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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was released for Halloween of 1988. The movie’s selling point is in the name. 1982’s Halloween 3: Season of the Witch did not continue the story from the first two films. Neither does it have anything to do with the rest of the Halloween franchise beyond the production and some thematic elements. I have already talked about John Carpenter’s desire to make the Halloween films a yearly anthology series, with each movie sharing only the Halloween holiday as connecting tissue. Carpenter had not wanted to continue the story from the first movie; in fact he made “The Shape” more human and less of a conceptual avatar in Halloween II just so he could kill that character off. At least, that’s my reading of what has been related. John Carpenter and his partner, Debra Hill only agreed to return for Halloween III on the condition that the story had nothing to do with the first two movies, a stipulation executive producers Moustapha Akkad and Irwin Yablans accepted. Even then, Carpenter and Hill only worked as producers; arranging talent and resources.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Horror Slasher Evolution: Halloween Returns”

Paige Francis He/him

We have talked about how two of the three major franchise slasher villains started out: Michael Myers was real in a manner-of-speaking, but was more of an idea; while Pamela Voorhees and later her son Jason were very straight-forward human serial killers. Freddy Krueger, from A Nightmare on Elm Street, deserves some deeper analysis. Until you get to the final scene of the first movie, Fred Krueger is a now-dead child murderer (the script, even to the point of shooting as far as I can tell, explicitly called him a child r***ist but real-life events during production prompted the change). His appearance in the dreams of the children (keep in mind all of the major characters in the film ARE WRITTEN as mid-teenage…15 and 16 years old) is *implied* to be a form of psychic emanation caused by the collective trauma of THEIR PARENTS. The people who burned Fred Krueger alive when his murder case was thrown out before conviction on a technicality. This is born out, more-or-less, when Nancy confronts Krueger, telling him he doesn’t scare her anymore (shades of “You have no power over me!”) She turns her back on Freddy and he poofs into nothingness as he lunges toward her.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Horror Slasher Evolution: What Is Freddy Krueger?”

Paige Francis He/him