Babysitting, A Dangerous Job?

HALLOWEEN (DVD)

Release Date: October 15th, 2007
Certificate: 18
Running Time: 93 minutes

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Brian Andrews, John Michael Graham, Arthur Malet

The Bureau of Labour Statistics recently published a study of people working in the most dangerous jobs in America. Among them are construction workers, drivers, industrial workers, refuse collector, roofers, farmers, aircraft pilots and logging workers. The #1 ranking most dangerous job though is fishing. Curiously, jobs that didn’t make the list based on the amount of fatalities recorded include law enforcement, fire fighting and of course, that other deadly job – babysitting. Just ask Laurie Stroder (Jamie Lee Curtis), she’ll vouch for how dangerous it can be.

Its 1978, October 31st, Halloween and Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle. Her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) further down the street. Unknown to them, a masked maniac has been stalking them all day long since he broke out of a sanatorium where he was under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).

As the night unfolds, Laurie will have to fight off the deranged killer with anything she can get her hands on, including normal household items like a knitting needle and a kitchen knife. She’ll have to hide in any place she can find including the closet upstairs, but Michael will continue to stalk her throughout the house. All together, it will be a hellish night which began with routinely babysitting for Tommy, but she does her job well despite it all and manages to keep not only little Tommy safe, but also Lindsey, whose babysitter, Annie, becomes one of Michael’s earlier victims. It remains unclear though how much Laurie made during the night’s babysitting, but hopefully the parents gave her something a little extra for her troubles and excellent references for future babysitting jobs in and around the neighbourhood – if she’ll ever want to do it again!

As one of the hallmarks in the Stalk ‘n’ Slash genre, Halloween is one of those movies you can watch over and over again and has become a staple part of the night itself when friends and family gather for some ghoulish delights. Whether you go out trick or treating, bopping for apples or at a fancy dress party, at some point in October, there’s a lot of you out there who will be watching this classic 1978 version.

Halloween can be traced back to pagan times when the Celts in Ireland celebrated the Day of The Dead. This was the day when the dead were said to rise and to attract them, people would leave food on their doorsteps. This is where the ‘trick-or-treat’ tradition first came from. When the Romans invaded Britain, they in turn brought in their own traditions, the celebration of the harvest and honouring of the dead. These traditions were then passed on to America.

It is an often held belief that October 31st is the day when the spirit world can make contact with the physical world. Feared by many, this is where the connection with the occult stems from. A day associated with demons, devils and of course…Michael Myers and babysitters!