REVIEW: John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)

Halloween picks up 15 years after Judith Myers is murdered by her brother Michael, who escapes an asylum and returns home to kill again.

Halloween is an extremely important horror film for me. It's the earliest memory I have with the genre; my mother showed this movie to me when I was WAY too young and it gave me nightmares for an entire summer. It's the movie I’ve rewatched more than any other in my movie obsessed life. I own it on nearly every format, some multiple times. It's in my top ten favorite films of all time list, and it's a comfort movie for me to throw on whenever my day has gone poorly; almost as an instantaneous remedy for whatever is on my mind. Hell, the way Carpenter and Hill wrote this movie shaped the way I view storytelling and shepherded my own writing sensibilities. For my first ever review series on this site, I wanted to revisit it (and the franchise it spawned) at length before the current continuity comes to an end with Halloween Ends this October. So let's dive into this seminal classic.

The cast of characters in Halloween are definitely one of the reasons the film has endured as long as it has. They aren't deep characters with emotional arcs and complex motivations. However, they are drawn in a manner that is meant to maintain a level of familiarity. These are likable people that anyone can relate to. By today’s standards, the three main girls are rather archetypal, but their interplay sells them as this really fun trio. I particularly enjoy the chemistry between Laurie and Annie. We get more time with them together, and their relationship produces some amusing humor with the situations they find themselves in. The scene where they run into Annie's policeman father while smoking a joint is particularly funny. When push comes to shove, Jamie Lee Curtis delivers a fantastic performance as Laurie. There’s a reason why Laurie Strode is the template a lot of final girls follow. She’s convincing in all aspects and she’s a heroine that is easy to root for.

Next character we really have to touch on is Sam Loomis, the doomsaying, Smith and Wesson toting Van Helsing of the film. From the onset, Carpenter writes Loomis with this eloquence, and this strong desire to see that Myers is never released because he knows what "it" really is. Until the final scene, he may be the only person who does. In a trope that carries through the franchise, people often don't seem to grasp the gravity of The Shape's return, and Loomis' desperation is shown very clearly through Pleasance's incredible performance. He's enraged by the incompetence of the asylum, pleads with law enforcement, and relentlessly hunts for his patient until the final scene. But even through this, he's able to have a bit of fun and scare the daylights out of some kids. It's easy to see why he's such a beloved character and why he was the perfect character’s shoulders to rest the franchise on a majority of the time.

He goes by a few different names; Michael, The Shape, The Boogeyman. Michael Myers is a stroke of writing genius, plain and simple. While there is a skeleton of a character, he exists as a manifestation of fate, and a specter of death wrought upon the town of Haddonfield. Nick Castle’s (the man behind the mask) performance imbues Michael with an otherworldly presence, the way in which he wears the featureless white mask is truly unnerving. Whether it be his walk, how he casually cocks his head to the side when admiring a kill, or when he rises after being stabbed, transforms Michael into one of horror’s greatest icons. He follows the principal characters around, like a reaper luring his victims into the afterlife, waiting for the time to strike.

The plot of Halloween is incredibly tight, with nary a moment wasted. After the (amazing) opening title sequence, which perfectly sets the mood for a spooky watch, we're immediately thrown into one of the most staggering usages of camera I've ever seen. A five minute point-of-view shot, filmed with the Panavsion Panaglide to convey the glide of The Shape’s walk. We don't know whose eyes we are looking through, but we know something is off by the fantastic Carpenter score building tension. We move through the house after seeing a couple making out on the couch and heading upstairs to make love. A small hand reaches out and opens a drawer, retrieving a kitchen knife, gleaming in the light. We head towards the stairs, watching the boy come downstairs after the shortest period of sex i've ever witnessed in a film, and as he heads outside, we head up the stairs. Retrieving a fallen clown mask, we enter into a bedroom where a woman sits, naked, brushing her hair. It's made very apparent that the woman knows whoever we are voyeuristically witnessing this sequence through when she says his name: "Michael!". Before anything else can be said, the small hand raises, knife high, and begins to plunge the blade over and over until the woman slumps from the chair, covered in blood. Michael descends the staircase and onto the front lawn. A couple removes his mask, and it is revealed that we have been watching through the eyes of a child. This child has just murdered his sister, and there isn't a single emotion on his face. It's a hell of a scene to start the film with. It's simultaneously disturbing and utterly hypnotic in its execution.

When we jump forward fifteen years, I think it's pretty easy to understand where Loomis is coming from when he says he doesn't want Michael to ever get out of Smiths Grove. From here we're introduced to our main characters, and Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill really take time to let us sit with the girls. As I said above, they aren't complex characters, but they are types of people I'd wager you crossed paths with in high school. I knew a lot of people like Laurie, more of a wallflower and bright. I passed girls in the hall that were a lot like Linda and Annie, more outgoing and carefree. It seems like relatability was put ahead of deeper characters, and I think Halloween is all the better for it. Laurie and Annie are both babysitters, and their charges are neighbors, which is an efficient way to cut down on the amount of locations necessary to contain the film to mostly one street after a certain point. This also allows us to learn more about Laurie. She doesn't have a boyfriend to be out with on Halloween night, so she becomes "the dependable one" when Annie goes to meet her beau. This puts two children in her care, and opens Annie up to being the victim of the knife wielding psychopath. With Annie out of the house and Lindsay across the street, Linda and Bob have the house to themselves, and The Shape has them right where he wants them.

Annie, Linda and Bob's deaths lead to one of the more interesting parts about The Shape in this movie: his macabre playfulness. Not just in how he stages the bodies once he picks them off, but in how he plays with his victims before he kills them. He knocks planters over to startle Annie, luring Bob around the kitchen, or messing around with Linda in a ghost costume with the beer Bob was supposed to fetch. It's this childlike playfulness that makes the murders even more disturbing to me. It only gets more disturbing once Laurie is discovering the bodies, staged in these bizarre ways to mess with her (a trope that would continue within the slasher genre going forward).

Whilst all the shenanigans are going down with the teenagers, Loomis is going around Haddonfield with Sheriff Bracket, hunting for Michael. They visit the Myers house, run down and dilapidated, which is where we really get a sense of the depths of Michael’s evil. If you have seen the film, you know the classic “...the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes.” platitude. Of course Bracket barely takes this seriously, dismissing it as “fancy talk” but begrudgingly hunting with and for Loomis. It would be easy to be frustrated by Bracket’s response, but no one knows Michael like Loomis. When this older gentleman, waving a revolver at a broken gutter, pontificates to you about this evil six year old…I can’t fault you for being a bit skeptical. Loomis’ monologue is one of the greatest I’ve ever witnessed and Pleasance’s performance is a masterstroke. It’s clinical, full of rich yet vague characterizations, and it makes explicitly clear how terrified we should be of Michael. Loomis also has a tendency to refer to Michael as “it” rather than “him” or even his name, further dehumanizing him into “The Shape” in our eyes. Talk about using dialogue to put the fear of god in someone.

All of this converges as Laurie discovers the bodies of her dead friends, laid out in almost a pranking manner, with Annie at the center, splayed out in some kind of ritualistic representation of Judith Myers near her headstone. Myers stalks her back to the Doyle House, where she secures the children and fights off Myers, stabbing him with a knitting needle. This isn’t enough to stop the boogeyman, however, and when Laurie goes to check on little Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace, she’s mortified to find The Shape has followed her. Laurie stows the children before hiding in a closet, praying the boogeyman leaves her be. But when Michael begins punching through the closet door, Laurie strikes again, this time blinding The Shape with a coat hanger before stabbing him in the chest with his own kitchen knife. Laurie steps over his lifeless corpse as she lets the kids out, ordering them to go for help. When they run screaming out of the house, Loomis spots them, putting two and two together and heading off towards the house. Meanwhile we see The Shape sit up behind Laurie, silent and inhuman. He gets to his feet, shuffling over and gripping Laurie’s throat. Laurie removes his mask in an attempt to shake his grip, which causes him to drop her and replace his mask, but not before we get a look at his -very- human face. It is in this moment where I think some terror must have set in, because underneath that mask wasn’t some boil infested, monstrous face. It was the face of a human man. But once the boogeyman replaces his mask, Loomis comes up the stairs and fires into him with his revolver. Loomis doesn't stop shooting until he runs empty and Myers is sent over a balcony.

“It was the boogeyman?”

“As a matter of fact, it was.”

When Loomis peers over that balcony to find his former patient gone, we’re brought to the scenes of Michael’s crimes, all of the places the boogeyman has lurked in the shadows. As John Carpenter’s musical score rises, infecting every corner of your room, the breathing of The Shape surrounds you. He could be in your house. He could be in your room. He could be right behind you. The Shape is everywhere, and you cannot escape him. Cut to black.

We can’t discuss Halloween without discussing the creative team. John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Tommy Lee Wallace, Dean Cundey and a bunch of other absolute madmen and women put together this landmark film with a budget of $325,000 (nearly $1.5 million today) and was filmed in twenty days. A lot of money was spent on the Panaglide system, and it was money well spent, because Cundey’s cinematography is a character all its own in Halloween. The point-of-view photography was just astonishing and they were feeling this stuff out too. The lighting is also a huge part of the identity of the series, particularly the blue hues the night time scenes had. It added this feeling of cold to a picture shot in Pasadena, California. There are so many shots in Halloween that are seared into my brain forever, whether it be the first shot of the Myers house, or the crane shot that ends the prologue, or Myers fading in from the shadows behind Laurie in the climax. I find it completely impossible to look away from this movie often even though I’ve seen it countless times. It’s easy to see why Cundey has lensed some of the most astonishing films of the modern era after watching Halloween.

The visual quality of Halloween is iconic, and so is its sound. Halloween fans know the story of when the film was screened without a musical score and how Carpenter was told it wasn't scary. So Carpenter said something along the lines of “iight, bet.” and just went and made one of the greatest and most iconic horror scores in the history of movies. Jokes aside, I remember when I was a kid, I had to leave a room if the Halloween theme was playing because the movie scared me so much. Beyond that amazing opening theme, which I find to be just positively hypnotic, Carpenter really tightens the screws of tension with these tracks that are as relentless as The Shape himself. “The Shape Stalks” in particular might be my favorite track in the film, because it really gives the impression that someone is giving chase with a knife. It’s the type of blood pumping track that really boosts the dread of Halloween.

Halloween is a watershed moment for horror and a landmark film for indie cinema. Top to bottom, it’s lovingly crafted, well acted, the sights and sounds are well rendered and it's genuinely scary. It ushered in a wave of imitators, and very few have even come remotely close. If you have somehow never seen this movie, do yourself a favor and correct that. It’s a masterpiece.

If you managed to make it through this review…thank you! It’s been a long time coming and I hope you enjoyed it! What do you think of Halloween (1978)? Is it your favorite horror movie? Do you hate it? Is it mid? Let me know! I hope you’ll join me next time when we discuss Halloween II (1981), MORE…of the night HE came home!