Halloween 35th Anniversary Review

• 21st Oct 2013

Halloween is almost upon us again and as inevitable as the celebration there is a re-release and re-packaging of John Carpenter’s career defining film. The recognition of Halloween (the celebration rather than the film) is so much bigger in the US than it is here although still remains a constant on the calendar for kids in this country. But this year marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the 1978 film with a new presentation by Anchor Bay, presented in a steel box Blu-ray which brings out the high definition of the movie which was carried out under the supervision of the films cinematographer, Dean Cundley. There is also a very special audio commentary with none other than Carpenter himself as well as the films star, Jamie Lee-Curtis and a host of other features (not available for review).

The film itself set the tone for a new kind of horror film that became sub-categorized as the slasher film. The ‘new’ horror film was already being set by George A. Romero’s zombies along with Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). But Halloween was the film that started a craze for slasher films. However, it wasn’t the first stalk and slash picture that really began with the very underrated Black Christmas in 1974 (one can also include Hitchcock’s Psycho way back in 1960). In many ways Black Christmas is a better film than Halloween, but the timing of Carpenter’s film hit the right note and was followed within a couple of years with the Friday the 13th franchise among others. This was Carpenter’s third major film and he agreed to make the film on a budget of $320,000 so long as he had complete autonomy on how he made the film. The story could now be read as a cliché slasher script. It opens with POV shots of what we already assume is a youngster prowling the house on Halloween; he goes upstairs to the room of his sister who is sitting naked at her vanity table with her boyfriend having just left and stabs her to death with a kitchen carving knife. He then walks downstairs as his parents arrive back home when the camera reveals that the killer is a 6-year-old boy called Michael Myers. Flash forward 15 years and his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) arrives at the hospital Myers has been kept in and arrives to discover that the insane Myers has escaped. Loomis correctly assumes that Michael has made his way back to his former home (abandoned since that night) in Haddonfield, Illinois. Myers robs a store and steals a mask, a knife and worker overalls (which one can only assume was the costume Asda were alluding to before they were in hot water for titling a Halloween costume this year as a ‘mental patient’). On Halloween eve Myers seems to have his eyes on the teenagers in the local neighbourhood including a girl called Laurie (played by first-timer Curtis) who is the school swat and seems to be the only one who is able to see him. That night Myers begins his new killing spree and as the film develops he becomes the un-killable boogeyman.

The film is an archetype for the un-killable boogeyman, that permissive teens will wind up dead (both Carpenter and scriptwriter Debra Hill have defended this by stating that we are at our most vulnerable when we are naked and that it is those who see the boogeyman who are the most likely to survive, although later films certainly seem to suggest that nudity/permissiveness = death), the good girl survives, often parents are either absent or too busy to be involved in their kid’s lives along with plenty of other red herrings along the way. But there are many subtleties to Carpenter’s film that other films miss. As with Texas Chainsaw Massacre there is little in the way of gore and he keeps it minimal – the horror happens in our imagination. There are a couple of scenes in the film that work really well: when the only male victim is killed off post-coitus and is pinned to the kitchen door, Myers returns to the bedroom with a white sheet over himself and his victim’s glasses while he proceeds to stand over the bed staring at his next victim and the scene in which Laurie goes to the house and finds all her friends dead including one with Michael’s sister’s gravestone at the headboard of the bed. Other subtle moments include Michael Myers stabbing his victims he spends time staring at his work. This is contrary to many other slasher films in which the victims are chased monotonously throughout the film. Meanwhile those jump moments are thankfully fewer and as a result more effective.

The low budget of the film is obvious in places and some of the acting by all is a little stilted while overall the film does look a little dated. However, what Carpenter managed with his limited resources is quite extraordinary keeping virtually the entire film within one very ordinary street (as Tobe Hooper did with a very similar street in A Nightmare on Elm Street) and uses some effective camerawork, including an early version of a steadycam called a panaglide with some low shot tracking shots of the street great POV work and the now iconic and chilling score by Carpenter himself that equals that of Psycho and The Exorcist as a spine chilling score. It is perhaps a little overused in Halloween though. This is a film that this reviewer has returned to on many occasions and I would imagine is one that will re-surface in other forms on subsequent Halloweens.

Chris Hick