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· Year: 1978
· Also known as: The Babysitter Murders, John Carpenter's "Halloween"
· Director: John Carpenter
· Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
· Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis
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Part of the Halloween series.
· The film series branches into two story arcs after Halloween II. The first involves films one, two, four, five, and six, and the second counts films one, two, seven, and eight as canon.
· Halloween III does not follow the Michael Myers storyline.
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· For years, the most financially successful independent film ever made.
· The earliest DVD version of this film is notorious for its poor video quality.
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Amazon.com
· DVD: Restored Limited Edition · VHS: Collector's Edition Widescreen · VHS: Collector's Edition · VHS: Special Edition Widescreen · VHS: Anniversary Edition Widescreen · CD: Score, 20th Anniversary Edition · CD: Halloween Horror Movie Themes |
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| Synopsis |
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A group of babysitters are terrorized and killed one by one by a masked, zombie-like madman on Halloween night. Simple as that.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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95
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| COLD ANALYSIS |
| ATMOSPHERE |
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| HUMOR |
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If Psycho is the grandfather of the slasher genre, then this sure as hell is the daddy. Halloween, a harrowing tale that spawned imitators beyond count, is really a deceptively simple story--just another Ten Little Indians tale. But under John Carpenter's direction (and with his music) it becomes much more--creepy, atmospheric, with a pervasive sense of oncoming doom. In many ways, Halloween is almost a ghost movie--the antagonist is slippery, nearly unseeable, seemingly without form, yet always present, even when his physical body is nowhere near. Surprisingly, especially when the said imitators are taken into account, the gore is light . . . and the scares are always dead-on. A remarkable achievement that has never been matched.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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John Carpenter truly is a master of horror. Halloween is a classic horror film and really set the stage for the HUNDREDS of copycat slashers for the rest of the century. Friday the 13th, Elm Street, Scream, this is where it began. This hit film MADE the slasher genre and did it in style. It is definetly the best of the seven films with Michael Myers (aka The Shape) providing a truly frightening presense. The gore level is fairly low, but this is made up for with suspense. Carpenter has made a scary movie, not simply a shocking gore fest. The music sets the tone and the camera angles (which will convince you that EVERY character in the movie is carrying a camcorder!) rear up and all over the place, you never know when the killer will strike. The killings don't start till near the end; the majority of the movie concerns The Shape stalking Laurie Strode and provides a disturbing piece of viewing. This is a masterpiece and acting awards must go around to all, expecially Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance who really capture the hearts of the audience and play their roles exceptionally. Truly a brilliant film and worth watching. Some of the sequels are truly awful, some are quite good, but none can match the excellence of this, the first and best. Horror would never be the same again
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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Simplicity, simplicity - that's both the essence and brillancy of Halloween. John Carpenter created a nightmare which spawned six sequels so far, while it easily succeeds these sequels in every possible aspect. None of the subsequent movies could come near to that, but I didn't expect that either. Simplicity excludes repetition, excludes resumption. Simplicity also is the essence of horror - horror is supposed to frighten, to excite, to move, to appeal to our innermost fears. With that, it has to be able to confront us each time it is enacted in a different way to really being able to frighten us. Once the scheme is known, the thrill is gone - horror becomes slasher. Halloween, though, still is horror - paralleled in its simplicity only by movies like Hitchcock's Psycho.
Both Hitchcock and Carpenter never used one scheme twice - John Carpenter directed just this one movie of the Halloween series. He also contributed to subsequent parts, but not as a director. Equally, David Lynch never does the same, sole exception being Twin Peaks which, in contrast, is per definition designed to be a series. Horror is fear, fear is incited by the strange, by the unknown. What is known to us cannot frighten us, unless new, previously unknown aspects within should manifest themselves.
The essence of this fear Halloween creates virtually manifests itself into the character of Michael Myers - plain evil, incarnated into human form, strange, mysterious, unlike anything else we might know. Michael Myers has no face, he wears a white Halloween mask, he has no fixed actor throughout the series, also his mask changes. In the first movie, his mask was the make-up mask used by William Shatner (as I read once in a magazine, but I cannot confirm the source; however, it surely looks like it could be true), but even the mask changes a bit throughout the films. His mission is to kill his sister, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), he himself being hunted by desperate Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance). Everything standing in Michael's way has to perish.
Loomis is the only one that really understands the essence of Michael's character, and he is on a desperate mission, on a desperate cause: No one will believe him unless the first victims appear. So Michael has virtually haunted his life, Loomis has become his primary victim. Loomis is obsessed with Michael, he is his antagonist - he is the one who stands between darkness and light. Apart from part three, Donald Pleasance portrays this character in all Halloween movies except also the seventh, as he died before that. Apart from Michael, he's the only fixed cast member. Laurie Strode, unforgettable through Jamie Lee Curtis' portrayal, only appears in parts one, two and seven, and she is besides Loomis the second most important person to resist Michael. It is a nice piece of girl power to see her, though screaming and crying, defeat herself successfully against Michael.
A very important element of horror is atmosphere - something such films cannot live without. John Carpenter's musical theme to the film, to the series, is gripping and an instant classic, it has almost magical quality - and its basic element is, again, simplicity. The dark score, the dark setting, the despair, the Halloween time-frame, the small-town atmosphere, all of that contributes to this classic. The sequels adapted parts of that, never reaching the greatness of its origin, but still they all belong together, they all are based on a similar theme. Some things they did wrong, some things they did great, and it is not at all a lost cause to see them and compare them to their predecessor. They all work fine as stand-alone movies, however. And isn't it a complicated job to reach the potential of such a movie as Halloween?
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