Therefore, he also becomes a symbolic target for all that pent-up ambivalence that Myers feels. Accordingly, his death is orchestrated in the most drawn-out, see-saw manner in the entire movie; as Michael drowns him, Cruz is given excruciatingly momentary respites until he meets his inevitable demise. After Michael s escape, he kills and then appropriates the clothing of another working class character, the trucker played by Ken Foree.
In case this strikes us as an insignificant detail, we must only recall how class has always been signified by sartorial clues in the horror film: from the working stiff (pun intended?) garb of Frankenstein s Monster and Dracula s stylishly aristocratic cape to Freddy Krueger s down-at-heels custodian s hat, work gloves and ratty sweater. In any case, thus embracing his class identity even as he tries to escape it, Michael Myers returns to his childhood home to collect his meager legacy a knife, a mask, and an old dark house.
Improbably, this house has never been razed and the land rebuilt on during the intervening years. Of course the rundown house that the rest of the neighborhood avoids is hardly an original device. As a story element, a matter of mere setting, this is true, and certainly John Carpenter used the house in a similar way in his film.
However, what Zombie does is tie this unchanging reminder of downward mobility to the greater theme of class shame that he explores. For example, unlike in the original, we are provided an extended firsthand glimpse into the mirror image of this home: the comfortably upper middle class residence of the Strodes, where the biggest problem seems to involve deciding where to go on vacation. Indeed, the bewilderingly gratuitous scene in which Myers slays the Strodes is a kind of weak point in the narrative fabric through which the killer s class rage erupts loud and clear.
That is, the Strodes have neither harmed or taunted him directly, are obstacles in any kind of practical/logistical sense, nor represent psychosexual targets as the babysitters do. Their only crime, it would appear, is to have a well-furnished living room and to be up-to-date on their car payments. Well, maybe not their only crime.
After all, the fundamental target of Myers s ambivalence is his little sister, now known as Laurie Strode. Again, Zombie explicitly grafts his perpetual themes of class-consciousness highlighting the literal danger of forgetting where you came from onto the plot and characters created by Carpenter. The sheriff, played Brad Dourif, spells out for Loomis his illicit efforts to find a good home for the infant girl, the only survivor of Myers s childhood spree.
For Zombie this is a critical piece of information, not simply a moment of necessary exposition for the audience s sake. Indeed, the second half of the movie is largely about Myers attempts to remind Laurie of her true background or to punish her because she is a living, breathing example of the reinvented future that he was denied. For audiences, his contradictory attitudes toward Laurie can easily cause the story s through-line to appear muddled: Is he trying to reconcile with her or slice her to ribbons?
However, in terms of Zombie s deeper intentions, his monster s vacillating motives are a perfect outgrowth of his confused relationship to his own humble origins. In the end, Myers is of course left owning nothing, not even the clear prospect of a sequel. A horrible end for a monster whose terrible, and terribly secret, acquisitiveness is denoted by the way his name itself twice repeats the word my as if he is still a young child who cannot bear having his toys taken from him, even if they are broken.
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