Scare Value Hall of Fame – 2022
Halloween review.
In 1978 John Carpenter released a low-budget independent slasher film, changing the genre forever. Over 40 years and a dozen movies later…the Halloween franchise continues to endure…but nothing tops the original.
Classic reviews will contain spoilers.
Halloween
Directed by John Carpenter
Screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis and PJ Soles
Halloween Review
Many different titles can come to mind when presented with the phrase “classic horror movie”. A purist’s mind may drift to silent era films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu or the Universal Horror era of Dracula and Frankenstein. Someone thinking in terms of their own lifetime of viewing might have movies like Psycho and Night of the Living Dead or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist atop their list. Perhaps the slasher craze of the 80s (Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street) or the boundary pushing films of the 90s (Scream and The Blair Witch Project) are more your definition. If you are younger you might think of It Follows and The Babadook or Get Out and Hereditary. These are all perfectly acceptable answers. All titles that will inevitably be covered in this space. When it came time to choose the first review for this column, however, there was one clear and obvious place to start. John Carpenter’s Halloween.
It’s an interesting thing. Halloween certainly wasn’t the first great horror movie, it wasn’t even the first great slasher movie, but its place as an important and influential cultural landmark of horror is unquestioned. But why this movie? What makes Halloween stand above its predecessors and the movies it influenced as perhaps the tentpole film in horror history? Obviously there are multiple answers to that question…so let’s have some fun looking at a few of them.
For part of Halloween’s success we can look at the old real estate adage…location, location, location. Whereas Psycho takes place at a remote motel, Black Christmas at a sorority house and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a desolate farmhouse…Halloween brings its nightmare right to your town. From it’s classic opening scene director John Carpenter makes clear…there is unexplainable evil in small town America. A normal house…an unassuming young couple…middle class parents…and the murder of that innocence at the unexpected hand of a six year old boy. While Michael Myers emerges from 15 years locked in an asylum as an iconic figure in horror…it’s where he goes that makes him terrifying.
Returning home to the fictional Haddonfield, Illinois (which may as well be named Anytown, USA) Michael Myers dons a mask and blends into the background on Halloween night…emerging from shadows to terrifying effect. He becomes fixated on our teen heroine, Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut), by not quite random chance and sets a murderous path through her friends to reach their inevitable showdown. Carpenter doesn’t invent the boogeyman…he perfects him. He puts him in your back yard staring through your window. Carpenter doesn’t invent the final girl…but he perfects her. He puts you into her very believable shoes walking down the streets you walk talking with the people you know. Laurie’s fear feels real because it’s happening somewhere that feels real. It’s happening right outside the window of the house you are watching the movie in.
Halloween is a lean, efficient movie by necessity as much as choice. Made for a small budget (around 300 thousand dollars) on a script written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, Haddonfield’s empty streets help to create an uneasy atmosphere…but its minimalist original score (also by Carpenter) elevates it to unforgettable. Ear piercing notes keep you on edge while the simple piano theme, played in 5/4 time, manages to feel unsettling without having even seen the movie. Simple notes that keep you on the edge of your seat looking in every dark spot on the screen for a hint of Michael Myers’ white mask.
Speaking of the mask…you no doubt know the history behind it (short version…it’s a Captain Kirk mask painted white with the eye holes widened) but even something that sounds so simple points to how much of Halloween’s unique and timeless quality was impossible to recreate. Think of how many masked killers you’ve seen in movies clearly inspired by (or ripped off from) the original Halloween. None of them are as good as this one…and ELEVEN of those movies feature Michael Myers wearing a Michael Myers mask. Future Michael Myers masks range from great (Halloween (2018)) to downright horrible (Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers) but none can measure up to the original. Its clean, pale, white visage intrudes from the empty spaces you assumed to be safe and make you wonder what horror lies beneath.
In the world of the film Halloween…one man knows exactly what is beneath that mask. Dr. Sam Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence, is cursed with the knowledge of exactly what has just escaped their captivity and returned home to Haddonfield. As Michael Myers’ psychiatrist, Loomis is convinced that Myers is nothing other than pure evil and should remain under lock and key for the rest of his days. Loomis chases his patient to the small town, warning local authorities, and hoping to stop him before he kills again. Pleasence was a veteran actor whom the production could afford to add some gravitas to the proceedings. Given that the character is tasked with delivering the exposition of the movie…it’s a necessary trick. Loomis has to convincingly tell the audience what they think they don’t want to hear (but secretly do)…that the answer that they’re looking for…has no answer. There is no motive, no reason, Laurie and her friends are being targeted by an unspeaking emotionless murderer. They simply are. He simply…is.
Not that Michael doesn’t have moments of curious character quirks. He steals his sister’s headstone for use in a display of one of his victims later in the film. He also wears a bedsheet with the eyeholes cut out (and the glasses of the victim he is silently impersonating over the sheet…a visual that is unavoidably hilarious but somehow manages to become quite unnerving) to set up another murder. You can read these moments in a few ways. Perhaps it shows the mind of a man whose mental development has never progressed beyond that of the child in the clown costume from the opening scene. Maybe it’s a sign of how a silent Michael tries to communicate his thoughts, feelings and desires. More likely Carpenter and Hill thought they’d make for good scenes and didn’t intend anything specific.
And in the end…a perfect ending. Our final girl’s childlike recognition that it was the boogeyman and our deliverer of exposition confirming, as a matter of fact, it was. The sounds of Michael Myers breathing accompanied by settings we’ve seen before, been before, while his body has disappeared. The evil could be anywhere. Evil is everywhere. This evil will return.
Scare Value
These are just some of the memorable and enduring aspects of Halloween. Its influence on the slasher genre is unmistakable. The fact that it has an almost bare bones quality lends itself perfectly as the template for those future films to build upon. But not improve upon. There was a lightning in a bottle/happy accident/once in a lifetime convergence in Halloween that could never quite be duplicated. Halloween pens the theme that we will see so many variations of going forward in horror that perhaps its greatest trick has become an inability to water down the effectiveness of the original. From its shocking first person view opening scene to its ending’s unwillingness to provide catharsis…John Carpenter created an enduring, important, classic horror film.
5/5
Buy Halloween on 4k/Blu-Ray on Amazon.com
Check out our review to John Carpenter’s follow up film The Fog
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