my mom moved out and abandoned me
“Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or another. They’re us with hats on.” - John Carpenter Everybody in a slasher film has some sort of family issue. It may be minor—Annie’s dad being a shouter in Halloween —it may be major—Sid’s mother sleeping around and breaking up at least two marriages in the process in Scream —but it’s there. The killer will have his own family issues—Michael Myers’ being left with his irresponsible sister is both a failure on the part of his parents, arguably, and on the part of his sister, for whom sex with her boyfriend is more important than familial obligations. The slasher film, I’ve said before, could be taken as a response to liberal developments in American society going into and, especially, out of the 1960s. September 3, 1967, in the Los Angeles Times , Reverend Ross Greek called runaways “a national crisis” (Houston, 1967, p. F1). And the biggest danger was exposure “to the three-letter hazards of pot, LSD, STP and sex” because none othe...