Saturday Drive-In: Halloween
For the month of October, each Saturday we’ll be taking a break from our normal 24 hour zombie news and reviews and bring you a different classic horror film review. Each of these films is an established icon of the genre but for one reason or another has never been seen by the reviewers.
Halloween is the classic John Carpenter film that jump-started the whole 80′s slasher movie sub-genre. It’s the story of escaped murderer Michael Myers who exacts a gruesome series of killings in a suburban neighborhood. Myers escapes from a mental hospital on a cliche’ dark and stormy night and heads to his childhood home where he begins stalking high school wallflower Laurie (played brilliantly by Jamie Lee Curtis). Over the course of Halloween night he kills several of Laurie’s friends leading to a big fight scene at the end.
What I like about Halloween is that it’s so simple. There’s no over-complication of plot or character – in fact you pretty much know right where this is heading from the beginning. It’s fairly obvious that Myers is after Laurie and the supporting characters exist just to be killed off. But where this movie succeeds is in leading you on that journey. John Carpenter can somehow take a predictable outcome and still make you tense. In fact, perhaps it is the existence of this prescience that causes that tension.
Carpenter uses some interesting techniques in making the viewer see the film through the killer’s eyes. He sets things up early in the film to make it it clear that Myers is watching these kids from afar. Later, he employs long shots that make it seem as though you’re just peeking in on a day in their lives. Once the big fight scene starts, however, things change and you’re all of a sudden in tight with the victims. You can’t always see what’s going on and it sets a very paranoid tone. I think that Carpenter clearly borrowed from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (released 4 years earlier), but he also perfected what he took.
The movie does have it’s problems. The suspension of disbelief required in some of the scenes may be difficult for some people to get over. For example, at point Myers endures 4 bullets to the chest, falls off a balcony, and then just runs away. And the sound quality hasn’t aged well – clearly there was a lot voiceover work and it sounds like it was done on the cheap.
Overall this an excellent study in how to do a scary movie right and I’m glad that I was finally able to see this movie.
Comments(2)
I found a remastered version at my local library that fixed those dub problems (wish I had the ISBN because I cant tell from amazon which version it was). I take film analysis very seriously, and when I first screened ‘Halloween’, I was stunned. The various camera techniques that are subjective and at times avant-garde, especially for an American film-maker, were perfect for a horror film, and it’s one of the few slashers than genuinely scares me. The thing I notice about so many directors is that when they get big studio gigs, they often have to drop more creative camera angles because they are considered “indie” or “film school” and stick with the standard shots (just look at the corruption of Sam Raimi), which I think really destroys many a film’s potential. Imagine if Ghost of Mars or Vampires had the same inventive cinematography as Halloween – I like thse movies for what they are: straightforward Carpenter action but that won’t hold a cinephile’s attention- the work would have been revered by non-horror fans and championed as a new wave of horror film (and for the film snobs, acceptable as a film).
But back to ‘Halloween’, I don’t think it incredulous that Myers could endure gunshots, as Dr. Loomis makes it clear throughout the film to many characters that he believes Michael to be a demon of sorts and “not a man”, thus the supernatural ending. Of course the series later explains all of this and tacks on more reasons for Myers’ impervious nature, but I still think the original does justify these supernatural bits.
And also – the score must be mentioned – talk about iconic! I love that Carpenter usually has a hand in composing for his films, as it is so essential to pacing (something that Carpenter had mastered, as best exemplified in “The Thing”).
Yes! I totally forgot to mention the score in my review – I woke up this morning thinking about how I left it out!