To go along with my review of Curtis Richards’s Halloween novelization, today’s scene that I love comes from the film Halloween …. kinda.  It wasn’t included in the theatrical release but, instead, it was later added when Halloween made it’s network television premiere.

Now, I’ve actually heard two stories about this scene.  One story is that it was shot during the filming of the original Halloween but that it was cut out of the theatrical release.  When Halloween premiered on television, the network needed some footage to pad out the running time so this scene was re-inserted.

The other version is that the scene was specifically filmed for the television version of the film.  According to this version, the scene was in an early version of the script but Carpenter didn’t film it until after Halloween had already had its theatrical release and was set to make it’s television debut.

(Personally, to me, the second version sounds more plausible.)

Regardless of when this scene was filmed, I like it quite a bit.  In this scene, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) attempts to get his colleagues to understand just how dangerous Michael Myers actually is.  This, of course, was a running theme for the character of Dr. Loomis and it has always amazed me that no one was ever willing to listen to him.  Loomis spent the last 30 years of his life telling people that Michael was an unstoppable killer.  Every single time, he was proven correct.  And yet no one ever listened to him!

This scene gives us a chance to see Dr. Loomis in a professional setting, as well as giving us a glance of an adolescent Michael at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium.  “You’ve fooled them, Michael …. but not me.”

As someone who has seen all of the Halloween films multiple times, I have to say that Donald Pleasence’s performance as Dr. Loomis, especially in the first 2 films, has always been underrated.  Pleasence gave a convincing portrait of a man who had spent the last ten years of his life dealing with evil on a daily basis.  Who could blame him for being a bit fanatical?  Wouldn’t you be if you had spent that much time staring into Michael’s soulless eyes?