Ike Oden in 'Attack of the Phantoms' (2024)

When we last left off, I was writing a rambling list of things that stood out in writer Dennis Etchison's 1978 adaptation of John Carpenter's seminal slasher movieHalloween. Given that my self-imposed deadline of October 31st, 2013 is hurtling toward me, I have no other choice than to sit down and comb through pages and pages of notes I jotted down while giving the book a read-through. Enjoy the following 20 academic insights below. If not, then go buy the book and read it for yourself. After you've gone and f*cked yourself, of course.

1) We pick up with Loomis stumbling upon the hardware store break-in and attempting to convince Sheriff Brackett that evil has returned to this tiny town blah blah blah. This scene is stretched out a little longer in the book, and also has Loomis' thoughts returning to his wife and teenage son. At one point Loomis wonders when Haddonfield would finally get its own head shop. I gotta admit, this whole aside feels like filler. Either that, or Loomis and his son like to get blazed together.

2) Oh, and Loomis describes Myers to Brackett as "from another dimension", thus driving the metaphysical aspect of the character home. Which is awfully nice of him.

3) Etchison then tackles the classroom scene where Laurie watches The Shape watch her from the Smith's Grove hospital station wagon. During this time we establish that Laurie is obsessed with the Judith Myers murder, Etchison makes a lot of references to her boobs, and Laurie tries not to imagine being knife-f*cked. Seriously.

4) During this scene, Laurie gets her first glimpse at Michael's mask. Etchison clearly had no idea what John Carpenter and his gang of miscreants were going to go with Myers visual look in the film. Rather than describing a white spray painted William Shatner mask, The Shape has a more traditional clown mask in the novelization. It sports "red lips and sunken purple eyes." More on that to come...

5) Moving on to Tommy's unfortunate pumpkin related mishap, the boy gets an even better look at the serial killer.After bumping into Myers outside of the school, Tommy gets an eyeful of his "dark red stains lips and eyes rimmed in purple, like grossly overused eye shadow. A livid scar zig-zagged down his cheek." So, yeah, sort of like The Joker with Frankenstein monster scars? I just can't see it.

6) No one who sees Myers' mask is ever quite sure if the mask is his face or just a creepy clown mask. So either way, its his face, just accept it and move on.

7) Alright, let's meet the other girls. Linda, played in the film by leg-tacular 70s sex symbol P.J. Soles, has a fashion sense in the book that screams"Sex here." They went a more conservative route for the finished movie, obviously, but this describes the character's personality pretty well. At one point Laurie recounts a time where Linda walked up to a guy in a bar to tell him "she'd like to ball him." Linda is an exaggeration of the stereotypical teen slasher slu*t throughout the book, though Etchison's depiction makes me question whether or not she's a straight up sex addict.

8) Next up, Annie. While Nancy Loomis' character in Carpenter's film existed to push Laurie and act as a the group's mastermind, Annie is presented as more of a perverse and idiosyncratic character in the book. She describes herself as as "the world's hornie*st teenage girl" and makes some off colored remarks about bestial*ty at one point. Etchison pushes Debra Hill's suggestively scripted dialogue over the edge of subtlety, but in Annie's case it works really well. She's the most well rounded and likeable of the three girls, even in her manipulation of those around her (from Linda and Laurie to her own father). Really, I sort of wish Annie was the final girl inHalloween. The same sentiments go for those Rob Zombie remakes no one seems to like but actually get better with re-watches and, no, I'm not just saying that because I like Danielle Harris but maybe I am.

9) The "Everyone's entitled to one good scare" sequence plays out far differently, ending with Sheriff Brackett demonstrating to Laurie a proper Judo technique for throwing someone over your shoulder. Seriously, the chapter grinds to a half for two pages to go through martial arts lessons. And, even better, there is absolutely no Judo fighting with Michael Myers at the end to pay it off. f*cking unbelievable.

10) Apparently Laurie is a horror fan, having seenThe ExorcistandThe OmenandBlacula. Okay, maybe not Blacula, but it would give her character a lot more depth if she put that AIP classic in the same league as the other two. I wonder if that has a novelization yet?

11) Laurie's mom (biological at this point, guys) is apparently "an angular, tall redhead like Laurie." They have a very inexplicable conversation about the nature of evil before Laurie retires "to go do her homework" (re: tease The Shape from her bedroom window).

12) Brackett and Loomis' man date at the old Myers' house is filled with revelations. First, Chester Strode has sold the house to a New York couple that's apparently into owning murder houses or some such sick sh*t. Oh, and they find the dog that Myers was munching on, just like in the movie but with more gore and bite marks and stuff. Finally, sexual tension arises between these two men's men. Both pull their guns when that tree branch smashes through the window in Judith Myers' room. When Brackett gets a glimpse at Loomis' piece, he comments "Lord, you're loaded for a bear." The book cuts the scene after that line, but I'm pretty sure that's their cue to start f*cking.

13) So Michael's stalking the girls throughout the narrative. Unlike John Carpenter's restrained film, Etchison's Myers is rocking a rager in pretty much ever scene. While he follows Annie's car, he's all nervous and horny. Around page 100, we get into his head, revealing he's essentially a murderous child trapped in a man's body who cannot go against the voices in his head that tell him to murder. At one point, he gets very tempted to grab a trick-or-treater, which is especially creepy. Mostly, though, he's like every other hormonal teenager in the book, albeit one who is more close to his butcher knife (the handle of which he squeezes in repetition while watching Annie and Linda undress) than his penis.

14) The book plays most of the death scenes as they occur in the movie, albeit with more blood. Etchison's work here is especially good. Annie's death climaxes with her feeling the demise is "peaceful and undramatic." She regrets not being able to say goodbye to her parents and wonders whether she'll get another shot at life on the other side of death. It adds an especially poignant layer, elevating an otherwise subpar slasher novel by reiterating the fragile humanity of the victim characters. Also, Etchison pours on the gore with every kill, thus satiating those Halloweendetractors starved of the red stuff. That's not what Carpenter'sHalloweenwas about, though in the context of the book, it works.

15) The novel also suggests The Shape swings both ways. While staring in awe of Annie's nude form from outside a window, Myers marvels that she looks nothing like Judith. Then, almost reassuringly, Etchison reveals "They didn't have to look like Judy. They didn't even have to be girls." Take what I can seems to be the killer's criteria. I don't blame you, Mike-y. We've all been there, bro.

16) We get some more insights on Bob and Linda's sex scene together. Despite dressing like a total dweeb, Bob is apparently Haddonfield High's Big Brain, Jock and Alpha Male all rolled up into one all-American package. Of course, this makes him Linda's first dating choice. During their roll in the hay, Etchison uses the description "Her nipples contracted into hard nuggets." Really, is that what Bob's thinking about while he's getting down? Hard nuggets? I suppose it's better than "hard misshapen rocks" or "globs of melted cheese" (which sounds more appropriate for a Cronenberg body horror tale, I think).

17) The remainder of theHalloween: Trick or Treat or Dieplays out more or less the same as the film, but with some added details. Brackett reveals to Dr. Loomis that Myers' great-grandfather committed a similar murder when he was Myers' age, gunning down a pair of young lovers with a revolver at a Halloween dance in 1899. Yes, it was at the behest of voices in his head and, yes, they apparently had Halloween dance parties during the turn of the century in Illinois.

18) While Laurie investigates the house across the street, she doesn't find the bodies in the exact same order in the finished film. Things get mixed up a bit, my favorite being that Laurie finds Linda's body propped naked in a chair, her tongue out and slathering "like a mongoloid."

19) The showdown juxtaposes Loomis' frustrated around-the-block searching for The Shape with Laurie's more strenuous struggle for survival. The cat-and-mouse battle between the final girl and the killer is more drawn out, with further asides and a glimpse into the mind of Mrs. Strode as she uses her pluck to narrowly avoid death. Meanwhile, Loomis is stuck walking around the block with his dick in his hand, though he does at one compare Myers to Dracula, which is kind of cool.

20) Finally, Myers' non-death at the hands of Loomis goes down. Remember that Dracula reference from the last entry? Well, it pays off with this final description of the killer without his mask on (played by Tony Moran in the finished film):

"Michael Myers face was white with whiter fang-life teeth. His black hair was matted over his forehead and one eye bulged like a dead fish. Where the other one had been was a wet bloody hole."

Through this, Etchison has brought Myers full circle from psychotic child to serial killing teenager to suburban monster. Just as in John Carpenter's film, the character survives six rounds being blasted at his torso. As he disappears into the night, he completes his transformation into the myth of a real-life boogeyman.

Then Brackett hits up Loomis for some sympathy sex after finding his daughter's remains, and we FADE OUT.

Everyone's entitled to one good lay, I suppose Happy Halloween, everyone.