The scariest scene in Halloween doesn’t involve a knife or a gruesome death. In fact, the most terrifying scene in the movie doesn’t even involve Michael Myers. John Carpenter’s 1978 classic about the boogeyman come to life explores the nature of evil in an ordinary town where gunshots triggered track meets, not sirens. Haddonfield, Illinois plays the role of a wholesome suburb where everybody knows everybody and, more importantly, a helping hand is always in reaching distance.
Yeah, about that.
As Halloween reaches its climax, Laurie Strode runs through her neighborhood, screaming at the top of her lungs for help. Her two friends are dead, and she narrowly escaped a run-in with a psycho wielding a kitchen knife and rocking an all-white Captain Kirk mask. On this Halloween night, someone must be home. Right?
Laurie finds a porch and bangs on the front door while yelling until her voice gives out. The porch light flickers on in an instant, followed by someone looking out the blinds. In less than a second, the blinds are closed, the porch light is extinguished, and Laurie’s world—along with the block—goes dark again.
That is the most frightening scene in a movie littered with them. Carpenter comments on suburbs, neighbors, and the evil residing in our world just under the surface in just a few seconds.
Carpenter lived in Bowling Green, KY, during the ’50s. On The Ringer’s Halloween Unmasked podcast, Carpenter said that part of the country profoundly affected him and, eventually, Halloween.
“Everything was segregated back then. It was astonishing when I think about it. But these hillbillies, they can be pretty rough. That’s where I learned about evil.”
John grew up around “evil people,” which, for him, meant those without empathy and uncaring about anyone but themselves. Some of his high school friends spent their weekends driving to the Black section of Bowling Green, guns in hand, and used houses for target practice. Clearly, it messed with him seeing this on the regular. Especially since he kind of liked some of the people who got their jollies from terrorizing their neighbors.
But he learned that genuine evil is covert. It wears a mask to hide its true intentions. These are the people who smile in your face while holding a knife behind their back. And this façade wasn’t relegated to racial relations.
Armed with that knowledge of evil hiding underneath the cover of respectable society, Carpenter made a horror movie where the suburbs literally give birth to evil. And the perception that “it could never happen here” is evident the moment we find out the masked killer in the opening is just a kid in a Halloween costume. Michael’s parents are detached. They’re not raving, angry, or even trying to put the fear of God in him like my mom would if that were me holding a bloody kitchen knife at age six.
And no, we’re not chalking up their blank stares and folded arms to mere shock. Carpenter knows the ‘burbs—the real place, not the Joe Dante movie—is the place where people don’t talk about certain things in the name of “politeness.” Debra Hill was on the same wavelength as her writing partner. “You think nothing could go wrong there, and nothing could be further from the truth. Every town has a secret.”
Michael Myers is only one of Haddonfield’s secrets. Laurie’s neighbor didn’t want to answer the door because it meant acknowledging that covered-up story. But their refusal to help her indicates the other secret Carpenter recognized in Bowling Green: People show you who they really are when they think no one is looking. Laurie’s pleas for help weren’t their problem. And perish the thought of lending a hand when you won’t get the credit for doing it in front of a group of people.
Movies like Halloween, Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream didn’t bring horror to the suburbs to scare “civilized” people. They just brought out the scary stuff that already existed. In each of those flicks, just like in real life, there’s a group of people who believe more commas in their bank account will shield them from the truth about their neighborhoods or even themselves. The ghosts, ghouls, and goblins with knives attacking them are the wake-up call nobody wants to answer until it’s too late.
Michael Myers never had a choice. His evil deeds are intuitive and natural. Laurie’s neighbor chooses to ignore her screams, making her complicit in everything that happened after the fact. That makes the resident of that Haddonfield house just as foul as Michael, if not more so. When push comes to shove, as it often does in this world, that scene says you’re on your own. If the “good” people won’t help, where do we turn when the boogeyman is on our tail?
We were trained to believe Good Samaritans existed in horror flicks and represented safe passage until that point in ’78. Halloween threw a bucket of cold water on that idea because its creators innately understood the reality of places with nice houses and well-manicured lawns.
“It’s not a place that you think anything evil can take place,” said Carpenter. “But people are trapped in there. And they scheme, and there’s trouble in the suburbs. Always.”
And that’s before we can even talk about the guy in a mask on a killing spree.
