So it’s September, which basically means Halloween Eve. Which makes me think about the movie Halloween. And I’ve seen some (presumably younger) people online talking about the movie and how early in the movie when Laurie is in her room and she looks out in the yard and there’s the laundry hanging and she sees The Shape… why doesn’t she call the police? That would have ended the whole movie right there.
Well, number one, what a boring fucking movie. Number two, in thinking about it and going back to my childhood and young adult in the ’80s and ’90s, we didn’t call the police. And I’m curious to see if this is true for other people as well.
The one time in like a 10-year period that anyone in my friend group called 911, the damage was already done. People had already been attacked and were hurt and on the ground by the time we actually fucking called 911. But there were other times: I remember a few of my friends and I were hanging out on my back porch just smoking cigarettes, drinking super Big Gulps, just hanging out. And we heard suddenly out of nowhere the loudest fucking sound.
It didn’t sound like a crash, like something had fallen or something had broken. It sounded like the killer was in the backyard with a battle axe and had just driven it with all of his heart and soul into the side of the house. This fucking sound, it was so loud and it scared the hell out of all of us.
Did we call the police? Of course not. We’re young and virile. We ran inside and grabbed weapons and ran back out. To investigate. Because that’s what we did. We investigated. We didn’t call the police.
So of course Laurie didn’t call the cops. She was a Gen Xer. She was probably just looking out the window like… I don’t think she says anything but in her mind she was going, “What the fuck, bro?” That’s just how we handled most things.
Again, I would love to hear if that was your experience growing up. Like, people had to be bleeding out in order to actually call the police or call 911. So give Laurie a break. She’s a product of her generation.
Should she have called the police? Of course she should have in the real world. But our real world was very different back then. So let me know in the comments.
And fire up Halloween this season. I know I’m due.
P.S.
Almost forgot: Speaking of Hallween, I’ve got a new short horror novel set in the ’90s coming soon! Here’s the artwork of the cover.
