No selection of Halloween movies would be complete without, well, Halloween. This was the film that, unfortunately, gave birth to the Slasher subgenre, though those flood-gates wouldn’t really open until the advent of Halloween’s inbred illegitimate spawn, Friday the 13th two years later. There is, accordingly, an unfortunate tendency to lump Halloween with its errant offspring as another brain-dead, blood-soaked “have sex and die” shock-fest. Like most instigators of genres, however, Halloween is far superior to the films that came after; it’s an intelligent, classy, even, dare I say it, principled little fright film: deceptively simple and very effective.
The film opens with the brutal murder of a teenage girl by her brother with a butcher-knife (in a sequence filmed entirely first person from the killer’s perspective, shades of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Institutionalized for life, the killer, Michael Myers (Nick Castle, listed in the credits as “The Shape”), breaks out fifteen years later and makes his way back home just in time for Halloween, where teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her first film role) and her friends obliviously prepare for their babysitting jobs that night…
I don’t want to describe much more, since the film is full of surprises and shocks and I don’t want to spoil any for those who haven’t seen the movie yet.
Halloween is a great example of the principle that, when it comes to horror movies, less is often more. Unlike the literally gallons of red-colored-corn-syrup that would fill later films, Halloween has almost no blood and certainly no gore. The scares come mostly from camera work, lighting, and sound effects (although there are a number of very effective “jump” scenes). Some of the creepiest scenes in the film have Michael simply standing there, while we wonder what he’ll do next. (I also love the way the movie works in the trappings of Halloween: Jack-o-Lanterns, tombstones, bed-sheet-ghost costumes, trick-or-treating, watching scary movies…)
This is, first and foremost, a director’s movie. John Carpenter makes excellent use of the corners of the frames, the backgrounds, and, especially, of light and shadow (Michael’s white, skull-like mask is put to especially good use). We rarely get a good look at ‘the Shape,’ it’s mostly just a barely visible figure, or a shadow silhouetted against the night…
Actor wise…well, okay, a lot of the acting here is just serviceable. Nancy Loomis and PJ Soles as Laurie’s friends Annie and Lynda don’t really have much to do except show skin (though Loomis has a rather amusing sequence in which she gets stuck in a laundry shed). Brian Andrews and Kyle Richards as young Tommy and Lindsay are surprisingly good. As anyone whose seen a lot of movies can tell you children often give very hit-or-miss performances at best, but here Carpenter elicits some very natural acting from the two youngsters.
There are, however, two really stand-out performances here. The first is veteran character actor Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis, Michael’s psychiatrist and nemesis. Loomis is a twitchy, melodramatic prophet of doom who seems to have more than a few screws loose himself. Pleasance plays the role with great gusto, tossing off endlessly quotable lines like “Death has come to your little town, sheriff” and lamenting after Michael’s escape that “The evil is gone!” He also shows a very entertaining impatience for those who insist on treating Michael as a mere mortal. When, in his first scene, a nurse protests that “him” would be a more appropriate pronoun for Michael than “it,” he replies with a weary “If you say so.”
The other stand-out performance is Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, one of the most believable teenagers ever depicted on screen. A rather shy and awkward girl, Laurie is responsible and intelligent, but not above youthful foolishness (she briefly smokes a little weed in one scene, for instance). She has a crush on a particular boy, but panics when her friend tries to set her up with him. She’s a good student (at one point lamenting that she’s “too smart” to attract guys) and responsible enough that her realtor parents entrust her to drop off keys for potential home-buyers (which inadvertently makes her Michael’s target for the mere fact that she went near his house). What’s more, she clearly enjoys babysitting for its own sake and likes making her charges happy (unlike Annie, who fulfills her duties by dumping Lindsay in front of the TV and then sending her over to Laurie once Annie’s boyfriend is available).
Laurie is, in short, a genuinely nice person, which is a figure all too rare in horror movies (or, heck, movies in general). It’s largely a credit to Curtis that Laurie is such a pleasant figure, and most of the film’s effectiveness comes from the fact that we like and believe in Laurie (it’s been speculated, and I agree, that the film’s enduring popularity among youngsters is at least in part because most teenagers see a lot of themselves in her). It’s mostly thanks to Curtis’s acting and Carpenters and Debra Hill’s writing that the scenes with Laurie simply going about her daily business are just as entertaining as anything involving Michael or Dr. Loomis. And, as noted with regards to A Nightmare on Elm Street, the fact that we like Laurie so much means that the scare scenes involving her are really scary.
As for Michael himself, he’s an interesting creation. Nick Castle does some very creepy body acting here, but Michael is more the product of directing and writing. What struck me most about Michael is the fact that there clearly is something going on under that mask of his: he’s not one of those simply mindless killers (*cough*Jason*cough*), it’s just that his mind seems to operate in a horrifically different way than a normal man’s. In one scene, for instance, Tommy is being bullied by some other kids, then as the kids are leaving him Michael suddenly grabs one of them for a second…then lets him go and just stands there (needless to say, the kid beats a hasty retreat). Then there’s the way he arranges the bodies of his victims during the climax, complete with jack-o-lanterns and his sister’s stolen tombstone. Clearly he has some motivation, but the creepy thing is that we have no idea what it could be. Michael is most frightening not as a masked, indestructible murderer, but as a character who inhabits a mental world completely to his own.
Like all great films, there’s a tendency to analyze Halloween to death, mostly as a fable of sexual morality (promiscuous die, virgins survive). Leaving aside the improbability of John Carpenter (who is liberal to the point of anarchistic in his views) crafting a film to that purpose, I never found that idea convincing. I think (and I confess a good deal of this interpretation is taken from an excellent essay on this film by Elizabeth Kingsley) that the film is more about the question responsibility in general than sex in particular. The main difference between Laurie and her friends is not that they have sex and she doesn’t (she clearly thinks about boys as much as the next girl), but that she’s responsible and they aren’t. It’s this responsibility: observation, caution, resourcefulness, thoughtfulness, etc. that saves her, while Michael’s other victims never see him coming until it’s too late…even when, at one point, he’s literally standing right in front of them.
The interpretation of Michael that I like the most is that he represents the potential for evil that exists in any community. “Every town has something like this,” a gravedigger notes at one point. In another scene Laurie answers a question about Fate by saying that it has been called both a religious force and a natural element. In a number of scenes characters refer to Michael as being “the boogey-man;” that unidentified terror that haunts the dreams of children. Michael, it seems, is the inevitable evil and horror that, sooner or later, will emerge even in the safest, most insular community. “Such things must come, but woe to him by whom they come.”
Looking at it this way, everything about Michael takes on a new significance: the fact that he’s always masked (evil can come from anyone), his apparent indestructibility (taken to ludicrous extremes in later Slasher films, but honestly scary here), and the famously ambiguous ending. In the end the film suggests that Michael really is some kind of supernatural avatar of evil, one who can be put down or shut away for a time, but who will always, always find a way home.
This interpretation not only enriches Michael, but Laurie as well. Viewed in this light, her responsibility, her awareness and simple decency become the key weapons against this potential for evil. Being responsible and aware, the film suggests, is what will save you and those you love when that evil inevitably emerges. A theme that becomes ever more topical in this era of child-molesters, terrorists, and serial killers. Also, if Michael is a supernatural being, then Laurie’s virginity can likewise be interpreted in a more traditional sense as a genuine purity (certainly we see little to contradict the idea of her being pure of heart) which gives her a kind of supernatural protection from Michael, so that when they meet he seems to have a lot harder time killing her than anyone else. In any other film this inexplicable difficulty of killing the heroine would smack of convention and laziness, but here it seems natural, even poetic.
All this is subtext; Halloween doesn’t make any pretensions about being more than it is: a simple horror film. It’s not consciously grand and artistic, like Nightmare or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; it’s just a very good horror film, and like all good horror films it can’t help but be symbolic and meaningful.
It’s not a perfect film by any means. There are numerous plot holes and writing problems. The film itself notes that it’s kind of ridiculous that Michael knows how to drive when he’s been locked up all his life (“Maybe someone around here gave him lessons,” Loomis barks impatiently). Laurie’s two friends are, as noted, more or less ciphers (and the less said about Lynda’s boyfriend the better). There’s also the question of whether Halloween, of all nights, would really see that much of a demand for babysitters…and whether the neighbors would react to hysterical screams for help with such blasé indifference.
Then there’s the much noted fact that Haddonfield, Illinois is suspiciously leafy and green for that time of the year (the dead leaves on the ground were painted by the crew), and seems to have a lot of cars hailing from California…and is apparently the only town in the Midwest that sports palm trees.
All these flaws are forgivable, however, because the film as a whole is so effective (and most great films contain flaws that might sink a lesser picture: note the ridiculous depiction of espionage communication in Casablanca). Most of them were due to the film’s extremely low budget (this was the most profitable independent film of all time until The Blair Witch Project). The movie cost a whopping $320,000 to make, half of which went to the Panavision cameras that give the film is professional sheen. The budget was so low that the afore-mentioned dead leaves had to be gathered up by the crew after each shot to be used again because they couldn’t afford to make more. John Carpenter, in addition to directing and co-writing, also composed the score (which, incidentally, is like the film that it accompanies: very simple and very effective).
To summarize, Halloween is more than just one of the most influential horror films of all time, it’s just simply a great movie. It’s an entertaining, generally-intelligent, and scary as heck little fright film. Take it for what it is and you’ll have a great time.
P.S. You’ll note that I didn’t even mention the film’s many sequels. That’s because the sequels are not only all completely unnecessary and (apparently) really bad, but they actually diminish the original with idiotic new ideas that contradict and cheapen everything we knew in the first film (i.e. that assertion in the second film that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister: apparently the result of John Carpenter getting drunk during the writing process). What’s more (and I should note that I haven’t seen any of the sequels; all this is based on what I have gathered from reviews and essays), they are for the most part very nasty and mean-spirited little films, particularly the second one. The best way to describe them is that Halloween is an honest horror film: the sequels, on the other hand, are true Slasher films: they exist to show gore and nudity and nothing else. Avoid them at all costs.
Final Rating: 4.5/5. Its amateur status shows, but it's a classic nonetheless. Highly recommended.
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