So that conversation didn't pass the Bechdel test
because we talked about Marty McFly garth Algar, Bobba bobad

(02:31):
genderless icon. So yeah, I think that that's fair. So
part of that conversation passed. So we use the Bechdel
test as a way to initiate a larger conversation about
the representation of women in film. The Bechdel Test, of course,
for us, is a test that you apply to movies.
It requires that the movie has two named female identifying

(02:53):
characters who speak to each other about anything other than
a man for at least a two line exchange. For example,
Hey Caitlin, Hey Jamie, did you know that the Babba
Duke is a queer icon? I did know that. Excellent
and night passes alright, So well, without much further Ado,
let's let's get into it. I'm so excited to have

(03:16):
our guest with us today. She's absolutely wonderful. She has
a film critic and the host of the Switchblade Sisters podcast.
Please welcome, April Wolf, Hi, Welcome, thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me in this beautiful little studio.
Of course, is it spooky and he so spooky? You

(03:37):
guys should see what they did with the play everywhere.
But I think that's just you know, I like imagining
that you guys record like in a dingy basement somewhere.
We used to record in an old attic recorded at
meltdown back in the day, so you know, stinky attic
and now no not Yeah, that's our story. That's what

(03:59):
Oh what a story it is. Speaking of stories, let's
talk about the story of Halloween, the John Carpenter nine film.
Very smooth, thank you, that's you know me. I'm a
segue icon, okay, like the scooter, Yeah, you're like, people

(04:22):
are all about those bird scooters. I'm still rocking the
segirl Like honey, I just paid off my segway writing that. Um,
So April, tell us about your history, your relationship with
the film Halloween. Oh, I just fucking love it. Um
When did you first see it? When I was probably
too young to even remember that I was seeing it.

(04:44):
My family and I used to watch horror movies when
we were very very young and continued doing so, so
I am a horror queen. I really enjoyed the genre,
and um, I just remember it was very chilling. It
was one that's stuck with me in the same way
that Nightmare in Elm Street did. Those two are kind
of like paired up in my mind, even though they're very,

(05:06):
very different movies. So yeah, I've confused them before because
I wasn't sure if I had seen this movie or not.
It's funny, but people also confuse Friday. I had to
hear a very long conversation that I couldn't interrupt in
the theater where people will talk. We're talking about Jason
Vorhees and Halloween, and I was like, no, not Jason,

(05:28):
the test of your lifetime. It was just like, am
I going to be that person who's sitting by themselves
in the theater exactly? I didn't, So Jamie, what's your history?
I thought I had seen it, and I thought, but
this is again one of those movies that is so
known in the culture that there were certain scenes that

(05:49):
I was like, oh, I've seen that, but I hadn't
seen the whole movie. So I saw it, you know,
this morning. I saw it this morning and very good.
It's a scary fucking movie. It's like, yeah, it holds
up in terms of it was very scary. Yeah, I
liked it, and I like horror movies. I just um
get them confused. Sure, yeah, I mean was to confuse.

(06:12):
There's just like a lot of murders usually a man
in a mask, a mask, I mean, like they're very
different movies. It's always like, uh yeah, an angry man
with with a mask and also like a weirdly chill
sounding name every time you're like, oh, Michael. Yeah. And
also as a as a notorious collector of Michael's, this

(06:34):
one hit close to home. Sure sure, sure. My history
is I saw the original Halloween probably for the first
time in college when I was just you know, you're
collecting Michael's. I'm collecting having watched movies, you know, as
a film student. You know, I'm just get this one.
Got to catch them all, you know. But I didn't
watch it again, although I did see Halloween H two oh,

(06:58):
I think in high school. So bad movie. That's the
first one night and I haven't I haven't rewatched it
since then. And then I saw Halloween Resurrection in the
theaters with the couple of friends of mine in high school.
Really quick, where does the H two O come in? Well? Great,
question there is. I did not realize quite how extensive

(07:18):
the Halloween franchise was. But we've got this first, the
original one in nineteen seventy eight, Halloween two comes out
in eighty one, and we've got Halloween three, Season of
the Witch, and we've got Halloween four, Return of Michael
Myers in ninet, Halloween five from nineteen eighty nine, and
we've got Halloween The Curse of Michael Myers from nine.

(07:40):
I will admit that I've not seen them all up
to a point. I kind of was picking and choosing,
and we have I mean, we haven't even hit Halloween. No, no,
like this is a long way. God, Halloween. Is it
just a remake of the first one? But Underwater? Was
my couestion. Is it Titanic or is it not? Because

(08:03):
I will see it if it's the Titanic. There there
is a movie called ghost Ship, which I think is
the closest thing we'll get to a scary Titanic. Then
we've got Halloween h two. Oh colin twenty years later,
with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode,
but underwater, but underwater this time she's in Scooby. Then

(08:29):
in two thousand two, we've got Halloween Resurrection again featuring
Jamie Lee Curtis as her Laurie Strode character. And finally
we've got the Halloween Movie coming out in two thousand
eighteen with again Jamie Lee Curtis. And then that is
not even including the two reboots that Rob Zombie made.

(08:50):
I think we should forget about those. Yeah, I've heard
they're bad, but I know that Rob's alv fans just
love them because it's his style, and that's you know,
that's whatever you want. But for me, they're not part
of the franchise, and that's that's fine. You know, like
like them, but they're not part of this franchise. I
feel got it. So the Halloween franchise, it is fairly extensive,

(09:11):
but we're gonna we're focusing on just the first one
for this episode. So my my background with the film
isn't super you know, I've just seen it a couple
of times now. As I've said before, horror is not
my favorite genre. Not that I don't like it, it's
just that I feel like you're like Scarity qualifying that

(09:31):
for me, like no, no, it's okay. You can like it.
It's fine, No, I really my so slasher movies. I
tend not to like very much. The horror movies that
I like the most um usually more of a supernatural
devil component to them, like Rosemary's Baby and on the
Exorcist and like the Olmen. I like that kind of

(09:52):
sub genre of horror a lot more. April is Michael
Myers like in your Tops In terms of like a
horror movie villa, I mean, I guess there's a lot
of horror movie. Yeah. I think some people don't realize
how deep the horror genre is because they you know,
you really only see the top ones constantly. But I mean,

(10:14):
he's definitely a wonderful creation because he is such a
blank slate. And yeah, there's always going to be that
really beautiful sequence of a little boy in a clown
costume holding a bloody knife, which is you know, it's
a great idea for a murderer, you know. Yeah, I
love that scene because it keeps the camera keeps pulling
out and it's just his two parents standing on either

(10:36):
side of them, not reacting at all. They don't go
into the house to see her hands are in her
pockets like she's like again, you know, like we're on
that scene for like maybe ten seconds or more and
not doing anything, and it's like, are you going to
investigate why your six year old son is holding it

(11:00):
crane for a day? You know, you would buy that
crane per day shot, hold the shot as long as
you can't get that crane, Like, okay, kid, continue to
look baffled at what you've done that. Yeah, shall I
do the recap? Yeah? Yes, So we open on a
scene where this little boy stabs his sister to death.

(11:24):
Oh and not just his sister, his completely nick sister.
You know, when you're just chilling in your room totally
nude and your brother comes in and you're like, hey,
get out of here, and you don't make any effort.
You turn your tips towards him. You're like, hey, come on,
Like that was really funny. That's my first favorite male

(11:45):
gaze moment of the movie. And I was like, oh yeah,
when my child brother comes in and I just make
no effort to conceal my tips at all. Right, they're
really good tits though, too. I remember being like, oh shit,
I don't think I appreciated those when I was a kid.
Just beautiful if I had seen If I had seen
the movie when I was younger, they would have made
me feel bad because they're that good. Yeah, they're that good.

(12:07):
I would have taken it personally. Okay, So then um,
she dies and the reveal is that, oh, the person
who just slaughtered this young nude woman was a six
year old boy and her parents don't care. And then
we cut too. I believe it's fifteen years later. There
are a few medical personnel who go to this psychiatric

(12:30):
ward to move Michael Myers, the man that this little
murder kid grew up to be, but he has already
gotten out. He attacks the nurse and he steals their
car and escapes. So that would put Michael Myers in
his like early twenties. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's he's young,
yearning to be free, young buck. I could drink. Now

(12:52):
get this guy, and let's get this guy in night school.
We can turn this around. We should say that Donald
Pleasants is one of the Yes, he is the one
of my favorite actors of all time. So he plays
Dr Loomis. So Michael Myers is he's out on the town.
He's looking for a zomba class, and it is Halloween. Now. So,

(13:14):
then we meet Laurie Strode Jamie Lee Curtis's character. She
is a teenager. Her dad is trying to sell the
Myers house that we can assume has been abandoned for
quite some time. And throughout the day she starts seeing
this creepy guy in a mask who appears to be
stalking her. A few of her friends are around and
they don't really believe her. Um then we see Dr

(13:37):
Loomis notify the town sheriff who is also Annie, one
of Laurie's friends. That's her dad, and Dr Loomis is
all like Michael escaped and he's on the loose. Then
later that night, Lorie is babysitting for a little boy
and her friend Annie is also babysitting for another neighborhood girl.

(13:59):
There's a lot of different houses and babysitting situations, some real,
some real like questionable logic to get Annie out of
her clothes is given. I really liked that seeing Yeah,
I was like, wait a butter, She's like this is
a mess, strips nude and then there just happens to
be like a men's white dress shirt around where I'm

(14:19):
just like Lindsay's dad's shirt. She's like, I'm too much
of a hurry for pants. You know, she just can't.
She's so hardy she doesn't even put on pants. Silly
of the house. It's like, it's great. She gets stuck
in the window like Winnie the Pooh. It's crazy. It's yeah,
she's just like horny chaos that she's my favorite. I

(14:42):
really liked her. I was like, man, I would that's
that's who I wish I was in high school. So
their other friend, Linda is hanging out with her boyfriend.
So then Annie swings by with her child that she's babysitting,
and she's like, here, Laurie, take this kid. I have
to go have sex. No pants. No she's not with pants,

(15:05):
No questions about that, just yeah, Laurie says nothing. Lori's like,
that's my friend is no pants any but we love her.
So Annie leaves. She leaves to go hang out with
her boyfriend, but before she can get there, Michael Myers
gets her and he kills her. And then we moved

(15:28):
to Linda and Bob's area where they're hanging out, which
I think is either in Annie's house or the house
that Annie's supposed to be babysitting in it's at that
house because they like stumble into that house and the
start humping each other with the door unlocked, and then
they get the call that no one is coming back

(15:49):
after all, and I think that they decide to stay
right yeah, and then they're just like, let's get drunk,
like sleeping the people's like. Then another one of my
favorite it reacts and the whole You know, when you
know your boyfriend shows up at your door dressed as
a ghost with a sheet with glasses on over top
of it, and once again you whip your tits out

(16:13):
and you're like, you're like, oh my god, you like
what you see? I love God, which we should say
that actress is also one one of my favorite movies,
Rock and Roll High School. Yeah, she's the lead in
that movie. She's also in a recent episode We did
carry a Girl. Yes she is, she's the Sportyes she

(16:36):
She wore her hat to the audition and they were like, no,
that's who your characters and she's like, oh funk, I
want to play someone else. It's a very productive couple
of years for this lady. Yeah. So, uh, Linda and
her boyfriend have sex and then they get murdered whenever
Michael Myers comes in. They had sex after all, exactly, yeah,

(16:57):
we'll talk about that. Um. And then so Laurie goes
to investigate because she's like, hey, my friends aren't where
there said they're going to be, and she finds their
dead bodies. Then Michael Myers pops in. He's like hey,
and he cuts her arm. He's literally like hey, hey, yeah,

(17:19):
she's like, oh hey. They scuffle, she hurts her legs.
She she gets away, runs back to the house that
she's babysitting at. She's screaming, somebody please help me. Where's
Dr Loomis and all this we don't know. Then Michael
Myers comes into the house. He's trying to get her.
She's fighting back. She stabs him with a knitting needle.
He collapses. He seems dead, but he's not. Come on, Laurie,

(17:44):
that's not going to kill someone probably, So then she
like barricades herself in the closet. He's breaking in. She
pokes him in the eye with a clothes hanger. He
drops his knife. She stabs him. He collapses again, seeming dead,
but he's not because then gets back up, and then
there's one final struggle and then Dr Loomis comes in

(18:04):
shoots him. Michael Myers falls out the window and then
they're like, oh, we got him, but then when they
look outside, he's gone. And that's the end of the movie.
It is, so let's take a quick break and then
we'll come back to discuss, and we're back. So this

(18:30):
movie was co written and produced by a woman, Deborah Hill.
Um I believe John Carpenter's then girlfriend, later his wife,
and then even after that his ex wife. But it's
my understanding that she wrote a lot of the dialogue
for the women, while Carpenter wrote most of the dialogue
for the men. In April you I think no more

(18:52):
about this. So yeah, I believe that she was very
involved in the story structure. And if you watch the
movie very prominently, it says a Deborah Hill film, does
not say a John Carpenter film, because she was the producer.
So as the creative producer on this project, you know,
she was shepherding it all the way through. And it's

(19:14):
a weird thing to go into maybe like um freshman
year film classes or something where they're watching Halloween and
they talk about it as though it's a not Tours film,
and that's wonderful. And I love John Carpenter with all
of my heart. He's one of my favorite cranky assholes.
But this is a collaborative film, and so much of
his work was collaborative with Deborah Hill and with other

(19:36):
people as well. So it's it's a strange thing to
think that a woman was the driving force behind this
movie and helped him push it over the threshold. So
I hope people remember it as a Debora Hill film,
but they don't because because yeah, it's really interesting to
look at her New York Times obituary. She did die

(19:59):
very young. I think No. Five, yeah, and No. Five,
and she was only like fifty. So the headline of
her obituary says, you know, essentially the woman who helped
create Halloween. And it's real fucked up for me to
think that, like the story genesis actually might have been hers,
because if it says a Debris Hill film, she was

(20:21):
probably the one who was behind the right. Yeah, so yeah,
you know, she helped create it, you know, But that's
such a it's such a diminutive way of talking about
her role in this movie. And then the other John Carpenter,
But I guess. You know, it's one of those things
where headlines there are just like so and so's wife
does this, you know, Yeah, it's the his wife of

(20:44):
his wife. Yeah, it's that's really frustrating and disappoine I'm
saying she also was involved with The Fog, Escape from
New York and Escape from l A some of my
favorite films for sure. Well, poor went out for Deborah tonight.
That's so fucking frustrating. I love. One of my favorite
things is that she I hope that she came up

(21:05):
with the conkis to door storyline for the Fog. You
guys have ever seen that, It's just like I have
ghost conkyst doors are just like sure invading a radio station,
so wonderful. And yeah, I I feel like a woman
being a driving force behind this project does show at

(21:25):
a lot of points because because I do have a
lot of these horror movies of this era conflated, I
assumed that this movie was going to be less good
to women that and that the female characters in the story,
I guess we're going to be less active than they
than they ended up being. Because I think that I

(21:46):
mean a lot of horror movies that came out like
when I was in high school. First of all, they
were remix of a lot of these, and they were worse,
where like female characters were even less active, and there
was even more pressure for them to be you know,
scantily clad. And I mean, I guess, you know, Annie,
there there are some clear moments, but I I don't know,

(22:08):
I was flord. Something happened in the nineties and early
aughts that turned me off of a lot of horror films.
And it was really nice when I could find some
that kind of bucked those trends, some international movies that
had come around around that time that you know, we're
just a little bit different, or some indies, you know,
like the movie May came out around that time, Lucky

(22:28):
McKee's movie, and you know that's one where like a
woman is very very present and wonderful and so good
Angela Bettison, Anna Faris or in that one. Interesting. Yeah,
I feel like a lot of it kind of just
turned into this like torture porn genre of you know,
just like brutality with like no nuance almost, but again

(22:48):
I don't know enough about it's true, So really it
was a driving force in that and it's a really
interesting thing. I did interview one of the directors of
the Saw franchise, um Darren Bousman, who it's a really
kind person and you know, he owes a lot of
his career to Saw, but you know he's got children
now and he's like, I would never direct one of

(23:09):
those movies if I were the person that I am now.
You know, I'm not sure if I would. I'm not
comfortable with it. I'm not I don't want to put
that into the world, you know. So he's like a
weird thing that happened and in that time period. That's
so interesting that he went on record as well, well,
well link that to that interview too, because that is
I think kind of like cool of him to to

(23:30):
cop to as well. Interesting. You know, everyone outgrows some
of their their old desires, their old things that they
wanted to make, and you feel like it's childish and
you're you know, you're kind of caught up in like
this is the zeitgeist of what was going on in horror.
Then sure, kind of going off of that, that was
the reason I wasn't, I mean, part of the reason
I'm not that into horror movies because I you know,

(23:51):
wasn't allowed to watch any of them growing up. But
the reason I wasn't allowed to watch them wasn't because
of the fact that they were scary. It was because
of the torture are elements to it, where I remember
my mom was very turned off by the like sexualized
elements of the movies that we're coming out. Then I
think that the Final Destination franchise also kind of fell

(24:11):
into that category as it went on for me. I
like those movies. Yeah, jeff I mean Jeffrey Riddick, like
a gay black man, created one of the most successful
franchises in horror history. And I am a very big
fan of the first few Destinations, like really big fan
of them. I saw three first, and I have such

(24:32):
a the roller Coaster one. I think that the first one.
I I love three and our producer Sophie really was
what an iconic movie. I really loved the roller Coaster
one stuck with me for years, like that was so
the tanning bed, Yeah, they're electrocuted. Oh my god, it's horrible.

(24:54):
I mean we're not even talking about the lumber whatever
coming off of the back of the truck going through
to OK. We got to talk about Halloween. But but
all I have to say, you know, Halloween is marketably
different from for sure and the early two thousands. So
Halloween is not the first slasher movie. There's some kind

(25:18):
of debate as to what it is. But but Halloween
is credited as ushering in the popularity of the slasher
sub genre because this was a huge box office hit.
It had a low budget if I think around dollars,
and it grossed seventy million in the box office, you know,
super popular. Really helped usher in the slasher sub genre,

(25:43):
and it made Jamie Lee Curtis. That was like her
first Scream queen role. I don't think a lot of
people understand when they try to copy these kinds of movies.
They don't understand what the key to success was in
the first one. Like I do think that, you know,
when you're looking at Nightmare on Elm Street, I think
that that's a really great six us full kind of slasher,
you know, rip off in some ways of these slightly

(26:05):
earlier ones, because there is a very interesting and enigmatic killer,
you know, and it's very creative, and you know, you
look at this as a precursor to any other slasher
and you're like, wow, this is extremely creative. Um, and
now it's just been done so many times. Yeah. And
also I didn't know. I didn't know the origin story

(26:27):
of Michael Myers, but just the fact that he was
originally among memonies, not this like abstract monster that you
don't know where he came from. He literally came from
the same suburb where he's now. I don't know. That's
that makes it scarier, just like for sure. Yeah, so
I want to talk about the brutalization of women in
horror movies. So what are you talking about? I don't sorry,

(26:51):
I made a mistake to um, I'll just go home.
So horror as a genre, as with all genres, there
are certain genre specific tropes that revolve around gender, and
many of those tropes mean a misguided or damaging portrayal
of women. But horror especially, I think it's worth talking

(27:13):
about because unlike say, action adventure, fantasy sci fi movies,
where women are generally sidelined and not allowed to participate
much in the story, horror movies, especially slashers and probably
other subgenres, generally allow women to be much more active
participants in the story. But this means that they are

(27:34):
also often very heavily brutalized. So I want to kind
of break down the people who get attacked in this
movie by gender. So the first thing we see is
the Myers teen girl at the very beginning being brutally stabbed. Look, yeah,
look at my tids, little brother. She's proud of them.

(27:56):
She is like eight year old packing the clown mask shot. Yeah,
but I do have to say the clown masks shot
actually does obscure some of the tips. It's it's a
weird thing, like it's less lurid than it would be.
Just it also makes you think that he's much taller. Yeah. Anyways, right,

(28:21):
um So, then her boyfriend leaves before the stabbing happened,
so he escapes the brutality. There the nurse outside of
the hospital that she and Dr Lomas go too, she
gets attacked, not killed, but Michael Myers does kind of
like struggle with her. Meanwhile, Dr Loomis is not attacked,
so so far it's two women and no men. Like that.

(28:44):
That woman never shows up in the movie again because
she's like, no, fuck this, you guys do like I am,
like I'm getting transferred. This is fucking not okay. Good
for her up. Nurse Betty is who she became. I
would watch that TV show, watch that sitcom. Isn't there
a movie called Nurse Betty did? Yeah with them? She

(29:08):
has amnesia. She seems like a murder and then has
amnesia about it. Literally this movie. Okay, okay, yeah, Nurse Betty. Okay.
Next thing we see is a dead man's body by
a red truck. He's already dead. There's no woman present,
so we don't see a man attacked, but we do
see his dead body. Next thing is Annie getting strangled

(29:29):
in the car and then her neck is slashed by
Michael Myers. Annie's boyfriend Paul, however, is not present, so
he is not attacked too bad. Maybe he had pants
kind of lens um. Then we see Linda get attacked
and strangled, and then her boyfriend Bob also gets strangled

(29:51):
and then stabbed, so finally there's a We see a
man crucified teen boy as well, and then at the
very end, Laurie is repeatedly attacked by Michael Myers, but
there's no sort of male counterpart there for him to
be attacked, so it's essentially five women we see attacked
in the movie and only one man we see being

(30:16):
brutalized April. This is not an unusual ratio, is it? Or?
Or is it? No? Now, I mean there's usually I
mean you might say it's like if there are seven people,
who's usually four women and three men. You know, there's
always at least one more woman who's who's separate, and
she's usually like the slut, you know, and it's great.

(30:37):
She's like the most charismatic character and everyone's like, oh,
she's definitely dying Paras Hulton and the House of Wax.
Oh my god, yeah, is the one I got to
do for that. Yeah, let's I guess I have seen
a lot of these things. Um, yeah, I liked. I
did like the skanky ones of the early and mid auts.
Those are most of the ones that I saw. Five

(30:59):
right well to that point. Of the women who are
attacked and killed, certainly in this movie and in many,
if not most slasher movies, all those women are sexualized
in some way. Where the Meyers girl at the beginning
is seen making out with a boy and then presumably
they have sex, and then she is stabbed. Annie is

(31:20):
on her way to have sex with Paul. We see
her undressed because of the butter, she apparently spills all
over her clothes mad. She gets so mad about the
whole butter situation. I'm like, Okay, it seems like there's
a lot of metaphors in this movie, like what's the butter?
It's like I spilled loop all over myself? Oh no,

(31:44):
um and the and then Linda has sex with Bob
and then gets strangled to death. So because and we've
hinted at this before, we've talked about this before, I
think on the Friday the thirteenth episode, and it's worth
going into a lot more on this episode because Laurie
Strode is, you know, the virgin type. She ends up

(32:05):
being the final girl where while she is attacked by
the killer she survives. Well. I think there's a lot
of indicators attached to Laurie's character that, from my read
of it, went even beyond her being the virgin where
and it's kind of all the classic indicators. But you know,
at the beginning, we find out that she's very into

(32:26):
her studies and she like gives a funk that she
forgot her chem book and everyone else was like whatever,
where you know butter? And she instead of hanging out
with boys, she's doing a very maternal activity. She's taking
care of children. Uh, she is. She's she's knitting, you guys,
Like she actually brings her knitting materials with her her.

(32:50):
The two weapons she uses are a knitting needle and
a clothes hanger, so she's using I think we were
talking about this recently, like just domestic kind of feminine
weapons to attack this man, which I thought was kind
of like cool and an interesting I mean, she is
kind of she's resourceful, but it also does mean that, Yeah,
we were talking about on the Raiders of the Last

(33:10):
Dark episode where Mary and Raven would right. The one
weapon she uses is a frying pan to like hit
a guy over the head with, which is another domestic item.
It's an observation of something I think. I mean, there's
different ways to look at it where you know it
could be used to her advantage of Like, yes, she's resourceful,
she's using what's around um and she's not I guess

(33:31):
taking the mass like the masculine whatever phalic item to
turn it on a man. And you know she's using
the feminine objects that are around her. I don't, I
don't know, I can I can see that both ways,
but there's and then she's dressed differently than every other
woman in the movie too big baggy sweaters, really cool
penny loafers. Though I really like I'm like really into

(33:54):
her style. I like and he's my favorite, but I
liked the look. That was a good look. They bought
her wardrobe at j C. Penny. Is some trivia that
I read does not surprise me. And I also am
a Penny kid. So all of my clothes from like
ages I think five till eighteen were bought at j C. Penny. Yeah,

(34:17):
I think that we got my clothes at Marshals and
they had bought it from j C. Penny. So it's
like last season J Cure. Sure, but you know it
trickles down. Uh So. Kind of looking at this from
a screenwriting perspective, I do have a master's screen in
screenwriting from Boston University. I hate to bring it up,
but I think there is a very specific reason the

(34:39):
slasher movies like this have a lot of women in
them as the main characters. Because filmmakers of horror movies
are going to use whatever tools they can to heighten
and amplify the horror, and they think that it's scarier
when a woman gets attacked, because women are perceived as
being weaker by society, so brutalizing women has a greater

(35:03):
like emotional impact on the audience. Well, I also, I mean,
I also think that it's just in the world more
likely that men are attacking women for reasons that are
deep seated women don't fully understand than than the reverse. Well,
there's also the I mean, this is a biblical story construction.
I think people forget that horror movies are actually drawn

(35:26):
from very deep, long histories. Um. And so even if
you look at Night of the Hunter, for instance, that
is you know, really kind of beautiful fairy tale of
an early horror film, and it is also one where
women who feel sexual are the ones who are murdered.
And it's also you know, a comment on what that

(35:47):
is on the Killer and you know, talking about God
talking to him and telling him to do these things.
And in the same way you can see a little
bit about Michael Meyer perhaps having someone kind of talking
to him and telling to him that this is a
moral thing and that morally these people are bad. And
so it is to me it's always been very very biblical,

(36:09):
And I was raised Roman Catholic and we love horror movies.
It is about us. It is about us. It's like
our story where we're like, oh, yeah, that's so fucked up,
let's watch this, you know, and um, you know, you
can see that that trajectory from the earliest of horror
films of morality and women and um sexuality and who

(36:29):
gets punished and who isn't sure you know, watching something
like this where women are brutalized in some ways, it's
you know, reinforcing what I was taught as a child,
you know, about about that morality. And then also it
is circumventing it because there there is one woman who survives,
you know, and there is you know, yeah, it's it's

(36:52):
never like all good or all bad, you know. Sure,
a few different interpretations. I did some research afterwards just
to sure that I was that my reading of it
was sort of tracking, because you know, the morality play
elements of it seemed to read very clearly, where it
also didn't resonate with me on first viewing that there's

(37:13):
an implication at least that the reason because I was like,
why does Michael Myers kill his sister? Like, but I
didn't figure that out the first time, and then went
back and watched that scene again to be like, did
I miss something? I think the implication and then I
sort of checked this against other stuff is that he's
upset that she is in you know, like engaging in

(37:34):
sexual whatever instead of taking care of him, instead of
paying attention to him. And so it's his anger at
her sexuality versus taking care of him that motivates that killing,
which helps me out a lot with not justifying but
what is motivating the other Like it makes him so

(37:54):
mad when teenage women are sexual because they're not babysitting him, right,
But then I I was I think he's an in
cell and he's absolutely if only he just had that
terrifying internet community to go to at that time. And
then but then John Carpenter and it's again it's like

(38:16):
I wish I knew what Deborah Hill thought about this,
because Carpenter later went on the record is saying he
doesn't think Halloween is a morality play at all, and
he says people who say that completely missed the point
and then says quote the one okay, and his readom
like did you see your own movie? He says, uh,

(38:37):
quote the one 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's killed him,
not because she's a virgin, but because of all that
sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those
phallic symbols on the guy. So that isn't that so too? Yeah? Also,

(39:01):
this happens a lot where critics of horror movies will
be like, the fallace is the knife and the thing,
and I don't really get I mean, I get why
this happens, but equating stabbing someone to death with a
knife and equating that too, I think that's a giant
clip personally, Like, you're just killing someone with a gigantic

(39:23):
Why are we equating penis vagina heteronormative penetrative sex? Why
does that get? I know why, But why does it
get equated with stabbing someone and murdering someone to death? Oh? Boy?
I mean I mean that maybe it's too much. Yeah,
you know, it's just like, don't sexualize my knife. My

(39:45):
knife is my knife just for murder, not don't gender
my knife. Um, guns are pretty clear, those are pretty
obviously penises when they come and they kill had Um,
we gotta take a quick break, but we'll come back
for more. And we're back. Can we talk a little

(40:12):
bit about the Final Girl trope? Because okay, no, I
mean you're this is, this is. We've only talked about
the Final Girl trope once last year when we did Friday.
So we'll talk about what it is and then we're
I'm very interested in what your read of it is

(40:33):
because I'm sure there's a whole secret history we don't
know about. Yeah. So um. It has become such an
easily recognizable trope that other horror movies have been referencing
it for a couple of decades now, Like in Screaming
gets talked about a lot, it gets alluded to in
Cabin in the Woods. There's even a movie called The
Final Girls that came out in two thousand fifteen, which

(40:55):
I did see in theaters brag um. But there's also
another movie called Just Final Girl came out like a
year after that. The trope is that the kind of virginal,
studious good girl who is among the cast of peers
who are are much more sexual than she is. She's

(41:16):
the one who gets away, She escapes and or defeats
the killer. Basically, she's the last survivor left alive after
the killer has murdered everybody else live long enough to
fuck baby? Can't I virgin? Right? So that's the thing
you behind that right there? Are Yep, I've read feminist

(41:39):
arguments for and against this trope and slasher movies in general.
But yeah, I'm curious to hear your take. It's something
that I've had to talk about so much then, like,
what have I not said before? Because if you're a
woman who is in horror, who likes horror, that's kind
of the first thing that people wanted to talk about. Um.

(42:01):
Annabella got herself into some trouble recently, director of a
movie called The Love which because she said that she
thinks that the Final Girls bullshit. UM, And it's Uh,
it's one of those things where are women who are
talking about the Final Girl and embracing the Final Girl.
Are they participating in their own you know, patriarchal destruction

(42:23):
or are they actually doing something that is feminist? And
I don't think that there's any one answer to to that. Um.
The way that I think about it is, um, something
that women have not had that many movies that we
get to see ourselves in right. And so one of
the reasons why I was always gravitating towards horror was
because you actually saw a female character, at least one generally,
who was very well developed. Um, and so it's like, okay,

(42:45):
great and she you know, often very strong, that kind
of thing. And in the same way that gay people
and people of color have had to kind of reinterpret
movies for their own use and their own instruction and
their own kind of like piece of mind. There you go.
I mean, that's the thing. It's like, we find what
we want in movies. And I think that it's completely

(43:07):
okay to look at a movie like you know, Halloween
and say, I idolize Jamie Lee Curtis's character in this
Laurie Strode, because you know, she survived and she's a
great character. She's got some texture and she's interesting. And
to say that that's something that you can exalt. And
I'm also okay with Annabeller saying that it's bullshit. You know.
I think that I think that you you look for

(43:30):
things that you want to be in film, even if
they're not quite there. Um. Some obviously are better than others.
I do think that Halloween has some interesting characters who
I love. I love sluts movies. I love them so much.
They're so fund annie. And that's one of another thing
where like in a horror movies, you only get to
see sluts in horror movies like kind of like fully,

(43:52):
kind of like self actualized, like this is who I am.
Of course, they get murdered, and I try not to
think about that, but I love their characters so much
and I love spending time with them. Um and so
you just have kind of have to look past some
other things and to enjoy what you want from it.
I definitely agree that it's a matter of examining each

(44:13):
individual movie and looking at how it decides to portray
the female characters, how it kind of comes about the
final girl scenario thing. It's not. I don't think the
idea of the final Girl is inherently good or bad.
I think it's just a matter of, Okay, how does
this movie, how do you handle it, and how how

(44:35):
do you interpret it as it plays out on screen?
In each individual movie, there's a I mean and and
I've like tempted to give Debra Hill most of the
credit for the parts of these movies that of this
movie specifically, that might kind of bug me, or I
might roll my eyes at another horror movies that I
didn't in this particular one. But one of the reasons

(44:57):
this movie was like still kind of scary to me
was it's like great use of voyeuristic shots because there's
so I mean, like that's worth A lot of the
horror comes from before people die. For minutes you're seeing
you're in the predators mask, or you're right behind him
and you're you're watching you know, you're watching Annie inexplicably

(45:19):
strip of nude in someone else's kitchen and put on
a dad's shirt or just stuff like that that plays
so well, especially when I was younger and still living
in the suburbs, of like the feeling of being watched
by a masked man when you're just trying to do
do your fucking thing, which I don't know, Like I
definitely had some peeping toms when I was a kid,

(45:39):
Like they were gross and my my stepdad had to
chase them away from the window, Like it was just weird.
That's the kind of thing that's like extremely you know,
resonant for a lot of suburban We had girls we
had like a closed shade rule after like six pm,
all shades to be closed once like me and my

(46:00):
cousin's hit Puberty. It was just like by towels over
the just in case. You know, like well because you
can see the shadows. That was an issue in my
neighborhood where we were closing the shade but you could
still see the silhouettes and the shadows, and that was
also not good. So the peepers was stay peeping in silhouette.
They would be old timey peeping and uh, and so

(46:22):
you had to like go the next So it does resonate,
it does, and you know, there's it's an interesting thing
that they have scenes of Annie just doing laundry like
that's just the and you're like, but you just know
that he's out there somewhere when she couldn't watch whose
You're like, oh, she's dead, but then she's not. Then
the then then Lindsay the kid who for oh like

(46:44):
a large portion of her time on screen is catatonic
watching the thing, which that was really funny. That was
something because we're recording an episode on Scream tomorrow and uh,
something that showed up in this movie. And then in
Scream as well as like they're watching horror like this
is this horror movie takes place in a world where
horror movies already exist, which to me seems like why

(47:08):
they kept cutting back to the thing and you know,
kind of referencing stuff like that, which I think does
something to like strengthen the characters within the world, because
it's like, you know, it's it's so frustrating when you
see a character go into the place they shouldn't be
going into, and it's like, have you ever seen a
horror movie before? So a movie going out of its
way to be like, no, they've seen a horror movie before.

(47:29):
I appreciate that. Yeah, I do find out fascinating. And
there's definitely a lot more we can say about that
when we talk about Scream. But um, one of the
things I wanted to point out about Laurie's Strode as
the you know, final girl, as the as the remaining
survivor of this movie, is that we see her fight back.

(47:50):
She as we talked about, uses a few different weapons.
She is many toning up a fight, she's running away,
she's screaming for help. People are like bystandering the funk
out of that situation and ignoring her. There's a moment
she gets Tommy's attention by throwing the plant up at
his window, and she just like get the funk down,

(48:11):
which is also a questionable decision, but whatever. She's like,
let's get into the house where there's children. Um. Yeah,
but she does not think. She's not thinking. I mean
she's there's like a fight or flight situation going on,
and then it is I did find myself frustrated at times,
and maybe this is unfair of me because I have
not been in a situation where I've been chased by

(48:34):
a murderous, crazy person with a knife. You gotta try it,
but yeah, you can pay to get that done. I'm
just like people love experiences. It's experienced. But I was like,
she stabs the guy with a knitting needle and then
she just like collapses on the couch for a while.
The knife is right there, she drops it and it's

(48:54):
just like, no, like kill him some more like make
sure he's dead. Uh. And then so I was like frustrated.
But so I was like if I was in her shoes,
I would probably not be thinking clearly either. It's not
easy to kill a person, as it turns out movies
kind of make it seem as though it is easy
to kill someone to like get even if someone's trying
to hurt you. Having to hurt someone else in that way,

(49:17):
it's extremely difficult, for sure. I thought of that as well,
But then I was like, oh, it's probably like a
character thing, like they wouldn't want the leading lady to
to kill someone too hard or like or go quote
unquote overboard with like you know, forties stab wounds. Right,
that would have ended it right there, which I think
might be because Magic, well, yeah, because he keeps coming

(49:40):
back for all the sequels, even apparently if you're mentally ill,
you also are, yes, which is just a whole other thing, right,
If only that'd be, I'd be well, I think that
is why the thing happens at the end where Dr
Loomis is the one who kind of swoops in, and
I would argue saves Lorie by shooting Michael Myers, And yeah,

(50:05):
so I would have rather that not have had to
happen where a man kind of comes in and saves
the woman. I think it could have easily been that Lori,
who would have been perfectly justified, and she she had
it but yeah, Dr Limas comes in, shoots him and
then he falls out the window. Michael Myers disappears and

(50:28):
you know he's waiting for production to start on this
sequel whatever. But um yeah, he zaps over to like
a meeting. He's like, sorry, I got a development meeting. Um,
but we don't have to say that. Like, this is
kind of before we were getting like a lot of
horror movies that add sequels like in that period. So
it was a very brave thing of them to do narratively,

(50:48):
to be like, let's set up a sequel, because like,
was this going to be a sure hit? You know,
they didn't know. So having that kind of unresolved thing
in the end of this film is also, I have
to say, very fucking weird. Yeah all right. Um. I
also wanted to talk about the whiteness of horror movies
because maybe until very recently and even now, most slasher

(51:13):
films have a cast that is all or predominantly white,
as Jada Pinkett Smith's character in Scream Too, which I
recently rewatched, as she says the horror genre is historical
for excluding the African American element, and she says about
the slasher movie she's about to see in theaters is

(51:34):
a dumbass white movie about some dumbass white girls getting
their white asses cut the funk up. So that that's
pretty well sum up what a lot of slasher movies are. Um,
if there are people of color in the cast of
a slasher movie, they are often the first to die,
and they almost never survive until the end. And I

(51:57):
was kind of I was trying to do some reading
up about this and was sort of like trying to
make sense of why this is and and what are
the implications of this? And I think it's part of
it is that stories about rich tract of white women
are very sensationalized in the media, either in horror movies
or in the news. I mean, like think of John

(52:17):
Beny Ramsey and how we're still talking about that when
it's like her brother talking about Sorry, I mean, I
have seen every single everything pretty. And then when you
think about like the most famous serial killers, they are
the ones who generally targeted young white women. We started

(52:41):
to keep poking holes, right, So sorry barbaratus is the
exception to every role the golden standard. But story, real
life stories about women of color being killed are largely
ignored by the media. They don't get nearly as much
press coverage. And I don't know if slasher movies excluding

(53:01):
people of color from their stories is active commentary on that.
I don't think so. I think white people just don't
think about it. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about slashers
proliferating in the nineteen eighties when we also had um
John god sorry, what's his name, sixteen candles John Hughes.
So you've got John Hughes on this kind of like

(53:22):
family friendly type of thing, and he's doing the same thing,
and slashers are doing the same thing. The nineteen eighties
was the time of like flipped up collar assholes just
like you know heroes as heroes like you know, running wild,
They're the center of the story, They're the center of everything.
Even though that was, you know, the nineteen eighties, if
you look at the economics of that time, that's that's

(53:43):
representative of a very very small small number of people.
Reagan era movies are so fucking weird, fucking Reagan dude.
Although I love Land of Confusion video that Genesis, it
was so good, I would also guess that it was
just literally lack of thought. The closest I could get

(54:05):
was there representing like upper middle suburbia which probably wasn't
as accessible to non white people in this time. But
there's never I mean, there's no excuse to I feel
like this is probably across all genres at this time. UM, April,
have you found that that has changed significantly over time

(54:29):
or has has there been any progress whatsoever. It's weird.
You're seeing a lot of films that are UM, a
lot of directors, people of color specifically, who are kind
of in development on features right now, people who have
had shorts horror shorts or sci fi shorts that are
screening at festivals right now. And you see that and

(54:49):
you're saying, oh, that's the next generation. Um. When Tales
from the Hood came out, Rusty Kundiff's anthology horror, that
was one of the few that kind of really spoke
to that. Then you've got also um lepricn in the Hood,
and then it's follow up also embraced you know, African
American actors and you know, gave people their own slasher
And I have to say, Lepricon the Hood is one
of my favorite movies. I haven't seen. It is so

(55:12):
wonderful and there's actually some really interesting performances and those
are really amazing movies, but they're also quite rare. There's
a woman who runs a website actually called Grave Shift Sisters.
Graveyard Shift Sisters, that's what it is, and that's UM
specifically developed to talk about women of color in horror,
and so people are interested in that. Graveyard Shift Sisters

(55:32):
has some really interesting essays and kind of digs in
to find not just the women of color in features,
but in the shorts that you know, from those directors
who might go on to make these features. So it's
it's very fun to see that everyone checked that outs
so cool tweet out that link. That's awesome. When I
mean this is sort of casa because we're covering a
lot of movies this month that came out in the seventies.

(55:54):
We just did carry. Not only is it an all
white cast, but in terms of the women that we see,
there's no range of body types at which is you know,
almost goes without saying, but there it is. There. It is. Yes,
um also as per usual and extremely hetero movie, not

(56:16):
not a glimpse of queerness. Bapa Duke isn't anywhere to
be seen. Where's the Baba Duke in Halloween? He just
shows up. He's like, hey, Michael mis is like, that's
my line. Queerness in norror movies is also its own thing,
because you know, you do have some really wonderful kind
of lesbian vampire films that have been made, but then
you also have you know, like Buffalo Bill and Silence

(56:39):
and the Lambs, which is a construction that trans people
have had problems with, you know, for but also some
people have embraced him because of or her. I don't
I don't remember like what we would refer gender. Well,
that's because I think the movie misrepresents the trans experience
so much that it's hard to interpret what exactly they're
going for. Ye, And so yeah, there's you know, like

(57:01):
these lines between again, are you we rewriting it to
embrace this person because we don't see this person and
to kind of envelope them in our love and be like, oh,
I have empathy for you. I have sympathy for you
because I understand it was so difficult or something. So
you know, Buffalo Bill is a really we you know,
weird example to put into that, but you know, um,
there is a really great article that my friend Jordan's

(57:23):
Cruciola wrote for Vulture that is like fifty of the
best queer horror films, and I would highly suggest that
people check that out. Interesting, And you're you hit on
this point very briefly about Michael Myers and sort of
the way that horror movies deal with mental illnesses there
could you expand on that a little bit. I'm really

(57:45):
interested in that side of it, and it's, um, the
exploitation of mental illness in horror movies is something I've
thought about for a very long time. I am a
person who I would say is like mentally well now,
you know, but I've obviously, you know, being a woman,
have had my bouts with i'm sure my own mental illness.

(58:05):
So it's something that I even wrote an article about
this where I interviewed a few schizophrenic men about schizophrenia
portrayed in horror films to talk about how they get
that experience wrong or right. And it's something where we're
just trying to exploit what we think it is. You know,
there aren't many people who actually know what mental illnesses,
and I think that that's something that we're more careful
about now. But damn, we didn't fuck it up for

(58:27):
so many years, you know, And it's a it's a
I'm trying to even think about ones that get it right,
but there's always something that you can pick apart about it,
you know. Well, in this movie, it's um, I mean,
I am not a therapist or psychiatrist, so I can't
really properly diagnosed Michael Myers. Yes, but he has some

(58:50):
sort of some sort of psychosis is what he seems
to have, dissociative I I don't want to even pin
it to a specific mental illness, right. His doctor is like, nope,
just pure evil, and you're like, yeah, so you know,
if your doctor so it's pleasant. Right, So it's basically

(59:12):
equating mental illness with evil. I mean, I think it's
a pretty free which doesn't set a good precedent. I
just remembered Black Swan, I think is one that actually
does get a kind of mental illness corrected. So I
need to rewatch that. Um. I think it's an interesting
depiction that even most most ballerinas who suffered with issues,

(59:36):
we're just like, oh no, no, he gets it. This
is right. This is like it feels, you know, like
you're just depressed and you're really love that movie. It's
so good. I really really love that movie. But yeah,
horror movies mishandle a lot of things a lot of
the time, often specifically the portrayal of mental illness, the

(59:57):
representation of the trans experience, and then it ends up
perpetuating the stigma against mental illness and society it creates
more transpanic things like that. So and that's why, I mean,
I think that even with genre movies, it's useful because
it's easier to spot this stuff because they're like campiness

(01:00:19):
and being over the magnified, right, Like, I think this
stuff is present in all movies, like any drama that
came out, and I'm sure that these same elements are present,
but because everything's turned up to an eleven, it's that
much more clear that when you look at it, what
is it forty years later now you're like, oh, this
couldn't be more obvious, when at the time that I don't.
I don't know, yeah, just like the values of the

(01:00:41):
society are turned up to an eleven, and so I
don't know. I mean, it's helpful to look at movies
like this now into some degree because you don't have
to dig that deep to find to find out what
what is, what's going on. But there's also I mean,
I'm actually I'm like looking at my phone trying to
find this. But there's some listeners of my podcast who
are making a trans vampire zombie movie, I think, and

(01:01:03):
they were doing a go fund me and I can't
find what it is. If I can, we would love
to Yeah, we would love to see, but you share it.
That's one of the things that I'm really excited about
for horror and the futures. You know. I go to
these film fests and I see like Quarterly Fargiat's Revenge
movie and it is a rape prevenge movie that is
done in a way that I've never seen before, and
it is just like chills of you know, this woman

(01:01:26):
destroying these people, and but there's also a motion to it.
You know, there's like inner interiority, and there's character and
there's you know, and I'm excited about you know, Julie
Ducarnell's Raw, which is one of the best coming of
age sexuality movies that I've seen, and it is a
perfect movie. I will go on record as a perfect
movie thirty years from now. You will ask me April,

(01:01:47):
was this really a perfect movie? I'll say it is
still a perfect movie. I guarantee you. It's one of
Aristotle's picks too. Yeah, we keep getting a recommendations. Yeah. Um.
Does anyone have any other final thought about Halloween as
it pertains to the treatment of women and just speaking
to the movie in general, still scary and weirdly as

(01:02:10):
I think sort of genre films tend to be an
education on the values of that time in a pretty
tight hour and a half, which I always appreciate. Yeah,
I'm just like, oh great, I love this. It's like
under an I was like, we're out of here is great? Um. Yeah,
And I just want to say, like, in keeping with
something that we had brought up Earli, where there are

(01:02:30):
more women who are, you know, killed in these movies.
I do think that one of the reasons why is
because women just make they actually make better characters. And
I'm like, they are different, And there's there's something about
like getting to know someone before they're murdered, because it
makes you cringe. You're like, oh my god, oh my god. No.
So there's something about like and I'm thinking about the
screenplays that I've written, like the horror screenplays, and I

(01:02:52):
do have more women in mine who get killed, but
it's just because I have more women characters because I
actually enjoy writing them more, and I think they reveal
their emotions and theirselves so quickly on screen in a
way that men it takes like much longer to get
them to come out and years long. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's like the economy of having women characters is also

(01:03:13):
I think something that speaks to to horror like that
people understand that they do make good characters. So for sure. Yeah,
I think one of the reasons that I'm not super
fond of the slasher sub genre is the very prominent
brutalization of women. But it is a sub genre where
there's mostly women present in the story and participating, and yes,

(01:03:37):
some of them get brutally killed, and it's hard to watch,
but we see a lot of granted it as mostly
young white women who by Western beauty standards, are attractive,
but it has produced some interesting characters. Um. I think

(01:03:57):
there's a reason that the lore E Strode character keeps
showing up in these movies and people are really excited
about this, so shots out Jamie Lake Curtis, she just
is she's great. Yeah, she's great. Big fan of her.
I mean it's like she's got some pretty good jeans.
Janet Lee True and um Curtis, Uh Curtis, thank you.

(01:04:19):
Couldn't come by it more. Honestly loved Freaky Friday. Yes,
her loved Friday. Freaky. If it paved the way for
Freaky Friday to happen in two thousand and three, I
have to support it. I can't a good conscience not
But yeah, I still have mixed feelings about this genre.

(01:04:42):
This movie I think is scary. It's well crafted, it's
well shot, it's well acted. There's more nuance to it
than a lot of slasher movies that showed up in
its wake. But I'm rarely going to watch a slasher
movie and feel empowered unless there was And maybe there

(01:05:03):
is an example of this where the killer is a
woman who kills a bunch of men. It's called the
Witch who Came from the Sea, and it's a great
I've got the Blue ray if you need to borrow it. Okay,
I think it's worth buying the Blue Ray. It's also
very hard to find, and it is a woman who
cuts off dicks. Yes, so, and it's beautiful. It's a

(01:05:24):
beautiful film. It's so gorgeous and trippy and wonderful. Nineteen seventies.
Oh wa era, Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so slad. There
are slasher films that are easily read as feminist films.
There are This one I would say is very feminist film. Yeah,

(01:05:45):
there's there's some gray areas. Yes, mistakes were made, stakes
were made. Oh, one last thing for anyone who's keeping
track of what my name Caitlin Darante anagrams too relevant
to this movie. Caitlin Durante and ams to Lorie can't
die t N, as in Lorie can't die die misspelled,

(01:06:07):
it's just d I without the e, and then t
N obviously stands for tonight, So Lorie can't die tonight. Wow,
wish't you you have such an anagrammable name? Thank you
so much, thanks Mom and dad for I'm sure that's
why they Yeah, they're like, uh, we could name her
like you know, joey um? Shall we? Uh? Does this

(01:06:31):
film pass the vectal test three one? Yes, especially at
the beginning, Yes, a lot. While the women are still alive,
other women are still alive. They're talking about a lot
of books stuff. They're talking about a dance they're going
to go to, their talking about how Lorie doesn't have
anything to do that night and why it's like, oh, duh,

(01:06:55):
you're a virgin. Therefore you are not busy that the
line of latches, visions are just they're just waiting, they're
hanging out. They're talking about weed, weed stuff. Yeah, so
it was great and again shouts out to Debra Hill,
because you know what chances are if it was just

(01:07:18):
you can always tell, and we talked about this in
the Carry episode two. You can always tell when a
group of men are trying to write what they think
teenage girls sound like, because it's insane, just like Uncanny Valley,
full on polar express, like what are what has happening?
It's just insane. So but but the dialegue between the
women here, you know, it's like not they're not talking

(01:07:40):
about heavy hitting stuff, but there you know, they're typical
teenage girl talk tracked for me, Yeah, for sure. Shall
we rate the movie on our nipple scale? Let's do it.
We've got a nipple scale. It's zero to five nipples,
where we rate based on its portrayal of women. I
this is a tricky one for me, as I'm still

(01:08:00):
not putting it up against other horror films, are just
all films in general, because that's also a yeah. I
don't know. I think you kind of have to compare
it to other films of this specific genre, because if
we're putting it up against all movies, where most movies
don't brutally murder, you know, four different women, it's not

(01:08:24):
fair to can't be genres to every single yeah yeah,
so yeah, just putting it up against other slashers, but
keeping in mind that it is a movie that exists
within the whole, you know, umbrella of American film. I
guess I'm gonna land on like a two and a half,

(01:08:47):
which might seem low, it might seem high. I don't
know what I feel, because we do see the Laurie
Strode character is through resourcefulness she is able to escape
from uh certain death. She does have to have a
man kind of come in and save her at the end,

(01:09:09):
but overall, the development of the characters is I would say, again,
compared to other movies of this genre, I would say
it's pretty strong. Although her close friend Annie is very
mean to her a lot of the time, that seems
realistic for summer here because like sisterly different times, like

(01:09:31):
when they're talking about their plans for that night and
he's like, oh good, I've got three choices. Watch the
kids sleep, listen to Lynda, screw around, or talk to
you Lori. And it's like, oh, I was talking to
your good friend Lorie as unappealing as the other two options.
So that's not nice. I mean, to be fair, Lorie.
She literally cops her. She's like, I'm never doing anything,

(01:09:55):
so like not your first choice for a hang the
one who's like, yeah, no, I'm not up to anything
at any time, Like you're not my first call. Because
childhood there's only so many options. You're just the suburbs,
you know. I was that boring friend to many where
it's like, well she's you know, she's a she's a
good last pick because she'll be around. Yeah, they're right,

(01:10:17):
you guys want to come over and watch a movie.
My mom's got the hot glue gone out, Like that's me.
That was me, So yeah, I mean I think that
because this movie, I would say, handles, you know, the
nuance of of being a teen young woman in a
slasher movie better than other movies of its genre, but

(01:10:41):
also still requires that a bunch of women get killed
because they wanted to have sex. So yeah, I'm gonna
land right in the middle on a two and a half.
I'll give two to Laurie Strode and I will give
my half nip to the lack of understanding and the
misrepresentation of mental illness in horror movies. Fundip. I'm a

(01:11:05):
two for this one. Um not because I didn't enjoy
the movie and I see a lot of value in it.
And this is again, it's like, I would love to
watch this movie in a group and you know all
that stuff, but I would kind of argue that we
actually don't know these women very well. I like them all,
and I love Annie's character especially. I like Linda's character.

(01:11:26):
I like that they are openly sexual. Obviously they're punished
for it. That goes out saying for a lot of
these movies. But I can't name a second thing about
them really other than maybe they have a boyfriend, So
I don't know that. Actually, Linda says totally a lot,
so that's her thing. Two things seventeen years of Life

(01:11:47):
has a boyfriend, says totally loves beer, loves drinking and driving.
There's given the amount of time, because it is like
impressive and cool how much screen time women take up
in this movie. But given the amount of time they're
especially like long scenes we have with these women, I
do wish that there was a little bit more we

(01:12:08):
knew about it, because it's not like they're not there enough.
So I think, and and then I mean sort of
all the stuff we hit already. That is also a
criticism of the time in history, of the heteronormativity, of
the all whiteness of sort of what is almost expected
in in a movie of this time, and in the

(01:12:29):
mental illness stigma. I think it is. It isn'teresting. I
like the idea behind Michael Myers a lot where it's like,
this is a villain who hates women, and that's I'm
not saying that's good, but I am saying that there's
a lot of heroes in movies who hate women. Um
So in terms of like someone who's openly hateful of women,

(01:12:53):
at least it's pretty well understood that he is bad.
So thumbs up for that, Yeah, to to for me,
and give one to Laurie Strode, and give one Annie.
She she's just she's I want to be her friend.
She's so cool. I don't think she would have hung
out with me. She would have guarantee it. I'm what

(01:13:19):
about you. I'm going to go three, just because of
the kind of depth I have of knowledge of other
slashers and the more lured way in which these murders
are generally filmed. There's no, for instance, a knife kind
of lingering on a woman's naked belly or something like that.
There are there are different things that happen in slashers,
and I would say, this is actually quite tame. You know.

(01:13:41):
This is almost like the Hitchcock version of it, where
you never see the stab kind of thing, and that's, um,
that's just very different. I mean, I remember there are
movie scripts that I was reading when I was in
development horror films where it was just like a man
rapes a woman as he pulls out her spine, you know,
and we're looking at this and and those terms were
like I would say, like, that's you know, like the

(01:14:02):
real gross part, right, and then this is just it's
it's not as bad filmically, you know, it's it's the
cinematography is is much more tasteful, and the representation of
that is much more tasteful if you can be tasteful
about playing a woman. I don't know, but it's it's
it's it's almost like not over the top, and that's

(01:14:25):
something that I appreciate and I and I think that
you know what you're talking about with the fear coming
from the possibility of these murders is much more kind
of tangible and interesting to me. So yeah, three nips
for me? Would you like to give them too? I
gotta say, just like given to my three girls, right,
one for Linda, one for Annie, and one for Lorie.

(01:14:48):
Friends forever, friends, forever until in the next dimension. Maybe. Yeah. Well, April,
thank you so much for being here and educating us too,
because we we truly haven't explored this genre very much
on this show, So thank you so much. Thanks for
having me. Guys, where can we Where can we find you?
On on the webs? Well you can look for me

(01:15:10):
my maximum fun show called Switchblade Sisters, and on Who
Shot You Pod? And then um, you know, I write,
I write everywhere, It's true, everywhere it's yes, read April's stuff. Yes, Well,
we'll link to a lot of everything we discussed in
the show. Today as well, and you can follow us
at Bactel Cast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You can subscribe

(01:15:33):
to our patreon ak Matreon, which is five dollars a
month and it gets you two bonus episodes every single month.
Really good month. This month we've got Bob, who was
noticeably absent from the film Halloween, and my new favorite critics,
it's the new Alpha Bollina Is. Didn't see the Baba
Duke in this. I think Alpha Billina would have. I

(01:15:55):
actually he was Michael Myers. We don't know, we don't know,
and early part I know, um so early role for him.
You know, he's still scraping around. People don't want to
see his face yet because it's just the world not
ready right. So anyways, people you know Indiana Johnes is

(01:16:15):
his first credited role, but it's just really the first
time you see face yea, yeah, yeah, so yeah. You
can go to um patreon dot com, backslash Bechtel Cast
to become a matron quick plug about our East Coast tour.
We're going to be in a few cities starting November three.
We're going to be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On November four,

(01:16:38):
we're going to be in Washington, d C. And on
November five, we're going to be in New York City
as a part of the New York Comedy Festival. More
details about the movies, recovering guests, venues, and how to
get tickets go to bectel cast dot com. Go to
our live appearances tab and we'll have information there. You
can also check our Twitter and Facebook will besting the links,

(01:17:01):
so if you live in or near any of those studies,
we hope to see you there. Also go to t
public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast. Some special Halloween
designs will be loose by the time this word. Hey,
you want a feminist icon beetlejuice shirt, It's there, Like
it or not. It's available for a limited time only. Uh.

(01:17:24):
And we have our of course, our classic feminist icon
queer icon uh and other designs there. Um, all right,
how does the music again? Already? Forget? Oh? I was like,
do do do do? That's absolutely wrong. Bye bye