Yeah, I’ve seen John Carpenter‘s Halloween before. But, honestly, not for a long time, and never in a cinema, and certainly not in a screen full of other people who have seen it so many times that they laugh at both every awkward line delivery and the iconic moments when Michael Looks Really Quite Threatening and Scary.
It was a sold-out show at the PCC. My friend and I scarfed our way through not one but two small mixed popcorns, through which he kept adorably burying chocolate pretzels for me to find, which I ate, because I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’m lactose intolerant and that dark chocolate still has some milk in it. But I turned out fine. Largely because I hadn’t eaten much that day.
Which explains how drunk I already was on arrival from only some punch, a beer and an jello shot from a syringe at my work’s Hallowe’en party that I showed up specifically for [despite working from my parents’ house for the next month due to stress], because it had been my freaking idea to have it in the first place and I felt bad for missing the set-up. Luckily I didn’t have to care about being drunk because a) everyone else was, too and b) my friend and I kept drinking. By the time we moved onto rum we had each made a a couple of trips to the bathroom each – but then everyone else in the upper screen had, too.
Both of us remarked that my father, a retired forensic psychiatrist, would have kicked Loomis’s pointlessly chaotic neutral’s ass in the shrink ethics biz. I’d forgotten the out-of-nowhere nudity and how really quite unthreatening and scary Michael now is in light of chainsaws, rigged jaw traps and body horror. I also forgot that we straight-up see adorable little blonde white Michael as a child, knifing up his topless older sis. To be honest, the only thing I do remember was that closet scene, now thinking that closet is probably bigger than my room in London, and that it was scarier 20-odd years ago when I saw it.
Sadly, I think I’m desensitised to that kind of thing now (unless it’s real-life horror – which I seriously have zero interest in watching). So I guess I’m half-rating the movie, half-rating the night.But what a way to celebrate Hallowe’en, huh? First one in London. Hopefully one of many.
Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃
An Englishwoman in Salem 