Halloween (1978)

June 2, 2018

I am embarrassed to say that this if my first time watching the original Halloween. I have seen Halloween 6, Halloween H20, and Rob Zombie's Halloween remake but never seen the original Halloween movie. What is even more embarrassing is that for some reason I thought Wes Craven did this movie and put a #WesCraven hashtag on twitter. For these sins I cannot apologize enough and after writing this will immediately begin my penance of saying 10 hail Snake Plisskens.

This is the movie that launched the slasher horror genre and with good reason, it is an incredibly well done movie. The movie refines many of the elements that will go on to define the slasher film: it begins with a murder that happens in the past, it has a masked or unknown killer, there are POV shots from the killer's perspective, sex and drug use, and of course teenagers being slashed to death. Most of this actually happens in the first five minutes.

The first scene is enough to sell the movie on its own: A teenage girl is stabbed to death with a large kitchen knife by an unknown murderer and we are previewed to this through two eye holes in what appears to be a mask. Afterward the killer walks out the house towards a car that is pulling forward. We then see the killer is a boy in a clown costume clutching a knife. What is so great about this scene is that there is no rhyme or reason that the young Michael Myers killed his sister. The look of confusion and surprise on the child's face mirrors our own face at the realization that an innocent child could be responsible for such cruelty.

The film then jumps fifteen years forward where Michael has been institutionalized during the time. Of course, Michael immediately escapes the mental hospital and goes on a rampage in his old town of Haddonfield, Illinois. The location of his crimes are purposeful but his victims are seemingly at random. This is what makes this movie, and the genre in general, so terrifying, there is no way to tell who the killer is going to kill next.

Throughout the film Michael can be seen lurking just beyond the view of the characters. He is seen driving at a distance or staring at characters in the background. (Most) of the characters seem oblivious to Michael's menacing stares but we the viewer are very aware of them. The only one that notices Michael is Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), but she is written off by all the characters as being silly or paranoid. This storytelling element will be repeated countless times in other horror movies.

Having very little budget ($300,000) Carpenter was originally going to have the killer wear a clown mask (similar to the young Michael in the original scene) but found it to be more silly than scary. Instead he used a Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek cutting out different eye holes, painting the mask white and teasing the hair. (I have to imagine the filmmakers of Friday the 13th III had this movie in mind when they decided to put Jason Vorhees in a ski mask). What makes Michael's disguise so terrifying is that it is close to resembling a human face but is slightly off which is an apt metaphor for the character of Michael Myers. There is just something creepy about something being so close to human but not quite there. It reminds me of the AI robots and CGI people in movies today. They are really close to looking human but not quite there.

The film also contains some of the darkest death scenes in slasher film history. There is one scene where a teenage girl enters her car and is strangled by Michael Myers from the backseat. The windows become fogged up as the character struggles for her life. The way the scene is shot makes the viewer feel like they are in the car with the character witness to the brutality. Meanwhile Michael barely moves other than holding onto the girl's throat. To add to the darkness of the scene, two children watch as Michael carries the dead body from the car.

In another scene Lynda, played by the always amazing PJ Soles (Rock 'n' Roll High School & Carrie), is strangled with a cord while on the phone with Jamie Lee's character. Once again, we the viewer understand the horrific events that are happening but the characters are completely oblivious. The intimacy of the killings makes them all the more disturbing.

The film's score is also incredible. Carpenter is a master of low budget moving making and did the score himself to save money. Its creepy monotonous tune has become iconic and has become another staple of horror movies since (phantasm has its eight note theme, Friday the 13th has its ka- ma- theme).

Lastly a few random thoughts: Jamie Lee Curtis looks the same almost forty years later! I always thought of Michael as killing with a knife but dmostly he just strangles people in this film. Michael does a lot of driving in the film and assumedly at some point he must've pulled up next to another car who must've noticed him in his weirdo mask driving... it really would've taken the scare out of him to see him behind the wheel putting on turn signals like a normal person. It was very exciting to see a topless PJ Soles (I've had a cinema crush on her since I saw Rock 'n' Roll High School when I was in high school). I cannot imagine that his masked, even before they changed it, looked anything like William Shatner. While Jamie Lee Curtis' character doesn't have sex, she does smoke pot throughout the film, breaking the horror rule for survival set forth by Jamie Kennedy's character is Scream. Buckethead chose right when he decided to wear the Michael Myers mask... he would've looked silly wearing a Jason hockey mask playing guitar solos. Looking forward to Halloween II and Halloween III the non-sequel sequel.