Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay In the spirit of both the spooky season and the release of Halloween Kills today, my next film from “1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” by Steven Jay Schneider that I want to share my unexpected love for is John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher flick Halloween.
[NOTE: This blog will contain spoilers for “Halloween.” You have been warned.] The History Upon seeing 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, the sophomore directorial feature of John Carpenter (The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China), independent film producers Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad asked Carpenter to direct a horror film for them that would have the same impact on the zeitgeist as William Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist did. After being given full creative control over the screenplay and score at $10,000, Carpenter agreed. During the drafting of a script about a serial killer that targets babysitters, Yablans suggested to Carpenter to set it on Halloween night to which Carpenter agreed. Carpenter, along with his then-girlfriend and screenwriter-producer Debra Hill (The Dead Zone, Adventures in Babysitting), wrote the script for the film in less than three weeks. According to Hill, much of the inspiration for the spirit of the film came from Celtic traditions of Halloween (i.e. Samhain) in which evil could not be killed. From there, Carpenter formed this concept into the embodiment of evil in “the most evil kid who ever lived” who is also a dark secret of the town. With experience as a babysitter during her own adolescence, Hill wrote most of the dialogue of the female characters in the movie. Additionally, there are many references to the films of Alfred Hitchcock such as Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) inspired by Sam Loomis (John Gavin) from Psycho. Regarding the film’s ending, Carpenter aimed to terrify the audience’s imagination in order to keep the true identity (or essence) of Michael Myers ambiguous. Thus, Myers can represent something supernatural or more than human rather than be explained away. After both Peter Cushing (The Hound of the Baskervilles, Star Wars) and Christopher Lee (Dracula, The Wicker Man) turned down the role of Dr. Loomis, Yablans suggested another British actor Donald Pleasance (The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice) who agreed to take the role (despite only being paid $20,000) because his daughter enjoyed Carpenter’s score in Assault on Precinct 13. Pleasance, however, was the highest-paid actor in the film (Nick Castle, who portrayed Michael Myers, was paid twenty-five dollars per day). Carpenter’s first choice to play the protagonist Laurie Strode was not Jamie Lee Curtis (Trading Places, True Lies, Knives Out), who at that point never acted in a movie and was a law-school dropout. However, after learning that Curtis was the daughter of actress Janet Leigh (Touch of Evil, Psycho), Carpenter seized on the opportunity to get publicity for the film by casting Curtis in the starring role. Curtis was initially nervous to play Strode as a “quiet, repressed” character as she identified more with the outgoing cheerleader type back then. Principal photography took place over a four-week period in May of 1978 on location in California. Due to the film’s low budget, many props and costumes were made from items on hand and inexpensively (famously, the Michael Myers mask was made from a mask modeled after Captain Kirk from Star Trek with several modifications such as painting it white and widening its eyes). Additionally, local neighborhood parents dressed up their children in Halloween costumes for the trick-or-treat scenes. Carpenter took three days to compose the film’s score, which has become iconic in and of itself. Notably, the recognizability of the “Halloween Theme” (the poignant piano melody in the film) is on par with the “The Ecstasy of Gold” theme from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the “Shark” theme from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Released in October of 1978, Halloween ended up grossing upwards of 70 million dollars worldwide making one of the most profitable independent films of all time. Much of its success can be owed to word-of-mouth, despite some critics calling the film unoriginal and empty. A notable exception was Roger Ebert, who called the film “a visceral experience” and “frightening” and eventually put it in his top-ten list of films released that year. Today, Halloween is widely praised for its use of Hitchcock-like suspense without relying on overt graphic violence. Furthermore, it is viewed by many cinephiles and film historians to be the progenitor of the modern “slasher” subgenre of horror movies. The Pros I first saw Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic a few years ago. In preparation for the release of the direct sequel forty years in the making, 2018’s Halloween from director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Joe, Stronger), I decided that I should first check out the original that started it all. Admittedly, I was apprehensive due to the film’s age and my presumption about slasher movies being absurdly cheesy, campy, and mindless affairs. And boy was I proven wrong after watching this film. Like some other older horror films that I’ve come to really like (Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Psycho, to name a few), Halloween has numerous qualities about it that make it timeless. First and foremost, the central performances are all standout in their own way. As a fan of much of the work of Jamie Lee Curtis, it was really great seeing her so early in her career be just as captivating as the central villain that is Michael Myers (Nick Castle). Additionally, my initial fears of her character of Laurie Strode being simply a damsel in distress were quelled by the end. Sure, she was a teenage babysitter pretty unprepared for being chased by a knife-wielding psychopath. However, her resourcefulness is evident throughout the film to the point where by the end (despite being scared out of her time) she is able to effectively end Michael’s reign of terror that night. The other great character work comes from Donald Pleasance as Dr. Samuel Loomis. His insights into Michael’s psychology never feel forced or inorganic but instead add just enough context to his mythos as an emotionless killer without detracting from what Carpenter intended for Michael as the embodiment of pure evil. Arguably the standout performance, however, is Castle as Michael Myers. In many ways, I compare him to the great masked performances of cinematic history (James Earl Jones/David Prowse as Darth Vader in Star Wars, for example) in that the actor must rely much more so on their physicality to express their characters’ mindset and emotions. In contrast with Darth Vader, however, Michael Myers has no dialogue and thus Castle’s characterization of the killer is based solely on how he moves within a given scene. To be intimidating without ever seeing the person’s face or hear them speak a work is what I like to call “simple brilliance” because it is obvious and yet had never really been done before Halloween. Needless to say, Castle’s performance has gone down as one of the scariest antagonists of any horror movie. Period. Aside from the performances, I really appreciated the film’s technical elements such as the score and cinematography. Regarding the former, Carpenter’s score is more than just iconic for aesthetic purposes. More so, it enhances the storytelling by effectively injecting suspense into the narrative at the right moments in the way that the “Shark Theme” from Jaws and “The Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back do for their respective films. Regarding the latter, cinematographer Dean Cundey (The Thing, Back to the Future, Apollo 13) expertly crafts tension in so many scenes in ways that I genuinely struggled to anticipate. Being an older horror movie, I was certain that I could predict where and when all the kills would happen. However, more than once I found myself pleasantly surprised by the camera work (notably in the pop-out closet scene) that proved to me over and over just how good this movie is. The Cons I won’t lie; Halloween is one of my favorite classic horror movies. Full stop. Thus, I have very few negative things to say about it. It’s well-structured, well-paced, well-shot, and well-composed. If anything, it’s biggest drawback is by no fault of its own due to its age but those watching it for the first time may feel that it relies too much on certain tropes now strongly associated with the slasher genre. Certainly some of the acting makes this apparent throughout the runtime. The only problem is…it invented so many of those tropes! Therefore, can it really be criticized for that? I say no, and not just because it’s an important film but because it’s a damn good one! So, what are my final impressions of Halloween? Needless to say, it is a fantastic film that did so much for the horror genre (specifically “slasher” films) and remains relevant in spite of the sheer plethora of movies like it that have come out in the forty-plus years since it premiered. I don’t think I need to say this, but go watch Halloween if you haven’t! What are your thoughts on John Carpenter’s Halloween? What other 1970s horror flicks do you like? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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