Slow pace, haunting atmosphere, well developed characters... I thought this was a horror film

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2004)

With the idea of home video still being over the horizon, films were expected to deliver quality results for a low overall cost. Halloween, in its original form, delivered a box-office performance totalling many multiples of its production budget. And unlike certain other pieces that claim to have delivered the same result, Halloween did not do this by cutting corners to the extent that it mostly looked like the home video of a drunk. In fact, Halloween looks so professional in spite of having been made for (reportedly) less than half a million dollars, it should come as no surprise that it grossed more than two hundred times its production budget.
As in any John Carpenter film, the cinematography is the true star. Wide, rolling vistas give the location as much development as the characters or the story. According to the stories, the decision to use Panavision cost around half of the production budget. It was money well-spent, as while the 2.35:1 frame is often sparsely populated, it is used with great effect. Like all of Carpenter's films, Halloween becomes a different film entirely when it is chopped to fit the obsolete shape of analogue television.
Another Carpenter trademark is to create musical themes that capture the memory and imagination all on their own. The main Halloween theme follows a strange sort of conga or bossa nova feel, following an odd sort of 5/4 timing. Like many themes from Carpenter films, it stays in the mind of the listener long after other aspects have been forgotten. Regardless of whether one views the film as a classic horror story or a cookie-cutter slasher, the score music is one of the great classics of its artform.
This is the film that brought Jamie Lee Curtis into the public consciousness, and introduced Donald Pleasance to a lot of young cinema-goers who might otherwise have no idea who he is. Unlike the sequels, however, the support cast is fairly strong, too. While few of them appeared in anything substantive after the fact, they at least give the impression that they weren't recruited right out of their first year of drama school. Given that this screenplay is heavy on exposition, there is no way that the ultra-trendy cast of Halloween 8 could have possibly made this work.
Like many a Carpenter film, Halloween ends in a manner that seems to wrap most of the story up quite neatly, but leaves enough open for the viewer to start speculating on the characters' future. This is an ending style that I wish more directors would use, as it gives the viewer's imagination something to do. We also get to listen to a monologue about fate that, mainly through its delivery, is surprisingly haunting. The care and effort that went into setting a mood really paid off here, in a total contrast to the sequels.
I gave Halloween an eight out of ten. It is showing its age, but it works wonderfully in spite of that. It is a good example of how Hollywood used to have new ideas.