Halloween II. Not understanding much English back then, my imagination had to do a lot of the work with the dialogue and plot, and it went a little too far. However, Michael Myer’s robot like physical demeanor and relentlessness did not help. I didn’t know then that he was possibly a super human. I just thought he was some normal guy, and I was like, how can one normal guy be that strong and cruel and kill so many people with such ease?
His mask showed absolutely no emotion, which for me, at the time, was very different from most horror movies I saw, where killers and all had some archetypical and evident trait that didn’t make you wonder about them too much. They were obviously evil or whacked, so it wasn’t scary. But Mikey struck it differently, by literally being a killing machine in my eyes, and one with no purpose but to kill. Most villains have a motive, some reason…and so does Myers, but as I say, I couldn’t grasp the whole thing, so I didn’t know. I just thought he was doing it for the lols.
It completely traumatized me, and the movie always has that whole helplessness feel to it, to which I fell victim to very fast.
The chase scenes were really long, especially the ending one, and it just never seemed to end. The special effects are pretty bad, even for back when I saw it, which was about ten years after its release. So that somehow made the murders look more realistic, in a way I find hard to describe. No special effects, but actual stabs or strikes being showed can do a lot. The movie is two hours long, and it just completely drones and stretches out its mood and atmosphere as much as it can, but without ever going too far away from the killer, or the fear of the people around him. I found this disturbing. Much like the novel Dracula, the killer was defined by the fear of the characters around him, as much as what he himself did.
I was eleven back then, and loved horror movies, but this one actually made me shy away from them for a while. It was just so violent without being extravagant, so that made a good field for realism, coupled with what I personally perceived of the movie. I had nightmares for weeks, and one part in the movie destroyed my childhood by making me realize that if someone wants to kill you, hiding under the blankets isn’t going to stop them. That motherfucker slaughtered some pillows, man! Pillows!