How Many Dogs Die in John Carpenter's Halloween?

The first Halloween movie is the best Halloween movie. If you don't want to spoil the experience, don't watch any of the others. 

Except maybe Halloween III. That one was interesting.

For a movie that was made for the express purpose of making easy money, Halloween had a lot of dimension to it. No pun intended.

The cinematography was spot on. There was an ink blot feel to the darkness in the movie. It got all over you. And Carpenter the Composer was off the charts jamming what with his alarm bell stabbings and scratchings setting off premature panic that wanes until the monster pops up and you realize you were right to start running in the first place.

Good stuff.

But . . . tucked in the movie is the horror movie marathon hosted by Doctor Dementia. It features The Thing and Forbidden Planet. The Thing in The Thing is a kind of walking carrot who kills a couple malamuts. It was remade by Carpenter. Some think that remake is his best film. 

Forbidden Planet features an invisible monster which turns out to be the one-man egregore created from Dr. Morbius's primal Id. Carpenter mixes the two movies in his version of The Thing and the inner monster manifests itself in the bodies of Carpenter's characters. But this isn't about that.

If you notice, the movies appear in Halloween out of sequence. The Thing kills dogs before his flying saucer is even discovered. They hadn't blown him out of the ice yet. In Forbidden Planet, Robbie the Robot zooms in toward the space ship before it has landed. In Halloween poop hits the fan before poop hits the fan.

Doctor Loomis and the Sheriff find a dead dog at the Meyers' house before Michael chokes the German Shepherd outside the house Annie is babysitting at. Exactly when the masks and rope are stolen from the Hardware Store is not clear. You can chalk it up to bad editing but . . . is it really? 

If you are confused, it is probably the way Carpenter wanted it. At the subliminal level, we are experiencing a mental disorder, a regression if you will, and time, like a mental disorder, is out of joint. The future happens before the present. Foreshadowing is foreboding. A process of confusion and disorder depriving the audience of any means of making sense of what is happening. 

The present is as blank as Michael's mask. Even in Carpenter's soul ripping music, the horror happens before the horror happens. That music has been called a "music box" or "musical set construction." You don't have to build a haunted castle. You can make one out of sound. 

Music is used that way in Phantasm and Jaws. When a Stranger Calls. I went to see When a Stranger Calls in the theater. People were literally screaming before anything happened. That is musical genius.

What is Michael? He's a cash cow now. The various attempts to define what he is have not been sufficient. I don't really want to know what he is. Then there is no mystique. His ability to haunt us is done away with. 

As a cure I suggest getting back to nature. Get back to the original Carpenter. Open the music box. Watch the teenage girls walking down the street. 

See the spectral figure behind the bushes.