A lot has been written and argued about
Halloween. It generated loads of
controversy. The main reason for the
controversy: Halloween was soon followed by
a huge number of “slasher” movies. It’s hard to write
about Halloween simply for itself, apart from
what came after it.
Three things cannot be disputed, though. This movie
was made cheaply. And it was extremely successful. Third, Hollywood producers knew a good thing when they saw
it.
Its cast was unknown then, except for Donald Pleasence, best known
as an off-beat character actor in The Great Escape and Fantastic Voyage.
Halloween’s sequels tried to explain
the mysteries with characters and past relationships.
The original explained practically
nothing. I’m not sure if the filmmakers
intended this, but these unanswered questions added to
Halloween’s power. Fear of the unknown can
be devastating, and Halloween takes great
advantage of our fears.
The movie begins in 1963. All seems
fairly conventional; a typical teen couple makes out in the
girl’s empty house. They walk upstairs, the room
goes dark.
You realize that things are
not normal, though. You are watching these events
through a third person’s eyes, a person wearing a mask.
This unknown figure stops in the kitchen, and takes out a
large knife.
He/she stops a moment and watches the boy leave, then
goes upstairs.
A girl sits, brushing her hair, wearing only
panties. She only has time to say “Michael…!”
before being stabbed to death.
The masked figure goes downstairs. The parents
are just getting home. “Michael?” they ask.
The mask comes off. You see a boy, about six, blonde
hair, angelic face, somewhat dazed, mystified expression…
Fifteen years later, a different town.
Hard rain pours down as Dr. Loomis and a nurse drive the
last stretch of road towards a hospital for the insane.
Loomis’ voice is entirely cold, clinical, “He hasn’t spoken a
word in 15 years.” You know who he is talking
about. In the downpour, figures wander aimlessly across
hospital grounds.
Suddenly a dark shape jumps onto the car roof, then
throws both of them out of the car and drives away. It
is one of those totally unexpected moments that makes you jump out
of your seat and wonder how it all happened so fast.
This is your introduction to Michael Myers, more a
force of nature than a human being. Nothing, no one,
can stop him for long. What is equally scary; he is beyond
communicating with.
Loomis later describes Michael this way:
“I first met Michael when the boy was six.
After eight years, I was convinced he was pure evil. I
spent the next seven years making sure he could never
escape.”
You know that Michael will return to his
hometown for Halloween. Not knowing
why makes it even scarier. You cannot
figure out what he wants. But you must expect the
absolute worst.
Meanwhile, his hometown of Haddonfield appears to
have forgotten Michael. Another Halloween; everyone
pretty much knows the drill. You’re introduced to Laurie
Strode and her friends Annie and Lynda. None is
sketched out in detail.
You feel you know Laurie well enough, though.
She is shy but has her feet planted firmly on
the ground. She has common sense, she is
resourceful, loyal to her friends, and to the kids she babysits
for.
She is more reserved than Annie and
Lynda. A major difference between them: Laurie has
no boyfriend. But Laurie is no 70’s hardcore
feminist. At times she reveals her loneliness, her wish to
find a boy she cares about.
Laurie is the focus of Michael’s return to
town. Why Laurie, the movie never explains.
A lot of the criticism of
Halloween revolved around the connection between
active sex and being killed by Michael. The
promiscuous characters seemed the ones much likelier to die.
Strangely, Michael appears fixated on Laurie, someone who has
never had an intimate relationship.
You realize for sure that Michael is back when
Laurie stops by the old Meyers house to drop off a set of keys
there. (Her father is a realtor who thinks he can finally
sell this property again.)
You see someone’s point of view from
inside the house. A figure suddenly emerges from the right
side of the screen—a sign of things to come.
Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis is on his way, trying to warn
the police about Michael. The police don’t take him very
seriously. On the highway, Loomis finds an empty pickup
truck, but in his hurry, misses the dead body of its driver,
thrown into nearby bushes.
For Annie and Lynda, Halloween is a chance to combine
babysitting, sex with boyfriends, and socializing with
friends. Only Laurie is beginning to suspect that someone
has other plans for them.
In 1978, Carpenter’s direction appeared to over-use
certain conventions… to the point of breaking cinematic
rules. Watching Halloween 30 years after
its release, its camera work no longer seems so
shocking. Perhaps because many other directors adopted
styles similar to Carpenter’s.
One example is to show someone in danger, such as Laurie,
in a close “one shot,” then show another character suddenly appear
next to her. The first time this happens is 25 minutes into
the movie. It turns out to be Annie’s father, the town’s
sheriff. A harmless meeting. Yet you still find
yourself jumping; it comes only seconds after Laurie has seen the
stranger facing her directly, then abruptly vanishing.
Laurie’s early glimpses of Michael–still an unknown to her
Laurie gets to Tommy’s house to babysit; Annie is also sitting, at
a house across the street. Meanwhile, Michael stalks the
peaceful streets in a mask, but is ignored; masks on Halloween are
expected.
Slowly the story tightens the circle around the four
characters: Laurie, Tommy, Annie, and Lindsay, the girl Annie sits
for. Tommy’s dog goes outside, confronts Michael, squeals
and dies. Annie goes to use the washing machine and gets
stuck in a doorway. Lindsay goes to Tommy’s house so Annie
can drive her boyfriend Paul over to the house.
Through much of these events, the camera appears to
taunt you, to play with your fears. When Annie talks to Paul
on the phone she moves continuously, left-right, right-left,
forward-back, back-forward. The camera follows her but much
of the time, Annie seems to be in “two-shots.” In
other words, she is framed so that there is room for another
person; you expect another person (Michael)… yet there is
no one. Your adrenaline slowly but surely reaches unbearable
levels.
Laurie’s friends–expecting only the same old
Halloween
Annie tries to take out the car, finds it is
locked, walks back for her keys. When she returns, the doors
are unlocked; she never notices the mist on the inside of
the windows. She gets in. Immediately she is
strangled, then stabbed.
I still remember my reaction the first time I
saw Halloween. It was the first time
I can ever remember being relieved when a character was
murdered. At least you can breathe again, I
thought That’s how suspenseful the moments before had
been.
From here on, the action comes fast and
furious. But describing the events in sequence gives only a
hint of the power you experience onscreen. You’ve seen women
before pursued by a maniac, and finally forced to fight
back. (One example is the under-rated
Wait Until Dark.)
But Carpenter uses Michael (also called The Shape) in
a new way. You see him appear, seemingly out of the void, as
he did inside the deserted house earlier. Much later, Laurie
tells the two young children, “There’s no Boogeyman. I
killed him.”
Then without a sound, he is abruptly visible, holding
the knife again, in the right side of the frame. Has
Carpenter over-used this device? It doesn’t feel that
way. Somehow he has made it work, like the repeated use of
one-shots to set us up for the kill, mixed with the two-shots with
a character missing…until it is too late, and The Shape is at our
throats.
I remember seeing Halloween, by
myself, in Flushing, New York, the Friday night it opened. I
had a girlfriend, but she didn’t like horror movies. A group
of about ten teenage girls sat near me, screaming their heads off
for the last 30 minutes. A man was seated just in front of
them. As the movie ended, he turned around, smiled at them,
and said, “I gotta see if my ears still work.”
Other box office smashes, such as
Deliverance
and The Exorcist were soon followed by many bad
imitations. It was the same story with
Halloween, only worse. A new series,
Friday the 13th followed, and also
made huge profits.
I don’t think Halloween had any
message (for example, a girl having premarital sex will die
violently, or deserves to die) or even any great social
significance. But its style affected horror films in
general; that feeling of the camera playing with you, almost
taunting you in a mean way. Once you had a chance, you could
finally find some holes, some inconsistencies in the story.
How could a child as psychotic, as evil as Michael have
passed himself off as normal for six years? Why wasn’t his
sister more scared of him? What did he see in Laurie that
made him focus on her? How did he learn to drive?
Halloween’s raw power makes all
these questions irrelevant. It pounds you into a place where
rational questions have no meaning. I don’t think Carpenter
has ever done anything equal to it yet.