Danielle Rae's Midnight Matinee: The Final(e) Girl
Okay but let's talk about Daddy Myers for a second
Hey everyone! Welcome back to Monster of the Week and Danielle’s final Midnight Matinee…for now! While I’m still working on revisions of my novel, I plan to resume weekly posts in early November. I’m going to take one more week off just because the election has my nerves absolutely shot (please go vote). But once that’s all settled, I’ll be back to interrogating the line between truth and high strangeness.
Huge shoutout to my wife and wonderous supporter, Danielle, for taking the reins and helping me to keep this going while I worked on other projects. It really is a passion project and I want to keep working on it. She’s had a blast writing about monster movies, and I had fun reading them!
So please enjoy this last Midnight Matinee, until I need her to swoop in and save me again!
- Gary
Originally, I planned out what I thought were enough monsters for the month buuuutt…I was short a week. I think I can tell why I’m not committed to regularly posting anything on my own. But you’ll see why this week’s monster had to come out today!
I think this might be the most iconic horror and Halloween monster, ever. The Shape. The original Halloween is one of my favorite movies and I rewatch it every year. My love for it began in Middle School when reruns of it — and Halloween II — would air on TV. I was a Jamie Lee Curtis fangirl and had heard that Halloween was one of her first roles. And that it, along with movies such as Prom Night, made her a Scream Queen.
One of my favorite things about Halloween is that it shows that sometimes, the biggest monsters are actually human. This isn’t a really revolutionary idea, but to young me seeing a man be the monster both made sense and changed my view of what made a monster, a monster.
“The Shape” is the nickname given to Michael Myers by director John Carpenter, because he was mostly seen as a dark shape that appeared in the background of scenes. Carpenter’s inspiration for the character came from when he was a student at Western Kentucky University and visited a psychiatric hospital. During his visit, he said he got to see some of the most serious patients and was most impacted by one little boy who had “the evilest stare”. In Halloween, Michael Myers is described in a similar way by his psychiatrist, Dr Loomis.
“I met this 6-year-old child with this blank, pale emotionless face. The blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil."
For those who haven’t seen Halloween, the basic plot is that at 6 years old, Michael Myers killed his older sister, Judith, and was sent away to a psychiatric hospital. Fifteen years later, he and several other inmates escape, and Michael goes on a killing all the while stalking Curtis’ character Laurie Strode. It is later revealed in the sequel that Laurie is Michael’s younger sister who was put up for adoption. Michael’s innate desire to kill her reflect’s Carpenter’s intentions for Michael to be human, but also supernatural. At times he appears to have superhuman strength, and in some story arcs, he is immortal.
One of Michael Myers most iconic features is the mask he wears. The visage is famously a Captain Kirk mask bought from a store on Hollywood Boulevard and spray painted white. The purpose of the mask is to take away any human features from the character and show that he is indeed, pure evil. Evil is the word of the day with Michael Myers. It’s his purpose, destiny, and motivation.
Halloween was my first introduction to the slasher genre and the movie’s success helped make slashers more mainstream. The slasher genere includes other famous entries like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream, just to name a few. The character of Michael Myers even inspired the development of Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise. Michael Myers even makes an appearance in the video game Dead By Daylight as The Shape, or as fans of his alternate costume know him, “Daddy Myers.”
…Anyway…. circling back to why I ever watched Halloween in the first place is our final girl Laurie Strode. I have been a Jamie Lee Curtis fan for as long as I can remember. Why? I don’t really know. I used to see a lot of movie reruns on TV as a kid and I liked her. In the final Halloween trilogy that came out in 2018, I was so happy to see her play an older Laurie Strode, badass and unapologetic. In a world where being female and over 30 is considered “past your prime” it was refreshing to see and I hope we make more movies and TV shows like that. In the meantime, I will continue to appreciate the original Halloween that made young me love Jamie Lee Curtis and Laurie Strode for the badass scream queens they are.
Happy Halloween!
