In Linda Clover’s Her Body, Himself, Clover talks in depth about the characteristics of the final girl and how the final girl is pushed to a breaking point where it is either kill or be killed. She also identifies the most well known and common horror themes from the early 60’s to the present day.
Clover states that the final girl is perceptive and keeps an open eye out for danger. She is ingenious, intelligent and somehow manages to keep calm during high stress circumstances (pg. 88). Laurie exhibits her brilliance throughout several key points of the film such as when Michael is chasing after her and she is attempting to get back into the house. She screams for Tommy to open the door and when he does not respond she wastes no time by grabbing a plant and throwing it directly at Tommy’s window to wake him up. A few minutes later as Michael is walking up the stairs to the second floor, Laurie opens the upstairs bedroom window to give the false impression that she has exited the house when really she is hiding in the closet.
(Michael breaks his way into the closet to get to Laurie.
Source: Compass International Pictures, 1978, Halloween.)
In almost all horror films, a common pattern is the association between sex and death. In horror films, two characters will usually have sex followed by being brutally mutilated by the killer (pg. 83). Michael expresses much of his sexual frustration as he murders his sister Judith after she has sex on Halloween night, murdering Annie a she was planning to engage in promiscuous sexual beavior and again killing Lynda and Bob after sex.
(Depicts Michael as he is about to strangle Lynda with the telephone chord.
Source: Compass International Pictures, 1978, Halloween.)
Clover acknowledges that the killers in these horror films seem to be invincible, much like that of a cat with nine lives. Within the course of the last thirty minutes of Halloween, Michael is stabbed in the neck with a knitting needle, impaled in his left eye with a medal hanger, and is shot six times only to disappear from the house without a trace. Each time Michael is attacked he recovers within a matter of minutes or seconds, somehow managing to retain his strength and belligerence.
It is no wonder why Halloween is considered one of the most horrifying films of the late 70’s to the present day. Director John Carpenter succeeds in his role to keep viewers on the edge of their seat sequel after sequel each time as Michael returns seeking more chaos.
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