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Tag Archives: Rob Zombie

Was John Carpenter’s Michael Myers autistic?

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

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autism, executive function, Halloween, John Carpenter, nerds, Rob Zombie, social class

 

myers.PNG

An idea, I’ve had for years (and I’m not the only one who has thought this) is that that the Michael Myers character from John Carpenter’s Halloween (and its sequels) was autistic.  I realize it was not the film maker’s intention to make him autistic (autism was not well known in the 1970s) but characters take on a life of their own.  Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired communication skills, repetitive ritualistic restricted behavior, obsessive interests, and poor physical coordination.

Myers clearly fit the criteria.  His communication skills were so impaired he went completely non-verbal, and facial expressions displayed only what his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis called a “blank, pale, emotionless face” with no understanding of human concepts like “life or death, good or evil, right or wrong”.  A key deficit in autism is impaired “Theory of Mind” (ToM).  ToM is the ability to understand that other people have minds just like you do and to form theories about what they’re thinking and feeling; why they behave the way they do.  Because of this, many autistic people are said to relate to other people more like objects than like living entities.  If Myers lacked ToM, it would explain why he couldn’t grasp the difference between life and death, since he was oblivious to the mental states of living creatures.  Also, the scene in Halloween (1978) where he pins the teenager Bob to the wall and then Myers tilts his head to the left and right looking at the hanging corpse, seems to suggest Myers was viewing a person as just another object. Autistic people also struggle to make eye contact and communicate with appropriate facial expressions, so it’s no wonder Myers avoided both by always wearing a mask.

Myers also had repetitive ritualistic restricted behavior and obsessive interests.  He repetitively killed people over and over again in very much the same way, making a ritual of only killing them on Halloween while always wearing a mask.  Indeed he spent his whole life doing nothing but obsessing about his childhood crime of killing his older sister Judith.  Myers killed his older sister when she was 17 on Halloween and then spent 15 years planning to kill his younger sister when she too was 17 on Halloween and ritualistically brought along the big sister’s grave stone to make it more ceremonial.  When he failed to kill the younger sister (Laurie) when she was 17 on Halloween, he then waited 20 years to try to kill her when her son was 17 on Halloween.

This kind of repetitive obsession with symmetry (both sisters, both 17, both Halloween), numbers (17) and calender dates (Halloween) seems classically autistic.   Indeed some autistic people are so obsessed with numbers and calenders that despite being mentally disabled, can multiply huge numbers in their head or calculate the day of the week for almost any date you can throw at them.

Myers also lacked physical coordination.  He seemed incapable of running, despite being physically fit, and had terrible aim and hand-eye coordination: In Halloween (1978) he tried to stab Laurie but ended up stabbing the couch.

Also, the fact that Laurie was his sister, also reveals autism.  As I explained on my other blog, there seems to be a genetic link between autism and nerdiness, so many autistics tend to have nerdy family members.  This happens because nerds and autistic people have certain overlapping traits: interest in numbers and systems, social and physical awkwardness etc.  The main difference between nerds and autistic people is that the latter seem to have a mental disability called executive dysfunction which prevents them from living a normal life.  By contrast, nerds can be extremely high functioning and successful (i.e. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg), however because nerdiness and autism are genetically linked, it’s not uncommon to see a hyper-successful silicon Valley millionaire, with a child so autistic he requires life-long supervision.  This was clearly the pattern with Laurie and Michael.  She was the successful high functioning nerd while he was too low functioning to live anything like a normal life.  Despite being high functioning, Laurie’s nerdiness was revealed by the fact that despite being pretty, she couldn’t get a date because boys thought her too smart (she was probably better at nerdy subjects like math and science than they were) and was treated like a freak by her friend Annie.  And like her brother Michael, she was a virgin.

However while Michael Myers seemed clearly autistic, in Rob Zombie’s remake, Myers was schizophrenic.  Some horror fans hate Rob Zombie’s remake because they feel Rob Zombie turned Myers from a middle class person they could relate to (scary thought) to what these people call “white trash”.  It’s fascinating that Myers went from seeming autistic in the original series when he was middle class, to being schizophrenic in the remakes, when he was lower class.  As I’ve previously explained, autism is more common in the higher social classes, while schizophrenia is more common in the lower social classes.

What’s fascinating is that autism and schizophrenia appear, in my opinion, to be opposite sides of the same coin.  When someone with a nerdy middle class or upper class personality has executive dysfunction, it tends to turn into autism.  When someone with a cool lower class personality (like the long haired heavy metal fan Myers of Zombie’s versions) has executive dysfunction, it tends to turn into schizophrenia.  Isn’t it interesting that the Halloween franchise so perfectly fits the pattern?

 

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Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers probably had an IQ around 80

17 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Halloween, Henry Lee Lucas, horror, IQ, Michael Myers, Otis Toole, Rob Zombie, schizophrenia

I previously blogged about how Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers was largely inspired by Henry Lee Lucas and to a lesser extent Otis Toole.  It’s interesting to note that Lucas had an IQ of 87 and Toole had an IQ of 75.  Averaging the IQ’s of the two men who inspired the character gives an IQ of roughly 80, which sounds believable.  An IQ of 80 implies Myers was brighter than about 10% of Americans, but duller than 90%.  Historically IQ was measured in children by dividing one’s mental age by one’s chronological age and then multiplying by 100 to remove the decimal point.  So an IQ of 80 implies that 10 year old Myers had the mental ability of an 8 year old (8/10 = 0.8 * 100 = 80).  Nothing 10 year old Myers did seemed beyond the mental capacity of an average 8 year old.

Now it’s likely that he got older his IQ deteriorated because schizophrenia is known to cause acute drops in IQ.  Rob Zombie said this about the mental state of Myers in RZ Halloween II:

I love the fact that he’s carrying this mask around; this mask is significant to him because he’s had it since he was a little kid. And it’s deteriorating. And in a way, we can literally make the connection between the mask and his state of mind. As the mask deteriorates, so does he. His brain is rotting away and in the sequel he’s becoming more and more insane.

 

Despite his deteriorating mental state, it’s unlikely that Myers’ IQ ever sunk too low, because he hallucinates his mother telling him that his psychiatrist (who wrote a book about him), got rich off of their pain.  It takes a certain amount of intelligence to know when you’re being exploited and Myers, even at his most demented, still exceeded that threshold.  As Zombie explained in the director’s commentary of part 2, that scene showed Myers was not quite as dumb as he appeared.

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Was Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers based on Henry Lee Lucas?

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

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Halloween, Henry Lee Lucas, horror, Lady Gaga, LGBT, Michael Myers, nature vs nurture, Otis Toole, psychopathy, psychosis, Rob Zombie, serial killers

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Rob Zombie was asked who his favorite non-fictional serial killer was.  He replied:

I love ’em all. Not, you know, as people or anything, but they all make for great stories. I think Henry Lee Lucas is probably one of my favorites.

He added:

He and his buddy Ottis Toole were just a couple of deranged rednecks. But given his upbringing, y’know, it’s just not that surprising. Some of these guys, you think, “What would make a person do something like this?” And then you read about their upbringing and you’re like, “Oh, okay, well I guess that might do it.”

He also said:

 I’ve read so many books about these guys, I start confusing their backstories. But with Henry and Ottis, I remember it was pretty horrible. Stripper moms, alcoholic dads, I think they were both forced to dress up like girls at some point.  Henry killed his mom and raped her corpse, and Ottis had a thing for arson and cannibalism. They were into some really perverted stuff, like having sex with dead animals and that kinda thing.

So we can see several similarities between Zombie’s Michael Myers and Henry Lee Lucas.  In addition to both being serial killers, both were deranged rednecks with stripper moms and alcoholic father (figures) and both were emasculated by a parent figure.  Henry was made to dress like a girl by his mother and Michael’s mother’s boyfriend mocked Michael for seeming gay, predicting Michael would cut off his penis and change his name to “Michelle”.  It’s unclear if Michael ever had sex with a dead animal, but his sister joked about him having sexual relations with the pet rat he killed.

It is tempting to conclude that a terrible parenting causes one to become a serial killer, but it could be that the children of terrible parents become serial killers for genetic reasons.  If psychosis and psychopathy are genetic, then the parents of the criminally insane would be expected to manifest these same traits though to a much lesser degree, but the bad genes, and not the bad parenting, may be to blame for their kids becoming serial killers.

Although Zombie focuses a lot on Michael’s bad upbringing, he ultimately explains in the clip below that bad upbringing was not responsible for Michael’s cold, robotic, merciless nature.  Michael was just born that way as Lady Gaga would say. His brain was wired differently.

 

 

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Another idea for Rob Zombie’s Halloween III

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

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Tags

Halloween, horror, Rob Zombie

Yesterday I blogged about my weird idea for a sequel to Rob Zombie’s Halloween II.  An IMDB poster named “barhoumhuneiti” felt it was unrealistic and not enough about Michael Myers.  Well, it’s difficult to make it about Michael Myers when he was unequivocally killed off at the end of Halloween II, but here’s another idea: Michael has an identical twin, separated at birth.

Michael’s mother (Debra) was a struggling single mom with a deadbeat boyfriend.  It was hard enough raising Judith so when Michael and his identical twin were born, Debra figured she didn’t need both of them since they were exactly the same, so she gave Michael’s identical twin up for adoption.  The twin was raised in a middle class loving perfect family.

When some psychologists discover that Michael had a secret identical twin who grew up in a good home they track the twin down to do some tests on him.  Although the twin is a weirdo and a freak, the psychologists are disappointed he’s not yet a killer like Michael was. They want to prove that despite his good upbringing, he is just as evil and psychotic as Michael so that they can become famous for showing that nature trumps nurture (genes trump environment).  They tell everyone in his small town that he is Michael Myer’s identical twin brother in the hopes that ruining his life will drive him crazy.  Little by little, the twin becomes unhinged, just in time for Halloween…

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Rob Zombie’s Halloween III: The Next Generation

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

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Halloween, horror, Rob Zombie

See also Another idea for Rob Zombie’s Halloween III

 

I don’t know if there are any plans for another Halloween movie let alone a sequel to Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, but I think it could work.  How can you continue Rob Zombie’s storyline when almost all the main characters have been killed off?  Here’s how:

The perfect family is having breakfast in a beautiful mansion.  They are concerned because their adopted teenaged son never comes out of his dark room and just watches horror films all day and all the classmates and teachers at a special school he attends are afraid of him.  His adopted parents don’t understand how a boy with such a great upbringing could have turned into such a freak, and he just keeps getting worse.

One dark stormy night the adopted mother discovers a book her father (Dr. Loomis) was in the process of writing before he died.  The book explains Loomis’ obsession with determining whether Michael Myers was just born genetically evil, or if he was driven to evil by his dysfunctional home life. To answer this question, Loomis conducted an experiment.  He collected dozens of sperm samples from Michael and used them to impregnate 40 female patients at the mental hospital Michael was in.  When the babies were born, he made sure that 20 of them were adopted into perfect families, and the other 20 were adopted by white trash.  This allowed him to compare the effects of nature and nurture. None of the families knew they were adopting a Michael Myers child.

Upon learning that their adopted son is one of Michael Myer’s biological children, they are so creeped out that they start plotting ways to get him to live somewhere else.  Overhearing their conversation, Michael’s son gets an axe from the garage and kills them.  He then use’s Loomis’ unpublished book to search the country for his 39 biological siblings.  Some of them are already confined to mental hospitals for strange or violent behavior, but most are not and the free ones help the institutionalized ones escape.  Once all 40 of Michael’s children are together, they each put on their Michael Myer’s mask and plot to all visit Haddonfield on Halloween and kill every single person in the town.

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