Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews.
Director: John Carpenter.
Now we kick Halloween hype into high gear with, well, Halloween. I'm a general fan of this series-even though a lot of the sequels aren't great and awful remakes that I'm dreading watching in a couple days-and am pretty excited to be diving into them. Well, mostly. Trouble is, I've seen this so very many times (with the last probably being this time last year) that I'm worried I'm going to be a bit bored.
But there should be enough artistic merit to keep me in the game for the purposes of this blog. But with the familiar sounds of Carpenter's unparalleled score, we'll just right in.
While Halloween is not the film to innovate the point-of-view technique (both Black Christmas and Peeping Tom maintain that accolade), it did a lot with it in the opening sequence of this film, especially with the sudden cut revealing that-after the stalking and murder of a naked female-we're looking through the eyes of a child. It's a great device and used quite well, especially when you keep in mind that innovation and originality were not the specific game plan of this film. Remember: original and good are not necessarily synonyms.
Donald Pleasence is extraordinary in this series, even in the crappier sequels. His quiet (and not so quiet) intensity is excellent: you can tell he's not a particularly nice man anyway. Of course, that gravity is completely necessary for us to know that our mental patient is not to trifled with and most certainly not to be sympathized or reasoned with. It makes for a very simple and very strong set-up. Plus, where else do you get to hear lines like "He's gone, he's gone from here! The evil is gone!"
It's funny, especially when you realize that Pleasence, despite being a legend, has actually been in some not so great flicks and hasn't been very good in those flicks. But, rock on, Dr.Loomis. You might be one of my favorite horror film characters...in the original series, anyway. I like Malcom Mcdowell but his performance can kiss my ass. Not my Doctor Loomis.
Then we have Jamie Lee Curtis, one of the quintessential final girls in horror history, and a very fine actress. Also generally regarded as the first scream queen in cinema history. Not sure that's entirely accurate but the term was certainly coined with Curtis in mind.
A great deal of this film takes place in broad daylight, which is excellent. I do think one of the most frightening moments is when Loomis and the Nurse are driving up to the asylum and see inmates wandering around in the rain. The characters don't seem to get too worked up about it but I would be incredibly alarmed. Like, run out of town alarmed. But a great deal of other stuff takes place during the day: Michael is watching as Laurie and Tommy Jarvis walk by his house, he follows Laurie to school, witnesses Tommy get bullied...stalks Laurie the rest of the day. Actually, I may have lied: I said Halloween didn't have a lot of innovation. The daylight horror stuff might actually prove me wrong. Laurie looking out the window and seeing "The Shape" amid billowing sheets...it's a great image.
Annie and Lynda are fun horror supporting characters. Lynda is willfully dumb (I adore her constant use of "totally" and her insistence that she "always forgets" her school books), and Annie is tough: willing to shout at cars driving by, and at confronting a man hiding in the bushes. They may not be the most complicated characters in cinema history, but they're enjoyable.
There's some nice subtle stuff happening throughout this film. The car Michael is driving isn't super-established, so while we're watching Laurie and Annie driving and smoking some weed, it's easy to miss that he's right behind them the whole time.
Seriously, it's so much fun to watch Dr.Loomis gravely tell the Sheriff: "This isn't a man." His monologue is great...really, the character is so well defined and excellently deployed: he's an authority figure and unbelievably serious, so we totally buy what he's saying without any trouble. Smart writing.
Carpenter does a great job with balancing tension with humor. Annie gets herself locked into the shed. We see Michael is lurking around said shed. We even see him outside the rear window. Annie goes to exit through the rear window...and gets stuck. It's a very clever sequence. It's nothing quite compared to the subtlety of Annie and the car, though: Annie realizes her car is locked and she needs keys. She goes inside, gets the keys, fixes her hair, goes back to the car...and doesn't notice that it's unlocked. She sits down, realizes that there's fog on the windshield..and bam, down she goes.
Dr.Loomis has one nice moment of humor: the bullies are going to the Myers house, and Loomis gives them a scare and makes the silliest face ever...it's adorable. Actually, that scene segues into a nice element I've always enjoyed about this franchise: smart cops. Dr.Loomis tells the Sheriff that a maniac is on the loose and, even though the Sheriff is fairly skeptical, he still takes the statement seriously. Horror movie police usually are pretty useless: they ignore warnings and if they aren't ignoring they are actively hindering the main characters, even when you'd think that Police would take potential crime pretty seriously. In these movies, they're totally up for helping out, even when they're not entirely convinced they have to.
Bob's death may be one of my favorite horror kills ever, really. There's this nice, slow build-up that is really effective. He walks to the patio doors, checks the closet on the left, checks the closet to the right: smack, Michael grabs him, lifts him and pins him to the door with the knife. The best part, though, is Michael contemplating Bob's corpse afterwards: it lasts for several seconds, Michael tilting his head left and then right, as if looking at a painting...it's such an evocative image.
I'm not certain of it, but Halloween may have been the first usage of the "finding bodies" motif. Laurie horrifying finds the bodies of her dead friends-including the excellent image of Annie laying beneath the tombstone of Judith Myers-and just runs around freaking out. It leads to some great chase scene stuff, including that excellent moment of Laurie stabbing him with a crochet needle.
I feel like I always forget how effective this climax really is: it's paced so remarkably well. It's just filled with these starts and stops, ups and downs...flows beautifully. She escapes him at the house across the street, she takes him down with the needle, checks on the kids, he shows up again and she "kills" him in the closet...then, just as she starts to feel relief at having the ordeal over...he sits up and turns his head...beautiful stuff.
"Was it the boogyeman?"
"As a matter of face...it was."
"As a matter of face...it was."
Gotta be one of my favorite final lines in cinema history.
Final Thoughts: Well, it's a classic and genre defining juggernaut for a reason. I'm not sure a final analysis is even necessary, since every jerk and his sister has likely see this film at least the one time. Carpenter shows a real knack for suspense, which isn't surprising since the gore effects and exploitation films didn't come until afterwards...while it's true that Black Christmas did a lot of this stuff sooner, I think Carpenter probably did manage to make it work more successfully than that film did. It's a fairly terrifying movie that probably would seem a little tame to a modern audience, but the sheer film-making magic that Carpenter managed to pull together here really is a wonder to behold.
Final Rating: Four and a Half Stars.
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