Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter

Film Review

Often imitated, but never bettered, Halloween is a superlative example of the suspense horror film, all the more effective because hardly a dollop of blood is visible on the screen.  This is the film that spawned the slasher movie, an oft-derided horror sub-genre noted for its gory Grand Guignol excesses and painfully juvenile plots.   It is fitting that the star of this film should be Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh, who played the ill-fated heroine in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the film that originally inspired the slasher genre.  

Made on a modest budget of $300,000, Halloween took over fifty million dollars at the box office, making it the most profitable independent film ever made.  Director John Carpenter has made several notable horror films since (including his 1982 remake of The Thing), but none comes even close to being as effective and as frightening as this one, an undisputed modern horror classic.

Halloween is one of those films which falls apart as soon as you try to analyse it in any detail (which could explain the poor reviews it garnered in some quarters on its first release).  The plot is so insubstantial and hackneyed that it seems incredible it could sustain a thirty minute short, let alone a ninety minute feature.  The characters are bland ciphers that have barely more substance than a vanilla milkshake, rendered all the more ludicrous by the corny dialogue that comes out of their mouths.  The villain, who is apparently a cross-between between Norman Bates and Satan himself, has an annoying superhuman capacity for knowing exactly where his victims are and being virtually indestructible, plus he sounds a bit like Darth Vader.  Yet, for all these flaws (and several others), Halloween is one of the most spellbinding and chilling films you will ever see, ranking along side other modern horror greats such as The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What saves Halloween and makes it a masterpiece of its genre is its relentlessly creepy atmosphere, achieved through some incredibly effective lighting and camerawork.   The point-of-view shots (realised using the recently invented Steadicam) are particularly impressive, creating the claustrophobic mood and building the tension, whilst evoking an unsettling complicity between the viewer and the killer (from whose perspective we see much of the film).  The score, composed by the multi-talented Carpenter, is also a key element of the film, lending a sense that a deadly evil lurks in every scene.

Ironically, it is the absence of explicit horror which makes the film so unnerving.   A lesser director would have completely showered the screen with gallons and gallons of theatrical blood.  Carpenter shows far more restraint, and the approach pays off.   The spectator is shown just enough to stimulate the imagination and it is the workings of the mind, not the images that flitter across the screen, that makes the experience of watching Halloween so intense and so utterly terrifying.  You only have to throw a cursory glance at some of this film's sequels (of which there are so far seven) or similar offerings in the slasher genre to appreciate the truth of the old adage that less is more.

Film Synopsis

On Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers stabs his older sister to death at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois.  Exactly fifteen years later, Myers escapes from the psychiatric institution where he has been held since the killing and returns to Haddonfield.  Dr Loomis, the man who has been charged with the care of Myers all these years, is convinced that he intends to embark on a killing spree in his home town and sets about trying to find him.   In unsuspecting Haddonfield, Laurie Strode, a student, plans to spend a quiet evening babysitting.  She envies her friends, Anne and Lynda, who will no doubt have a more interesting Halloween night.  She is wrong.  This is one Halloween Laurie will not forget in a hurry.  If she survives it...