I remember, don't worry...

Well, he remembers. He remembers. Don't worry.

How could I ever forget? It's the first time, the last time we ever met.

Loomis, not Michael, is the real bogeyman: An alternate reading of John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978)

October 31, 1978 is the Halloween that Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald  Pleasence) has been anticipating for 15 years.

"Your compassion is overwhelming, doctor."

-Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), sarcastically addressing Dr. Loomis

"The concept is valid no matter where it originates!"

-A line from John Carpenter's debut film, Dark Star (1974)

The first film in the franchise.

For a moment, I want you to cast your mind back to 1978, when John Carpenter's immensely influential (and still enormously entertaining) slasher film, Halloween, made its debut on American movie screens. At that time, there was no such thing as "the Halloween franchise." The film's ten sequels (1981-2022) had not been made yet, to say nothing of the 2007 remake, which inspired its own 2009 sequel. For those of you keeping score, there are now thirteen Halloween movies all together. 

But back in '78, there was just one movie. Based on the comments made by the film's co-creators, director/writer John Carpenter and producer/co-writer Debra Hill, Halloween was not meant to be the first chapter in an ongoing saga. It was a contractual obligation, not a creative drive, that led to Halloween II (1982) and all that followed.

Naturally, the subsequent films explored and expanded the mythology of the original film's three central characters, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Michael Myers aka The Shape (Nick Castle, among others), and Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Thirty-five years ago, however, there was no mythology to explore. The only information we had about these characters—and the only information the creators ever intended us to have about them—came from this one movie. 

I say all of this because I want to present an alternate interpretation of Halloween that willfully ignores everything revealed about Laurie, Michael, and Loomis in the subsequent films and treats the 1978 original as an isolated, standalone story. Still with me? Good. Let us continue.

(today's zomby) AND A PHIL COLLINS PUPPET SINGS OF HEARTBREAK AND HAIR LOSS!

So now we know what Zomby watches on television, which as I argued previously may well be the truest, most accurate way of gauging one's soul.

But what kind of music does Zomby listen to? My best guess: Phil Collins. I think of Phil Collins as the patron saint of the lonely and heartbroken, mainly due to a 2007 radio story from This American Life called "Dr. Phil" by Starlee Kine.

Phil Collins was famous for turning his real-life romantic setbacks into popular songs,"In the Air Tonight" and "Against All Odds" chief among them. Back in the 1980s, a satirical British puppet show called Spitting Image took Mr. Collins to task for this and produced this scathing, dead-on parody:



Eerie, isn't it? "I'm So Lonely" may be the ultimate Phil Collins song, even though Phil didn't write it. It certainly works as a good theme song for both Ziggy and Zomby, both of whom can relate to the themes of loneliness and male pattern baldness.

Incidentally, one of the side effects of British comedy is that it occasionally forces you to look up some of the more obscure references. I'm sure we all know who Bob Hoskins is, but the other British celebs named in the song are not so well-known here in the States. For the record, Mel Smith is a British comedian and actor probably best known to American audiences as The Albino in The Princess Bride.

And Eddy Shah? Well, he's a rather infamous UK newspaper tycoon who very recently was arrested in connection with a sex scandal. At the time of the Spitting Image broadcast, though, he was just a famous businessman.

Now don't you feel better informed about the world? Incidentally, there was no bad blood between Phil Collins and Spitting Image. In fact, not long after this parody aired, the puppeteers were hired to do the deeply weird video for "Land of Confusion," a song by Phil's band Genesis.