Entry 86: Halloween (1978)

Halloween (1978)

Dir: John Carpenter

"The night HE came home!"

   

Well, happy Halloween, readers!  This is one of my favorite days of the year, unfortunately, this year I didn't get much time to enjoy it.  However, there's one tradition I NEVER break: each and every year on October 31, right before I go to bed, I lay down and watch John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece Halloween.  So much has been written about the film over the years, and Carpenter's boogeyman Michael Meyers has become so ingrained in our popular culture that I'm not sure I have much new to bring to the table.  That said, I'd be remiss if it didn't get a spin in the goddamn Basement of Sleaze...

The plot of the film is so simple, and by now so familiar, that I won't waste a whole lot of time summarizing it.  In 1963, blank-eyed ten year-old Michael Meyers brutally stabs his older sister to death on Halloween.  15 years to the day later, Meyers escapes from incarceration in a high-security mental institution and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois.  Meyers is pursued by his twitchy, gun-toting shrink, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance, Wake in Fright, Escape from New York).  As Loomis closes in, Meyers stalks babysitters Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, Prom Night, Trading Places), Annie (Carpenter regular Nancy Kyes, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog) and Lynda (P.J. Soles, Carrie, Rock 'n' Roll High School).  In the end, only Laurie survives, but it's a hollow victory; Meyers, too, survives.  After being repeatedly stabbed by Laurie, shot several times by Loomis and knocked out of a second-story window, Meyers simply disappears.  He has become "The Shape;" the unstoppable, unkillable personification of the boogeyman.

Halloween wasn't, as it's commonly given credit for, the first slasher movie (Black Christmas beat it to cinemas by three years), nor is it Carpenter's best film (Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing both have it beat), but it IS the best of it's sub-genre and one of the most simply effective shockers of all time.  Co-writer/director Carpenter distills his story down to the basest possible elements; he eschews the "origin story/revenge plot" that so many slasher films hinge on (even Alfred Hitchcock's legendary proto-slasher Psycho ends on something of a cop-out, expository note explaining away/rationalizing the actions of Norman Bates).  In crafting a leanly efficient horror film, Carpenter realizes that it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER how or why Michael Meyers does the things he does (he even embeds a joke about it in the script; when asked how a man institutionalized since the age of ten could know how to drive a car, an exasperated Loomis exclaims "He was doing very well last night!"), he simply does them.  No amount of explaining is going to enhance the visceral thrill of a suspense-based narrative.  The film is also almost totally bloodless, relying instead on atmosphere, an ever-building sense of dread, Carpenter's own eerie, iconic score and the often sudden appearances of Meyers to instill fear in the audience (pay special attention to the way Carpenter uses lighting and focus; a scene in which Meyers' white mask appears out of nowhere in a completely dark room and another in which the seemingly dead and out-of-focus Meyers sits up suddenly in the background while the camera is focused on Laurie are both classics).  Another key to the film's success is it's three female leads.  Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill (Clue, The Fisher King) create three-likable, well-rounded characters, and they're all brought fully to life in great performances by Kyes, Soles and Curtis (whose turn as the put-upon Laurie made her a star).  I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the performance of future writer/director Nick Castle (Escape from New York, The Last Starfighter) as Meyers; with his imposing physicality and limited, always-efficient body language and motion, he's like a bipedal great white shark.

Halloween was followed by seven (!) sequels and an ill-advised remake by Rob Zombie which in turn spawned it's own sequel.  Some are better than others (check out the underrated, non-Meyers-related Halloween 3: Season of the Witch; it's fucking great!), but none of them manages to recapture the tension and dread of the original.  A true horror classic!

"It's Halloween; everyone's entitled to one good scare."