Halloween (1978) Compass International/Horror RT: 92 minutes Rated R (violence, language, brief nudity, sexual content, drug use) Director: John Carpenter Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill Music: John Carpenter Cinematography: Dean Cundey Release date: October 25, 1978 (US) Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, John Michael Graham, Nancy Stephens, Arthur Malet, Nick Castle. Box Office: $47.1M (US)
Rating: ****
A true classic of suspense and terror, the original Halloween cost only $325,000 to make and its domestic box office take was $47.1 million. Released in October 1978, audiences were treated to a horror movie unlike anything they had seen before. It would change the face of horror forever.
The plot is simple and straightforward. It all begins in Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween night in 1963. A 6YO boy named Michael Myers picks up a butcher knife and stabs his older sister to death for no reason. He is sent to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium where he spends the next fifteen years in a state of catatonia under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasence, The Great Escape).
Jump ahead 15 years, Michael manages to escape from Smith’s Grove on the night of October 30. He steals a car and makes his way back to Haddonfield. Loomis follows and enlists the aid of local Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Cyphers, The Fog) to help find his disturbed charge before he kills again. Loomis is convinced his patient is not only incurable, but pure evil that must be contained. He stations himself outside the old Myers house, convinced that Michael will eventually return to the scene of his original crime.
Meanwhile, three teenage girls are planning a night of babysitting and other teenage activities (i.e. drinking and sex) while Michael watches from the shadows. Laurie Strode (Curtis, A Fish Called Wanda) is an intelligent high school senior whose social life is far from exciting. It’s Halloween night and she’s babysitting a young boy named Tommy Doyle (Andrews) while most of her peers are out raising hell. Her closest friends are Annie (Loomis, The Fog), and Lynda (Soles, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School). Annie’s across the street minding Lindsay Wallace (Richards, The Watcher in the Woods) and making plans to get with her boyfriend. Lynda wants to use one of the bedrooms to get busy with her boyfriend Bob (Graham).
Given the illicit activities Laurie’s friends have planned, their fates are a foregone conclusion. Sure enough, Michael starts picking off the horny teens while Laurie is completely oblivious. She won’t be for long. By the end of the night and the movie, she’ll be fighting for her life against the unstoppable masked killer.
Halloween is frequently cited as the first slasher flick. That’s not accurate. The first was actually Black Christmas (1974). Carpenter’s film was the first of its kind to strike a nerve with audiences. It gives us a killer with no clear motive. Why does he want to kill these young girls? The fact that we never see his face makes it all the scarier. We don’t get a full shot of Michael until he acquires the now-iconic Halloween mask. Ah yes, the mask! Who can forget that? The blank expressionless white face and brown hair, it’s the perfect way to represent a person completely devoid of emotion, a soulless killer, an empty vessel of a human being whose sole purpose is to kill. He isn’t even named in the end credits. He’s referred to as “The Shape” which is what he basically is in this first installment, a figure that emerges from the dark or the shadows. He is literally the boogeyman feared by every kid in Haddonfield.
Halloween is the first horror movie that showed the events from the killer’s point of view. Look at the opening scene when Michael stabs his sister to death. Instead of filming the action in the usual way, Carpenter uses the camera to show the horrific murder through the killer’s eyes. He adds an extra element of terror by having the boy put on his Halloween mask beforehand thus making the viewer see the action through the eyeholes in the mask. It’s a clever and (at the time) original idea.
Then there’s the concept of the unkillable killer. It’s frightening the way Michael won’t die no matter what Laurie does to him. She stabs him in the eye with a knitting needle and he barely flinches. He’s inhuman. No one is capable of withstanding such things. It’s scary stuff, especially for audiences who didn’t grow up with slasher movies.
Pleasence is terrific as the psychiatrist who “spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because (he) realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply…..evil.” This is a man obsessed with a patient he believes to be evil incarnate. Michael has consumed Loomis’ life and now he’s on the loose, a prospect that panics the psychiatrist to the point where he arms himself. The respected British actor convincingly delivers crazy dialogue like “Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.” and “He’s gone from here! The evil is gone!” when he realizes Michael has escaped.
Curtis, in her feature film debut, is great as the resourceful “final girl” who finds herself in a life-or-death struggle with “the boogeyman”, an entity she was certain didn’t exist. This is the role that catapulted her to stardom. For a few years, she was known as “The Scream Queen” starring in several horror movies (The Fog, Terror Train, Prom Night and Halloween II) before showing off her comedy chops in Trading Places (1983). It’s not difficult to see how and why Curtis became a star. She has a way about her that exudes intelligence and strength. She’s no dizzy dame (my father’s words) or victim-to-be. She has a killer survival instinct.
Loomis and Soles also give good performances. They’re just like any American teenager in the late 70s- oversexed, irresponsible, fun-loving and free-spirited. Carpenter regular Cyphers is very good as the town sheriff who doesn’t quite believe the doctor’s description of Michael (“No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.”) but goes along with him anyway because he doesn’t want any trouble in his jurisdiction. He’s the typical small suburban town cop. He just wants things to stay quiet and in control. He has no idea what he’s about to face in the next 12 hours.
The suspense in Halloween is almost unbearable. Carpenter really knows how to bring it on. Like Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), he builds the suspense to a crescendo until the viewer can barely stand it. It’s a masterpiece of its genre. In addition to writing and directing, Carpenter composed the music for this movie. He uses it sparingly. Many of the nighttime scenes are without music and the silence really contributes to the suspense. It lends an additional level of suspense and terror to the sequence when Laurie ventures to the house where Annie is babysitting to look for her friends. It shows that silence can create just as much, if not more, tension. Everybody’s waiting for that precious moment when something finally happens so they can release their pent-up emotions and scream their heads off.
I’m sure we all know the details of Halloween including the outcome (hint, nine sequels to date) thus negating the possibility of spoilers. What still holds up after all these years is the suspense. It’s still pretty tense waiting for Michael to make his move even if you know the exact moment he’s going to strike. Let’s turn our attention to the imagery. There are many unforgettable moments scattered throughout like when Laurie sees Annie dead on a bed with the dead sister’s gravestone perched on the headboard. And what about the scene where Michael, wearing a bed sheet and Bob’s glasses, enters the bedroom and stares wordlessly at Lynda?
One of the freakiest scenes is when Michael goes after Laurie in front of the two children. He traps her in a closet where she manages to get his knife away from him. She stabs him with it and he collapses to the ground. As she’s catching her breath, he sits up and looks right at her. When I saw that scene on Sneak Previews, it quietly freaked me out. I was 11 at the time and had never seen a real horror movie at the cinema. I believe this is the moment I started becoming a fan.
Halloween is a quintessential horror movie. You can’t rightfully call yourself a horror fan if you’ve never seen it. It set the standard for the genre for the years to come. The theme will remain indelibly imprinted in the conscious mind much like the ones for Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). In my opinion, it hasn’t lost any of its impact in the nearly 50 years since its release. Even if you know the film by heart, it still manages to get under your skin. You still want to check all the closets and look under all the beds before you turn off the lights for the night. You never know, the boogeyman could be hiding in your home….or yours….or yours….or YOURS!
