I’ve said it a million times. HALLOWEEN II is by far, in my humble opinion anyway, the scariest of the franchise and is rightfully so for many reasons. HALLOWEEN II goes harder in just about every aspect, from the angrier music as a metaphor for a more pissed-off Myers, to the minute details scattered around the film. One in particular, shoved in by John Carpenter that is brief in nature, but perhaps the most fucked up moment in the whole movie.
And it had nothing to do with Michael Myers.
While Laurie Strode is being tended to her wounds by a drunken Dr. Mixter inside Haddonfield Memorial, a car pulls up to the front of the entrance with a frantic mother gently easing her son dressed as a pirate, out of the car and the kid is gushing blood from his mouth as we can see something shiny stuck up in there good. ‘m going to be completely honest because when I saw this as a kid, I thought it was a fuckin’ ice cube. Maybe it was the low definition on my crappy TV, but I went for YEARS thinking this kid had an ice cube stuck in his mouth. Did it make sense? Not a bit. Did I ever question it? Hell no. All I understood was that shit looked like it hurt and when I finally found out it was an actual razor blade from a piece of candy, it was like an emphatic moment of HOLY SHIT for me, and it just made that movie so much scarier.
We only see the mom and son duo two more times-once checking in and being told to wait as the frustrated mom is putting pressure on her kid’s jaw, and then again upon discharge outside the hospital where Gary French (yes, the kid actually has a name) and mom Leigh, (hey, so does the mom!) attempt to have a conversation, but the kid’s words are muddled from the injury and although Gary lives to see another Halloween, he’s obviously scarred for life.
Watching (and realizing) what I was seeing within that scene as a child, and now a parent myself, just makes it that much more chilling knowing these things have absolutely happened. The genius of John Carpenter sticking this out-of-pocket, non-essential plot point in HALLOWEEN II, comes on the heels of mass hysteria of stories of crazed people tainting candy for trick-or-treaters with poison and, of course, razor blades. The first documented incidents go back to the 1950s, where a California dentist laced over 400 pieces of candy with laxatives, sickening over 30 kids. As if kids aren’t scared enough of the dentist! Another incident came in the 1960s where a mother in New York handed out bags of treats containing arsenic-laced ant traps, metal mesh scrubbing pads and dog biscuits. In the 70s, a boy was killed by ingesting a pixie stick laced with cyanide by his own father, who used the legend of poisoned treated on Halloween to attempt to thwart the suspicion away from him. In Minneapolis, in 2000, James J. Smith, 49, was charged with felony adulteration after four teenagers told police they received chocolate bars that were later found to contain needles. As recent as 2022, a child in New York found a razor blade inside a candy bar she got while trick-or-treating. Bringing this John Carpenter’s horrifying scene here, full circle.
PSAs began in the early 70s, warning children and parents about Halloween dangers in the form of educational videos, and after the infamous Tylenol murders of 1982, one year after the release of HALLOWEEN II, the fears of product tampering reached an all-time high, especially around Halloween, and in 1985, another national PSA video was made containing fifteen-minutes beginning with glorious Ben Cooper masks dancing across the screen to some serious disco music. It tackles such pressing issues as the importance of safe pumpkin carving, costume dos and don’ts, and the all-important candy inspection before digging into your sugar haul for the night.Â
Seriously, this thing rocks. Sure, it’s slightly dated, but the message still applies.
Many people shrug off the Halloween candy story as just that, a scary story. And while it’s true, most cases of reports seem to be unfounded and the biggest threat of a kid’s Halloween bucket is a sugar-induced stomachache, urban legends notoriously become reality in the minds of crazed folks where the myth turned into a real-life danger for unknowing innocents. Knowing that John Carpenter really didn’t want to do a sequel to his immortal classic and had a vision of his Halloween films exploring the horror holiday’s urban legends and cautionary tales of lore, this scene in itself, doesn’t seem so, out-of-pocket after all. Speaking plainly now, it truly is the most unnerving part of the entire film as the reality lines blur from Terminator Myers hunting down Laurie in a hospital, into something we know has, can, and may happen again somewhere; and that’s what makes it so terrifying.
So, is this scene the most messed up in the movie? I’ll let Dr. Loomis answer that one…
