While not the first, arguably the consummate slasher flick

Rating: 8/10 (28 September 2012)

What's remarkable about John Carpenter's 'Halloween' is that, despite the endless sequels and slew of imitations that followed, and the subsequent decay of the slasher sub-genre into ineffectual parody, it nonetheless retains its chilling and suspenseful atmosphere, keeping it fresh, vital, and (stop press) scary.
The strength of the movie is the simplicity of its concept and the directness of its execution. On the former point: a crazy kid (the ever bemasked Michael Myers of lore) hacks up his sister, is incarcerated for a couple of decades where he gives his doctor (Pleasence) the heebie-jeebies from his general vibe of evil-ness, escapes and returns home to hack up more kids in general and Jamie Lee Curtis in particular as an archetypal, nightmarish monster-who-will-not-stop. On the second point, 'Halloween' is refreshingly free of the over-the-top gory "kills", such as in 'Friday the 13th (1980)' or 'Halloween 2 (1981), which went onto become such a predictable characteristic of the genre. Instead, Carpenter has Michael silently lurk in peripheral vision and shadows from which he periodically emerges, usually accompanied by the minimal and haunting score, to take another life.
The characters are all fleshed out in a way that makes them more than slasher-fodder and the performances are strong all-roundyet all eyes (deservedly) remain on Pleasence and Curtis. As Dr Loomis, Pleesance's earnest exhortations of Myers' evilness and that the local police force don't know what they're up against, build suspense where in later films they elicit a "rightreally really evil, got it" and roll-of-the-eyes response. Complimenting all this is Curtis's shy and uber-awkward Laurie Strode who as a virgin and the surviving female seems to be the prototypical "final-girl" which would become another trope used in the genre. However, while certainly surviving the ordeal she is far from the "final-girl" in the sense of being empowered by her ordeal (like the spiky, booby-trap setting moxy of Nancy from 'Nightmare on Elm St. (1984)) but instead Laurie remains the perfect victim, even when brandishing a knife, and is wholly traumatised by the whole affair. Sexist? Probably. Draw from that what you will.
The movie is often erroneously cited as the first slasher flick. While certainly the quintessential example of the genre, the honour of the first slasher actually goes to 'Black Christmas' four years earlierindeed, so impressed was John Carpenter when he saw 'Black Christmas' that he originally envisioned 'Halloween' as being a sequel! However, perhaps the key difference which presumably seared 'Halloween' into the collective imagination (while relegating 'Black Christmas' to an undeserved 'Halloween' footnote) is that it gives us something 'Black Christmas' chose not to: a contemporary revision of the movie-monster in the boogieman-made-real form of Michael Myers. Trick or treat? Definitely a treat!