A Clockwork Darkness

b) Vanishing Point of View (VPOV) When we are in Myers' POV watching Laurie and friends from far away it's scary but we know they're safe due to our distance from them (Myers has no rifle or crossbow). Once we lose his POV and are in, say, Laurie's bedroom, we can't be sure when we'll be seeing through his eyes again and that in itself becomes scary (as long as we're seeing through his eyes he can't sneak up on us). Hitchcock's Rear Window is an example of how to exploit this sudden loss of distance: after we've been seeing the killer in the window across the courtyard for most of the movie, his sudden entrance into the Jimmy Stewart's apartment is truly shocking--a bit like Samara crawling through the TV in The Ring, as is the suspense of seeing Grace Kelly, who we've seen all through the movie in the comparative safety of the apartment is suddenly vulnerable, having moved within the screen onscreen.

Expounding on this concept, Sheldon Hall notes in his essay "Carpenter Widescreen Style" that we may see some of what Myers sees but we never see Michael see.

"(W)e are often positioned along or beside Michael but we are denied the reverse angle cut which would show us his reaction if he were not wearing his mask: the necessary pre-condition for empathy as both Hitchcock and Carpenter have noted."

"We are however given just such a reaction shot when positioned with Laurie at the several points where she becomes aware of being followed. At these moments --such as when Laurie watches as the car Michael is driving passes her and Annie (Nancy Loomis) and comes to a momentary halt, or when she looks out from her bedroom window at Michael standing below--suspense derives in part from the fixed distance between Laurie/the camera/us and Michael: she is not close enough to identify him clearly, to recognize or dispel the threat, and the camera does not close the gap. A variation of the device is Carpenter's manipulation of the distance of the camera from Laurie and her friends. It does not always stay with them as they traverse the sidewalks of Haddonfield, but will sometimes hold a fixed position as they walk into the shot's depth. In refusing to be prompted into movement, to be motivated by the action happening before it (as is customary in classical cinema), the camera's objective autonomy suggest Michael's subjectivity even in his absence, and again increases our anxiety for Laurie. (3)

4. Hawksian Seige Dynamics
Carpenter is a huge fan of director Howard Hawks, and most of Hawks' films concern the dynamics of group action with the camera in medium shots. This allows us the perspective of one of the people in the group and we feel a sense of belonging and courage in the face of great odds and danger in Hawks' films that's unavailable in other directors' films, even John Ford's. In his 1951 The Thing (shown on TV within the Halloween mise-en-scene), Hawks' use of overlapping dialogue makes the action flow too fast for us to think or critique, only react as we would were we there (3). We are with the good guys every step of the way; we never see what the men under Captain Hendry's command don't see. There are no monster POV shots and we're never left alone with any one character. We feel connected and competent, so when they begin to display fear and anxiety it infects us more easily than if they inspired no initial confidence. Even the "Winchester Pictures" logo in the beginning, with the crossed rifles denotes a kind of rock solid safety - strength and solidarity in firepower, frontier-style. But soon enough that image burns away as the title "The Thing (from Another World)" blazes through in unholy light. It's surely no accident that even in the early 80s when I was still too young, alienated, and spooked to watch Halloween, I had seen the The Thing dozens of times. Even now it always works its brotherly magic, but within the mise-en-scene of Halloween, The Thing is metatextually swallowed by the darkness, as if a third screen barrier suddenly slammed down between it and the two kids watching it (in separate houses) and we viewers watching it in our own dark living rooms. The classic overlapping dialogue momentum of Hawks' film becomes trapped in the slower-than-time amber terrarium of Haddonfield, IL. It seems like even this 'comforting' sci fi film is slowly being swallowed up by the suburban melting clock of alienation and immanent threat.

To achieve this harrowing effect, Carpenter takes the sense of courage and strength inspired by the Hawksian 'group under seige' and reverses it, so we're seeing through the lone outsider's--the thing's-- eyes. Instead of the feeling of security we get from a Hawks film--the belonging to a group of brave men with a a shared code of ethics---we're utterly isolated. Instead of being able to rely on a shrewd group captain (who heeds our suggestions) we're ignored; instead of being safe inside the fort looking out, we're outside the fort, looking in.

In Halloween Hawksian framing (middle range, waist-up) does occur in some key scenes, as in the shot below where Nancy and Laurie flank the kids watching TV inside the room. Though we would hope they'd be aware of the onrushing menace, the dialogue is instead focused on boys and constantly interrupted by the ringing phone, requests from the kids on the couch, and the TV itself. It could almost be like a Hawksian comedy--Monkey Business or Bringing up Baby instead of a siege movie, because like Katherine Hepburn in Bringing up Baby, Nancy natters on as a self-absorbed but well-intentioned flake while as her fussy paleontologist, Laurie tries to mask her sexual reticence. In neither movie is there a reason for the characters to think there might be a devouring 'shape' of man or leopard coming to claw them up while they dawdle at the lip of chaos (to use the iconography of BABY -- see more on that here).

The fundamental difference between Hawk's comedy and drama is this awareness. The characters in The Thing know that a Myers-esque 'shape' coming to get them, so they're able to crack jokes, to take a 'whistling in the dark' approach to drama. Hawks' comedies occur when the the characters are oblivious to the coming monster/shape or they think there is a danger when there's not. When a hero knows he's in danger the courageous thing to do is treat it like a comedy, and in comedy, to treat it like a drama. In Halloween, the heroine thinks she's in in a Hawksian comedy, however it's we who know she's in danger. This variation occurs only rarely in Hawks --in Scarface when Guido answers the door of the honeymoon chateau he shares with Tony Camonte's sister and at the climax of Bringing up Baby wherein Susan brings in the killer leopard to the jail, thinking she has the tame one. In each of these examples our slight advance knowledge generates mounting dread. The build-up to the rampage in Halloween is like one of those moments stretched to 70 minutes.

Now that I'm able watch Halloween over and over as I used to The Thing it becomes more and more apparent that Michael really loves Laurie Strode (the way Susan really loves David in Baby) and just likes scaring her, chasing her around, letting her stab him with hangers and sewing needles, and of course killing all her friends as biblical payback for their surrendering to mindless hormonal desires instead of making popcorn and watching The Thing with her on Halloween, as he or I would have. And it's no accident that like Marlon Brando at the end of Last Tango In Paris, Michael is shot right at the moment his mask comes finally off and the invincible boogey man is revealed (for all his automaton shambling) to be just a disturbed boy man who looks like Mark Ruffalo.

After all just as we are powerless to change the events onscreen so too are we powerless to stop our friends from leaving us (or at least seeing us a lot less often) when they start dating. We can only moan in despair when Laurie continues to drop the butcher knife near the possum-playing Michael, who, for all his menacing stalking, is intimidated or enthralled by Laurie's resilience. Clearly Michael also relates and sympathizes with little Tommy after he's bullied and threatened by kids at school. As they run away one of them bumps into Myers and looks up, aghast, then runs away and we're meant to grasp a subtextual sense he's temporarily playing protector of the innocent. And if Laurie can't get away fast enough when he's chasing her, Myers slows down his inexorable shambling approach, and goes around to the side window rather than following her in the front door. For all his evil he's playing a game. His stabs miss or near miss even when he has plenty of time to aim. His complete silence dictates we can only determine his evil by his actions, which are too systematic to be sexually sadistic. They can only be read as elements instead of performance, of a game.

6. Fear of Maturity - I know of a lot of people who resent having to grow up and face the wearying demands and pressures of adulthood, myself included. All actions have consequences, and for someone as emotionally arrested as Michael the consequences add up only to bodies for disposal and use in creepy tableaux. He seems to have a point, as sexual excitement over boys so overwhelms these three friends that it shuts out all the warning signs coming their way. To them the world moves as they want it to, and nothing can be out of the ordinary or threatening when they have sex--which they're led to believe by Hollywood will cure all their ills--on their mind. While may watch Laurie's friends being unknowingly stalked and think, 'ah they get what they deserve,' the way parents will accuse their own children of lying when they say a priest molested them. Annie especially is guilty of ignoring danger signs: first by the barking dog, which in her self-absorption she thinks is growling at her even though it's clearly standing by her side and trying to warn her; and later when she hears a potted plant crash on the porch, and then the yelp of the dog being strangled (all she can presume is the dog is getting laid). She's blind to anything and everything unless it's related to her horniness.

Whether we remember it or not we've all been babysat and we've all had to deal with the sudden arrivals of horny boyfriends, anxious to take advantage of our temporarily parent-free space. Maybe we've also ourselves, later on, taken advantage, but that's at a less formative time. As kids our budding crushes on this older but not yet adult babysitter are dashed by this coarse brute's arrival! Is this not also a fine metaphor for our own sense of powerlessness? We can't stop the boyfriend and we can't stop getting old and having to one day get a job. Michael terrifies us because he represents an alternative too dark to consider consciously. We can just disappear down the rabbit hole of becoming a mere 'shape' like he does, or just do whatever we feel like, lying and stealing and wandering the Connecticut wilderness like Susan Vance in Bringing up Baby.

7. Tele-Cocooning - Even Laurie is guilty of this social ill. While on the phone with Annie she ignores Tommy's boogeyman sighting because she's appalled after learning Annie told some boy Laurie liked her. Look at the awesome way Jamie Lee twists her eyes up and twirls her hair in a mask of concern and anxiety over Annie's matchmaking gambit, which causes her to miss the sight of the Myers across the street and so dismiss Tommy's anxiety the way her friends have dismissed hers earlier when she spied Michael peering behind bushes.

Imagine if Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) was so wrapped up in the issues with Nikki (Margaret Sheridan, above) that he ignored the danger in The Thing? If he just told his men and the scientist that they were hallucinating and not to bother him as he sweet-talked her? The world would have ended in 1951. That's maybe why Carpenter's remake is all men. We just aren't as strong multi-taskers as we used to be, at least not in the movies. Men can't navigate a woman and a monster at the same time anymore.

8. Open Non-Ending - The Shape is in the theater!
And so it is we're left in the movie with a continuing sense of the eternal threat, our first experience of a human killer who can come back to life time and time again, who is supernaturally unstoppable. All horror movies after Halloween would now end this way, with some very last minute realization of more danger to come. Creatures like the Tingler and the Blob used to ooze off the screen around under the William Castle electrically-wired seats of 50s teenagers. Now Samara crawls from the screen in The Ring or we watch our own immanent death on TV in the latest Scream. It's only a matter of time before we turn around and see the window behind us is open.

And we were sure it was closed.

Better turn the TV on loud. Something nonthreatening from the desert island video collection -Forbidden Planet of The Thing... if you've read this far I'm pretty sure you own both and know they can protect you from fear like few others. Shit may be going down but here in these films we are safe inside an established military perimeter, or high up in a well-armed B-17... with warm coffee up front,

Of course when both The Thing and Forbidden Planet are on the living room TV sets in Halloween that sense of security is just a fleeting memory -- washed out images the kids are only marginally paying attention to as right behind them--gathering in the darkness of our gaze -- the killer is leaking into the surrounding darkness of the theater or your own living room. Make sure your back is against a sturdy wall. Stay alert, with porch light on and guard dog, knife, shotgun and baseball bat by your side, and keep watching... keep watching The Thing!.

NOTES

1.1) Films like De Palma's Blow-Out and Coppola's The Conversation are the exceptions, but in both cases the eavesdrop aspect is central to the plot instead of incidental as it is here. 2. "Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!" - Hitchcock / Truffaut

3. The Cinema of John Carpenter, p. 71 (Wallflower Press, 2004)

4. Hawks' gave the directing credit on The Thing to his longtime camera man Christian Nyby, but its generally considered 'his' movie