10 "Gory" Movie Moments (That Didn't Show As Much As You Think)

Halloween is the prototypical slasher film, where iconic baddie Michael Meyers (Nick Castle) stalks and murders a group of unsuspecting teenagers. It may then come as a surprise that not a drop of blood is shed throughout the entire film.

The film opens with a juvenile Meyers murdering his teenage sister, all shot from the killer’s POV perspective. The voyeuristic set-up echoes Psycho’s shower scene, as the sister is semi-nude during the killing, and, again like Psycho, we never see the knife pierce any flesh. Unlike Psycho’s 52 cuts, this killing is all shot in one single take. As such, technical constraints of the single take results in an opening murder devoid of blood and guts.

This lack of blood doesn’t make Halloween any less terrifying, however. The senseless nature of the film’s murders is chilling, as are Meyers’s sadistic tendencies - the choking, the ghost disguise, and the morbid fascination displayed after he skewers Bob (John Michael Graham) - these are all far more unsettling than a splattering of red.