Most Rewatchable Scene
Ben Tramer’s mistaken-identity incineration wins over the remixed opening, neighborhood kitchen murder, Brackett finding Annie, hot-tub murders, hospital chase, and gas-soaked finale.
In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:35:00Read transcript
- The reprise remixes the original ending, Loomis’s “you don’t know what death is,” the opening score, and Michael stealing a kitchen knife into a propulsive first twelve minutes.
- An elderly couple watching Night of the Living Dead while preparing a huge midnight sandwich creates domestic calm before Michael enters the neighborhood.
- Ben Tramer is hit by a speeding police car, pinned to a van, and incinerated while Loomis and Brackett immediately leave; its grotesque scale and lack of aftermath make it the unanimous comic favorite.
- Brackett closing Annie’s eyes and blaming Loomis is unexpectedly moving, while Loomis responds with monomaniacal indifference.
- Loomis repeats his inhuman-patience speech like stand-up material and grows increasingly frantic as nobody believes Michael cannot die.
- Karen and Bud’s workplace hot-tub tryst combines unhygienic absurdity, coercive set history, nudity, and the movie’s most iconic scalding murder.
- The hypodermic deaths, scalpel lift, Laurie’s car hiding, blind Michael, and Loomis’s willingness to explode an occupied hospital are additional set pieces.