A Chilling Reminder of Carpenter During His Prime!

Rating: Null/10 (25 August 2002)

Contains Spoilers!! John Carpenter's best years for movies were in the 70s when he was very much an unknown working the independent-studio circuit and making films as cheaply as possible with limited finances but without sacrificing the quality that goes into such superb film.
And as a consequence from 1974 to roughly 1986 Carpenter offered us such classic indies as, Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, The Fog, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. All of them had their cult following and all of them had a lot of film critics buzzing with praise & plaudits but only Halloween became perhaps one of the most influential movies in movie history.
Although a generally simple concept of a maniac-on-the-loose, that had done before in lesser films previous to Halloween in '78, a lot of them lacked the style and above all, the sheer terror of this Carpenter offering.
Even the opening titles were enough to set the mood in no uncertain terms: a halloween pumpkin with a rather threatening "smile" slowly coming into the camera's focus while a pair of synthesizers pound out one of those nerve-jangling & ominous film scores that really sets the mood.
Then we see a POV of our killer stalking the house of his sister who is making out with her boyfriend late at night. He then makes his way into the house when the boyfriend has left, enters her bedroom and then stares for what seems like forever before killing her.
So far, so normal. This kind of thing has been done a few times although never quite so calculating or sucessful. But what really makes this scene so shocking is that we then get to look at our killer, but instead of expecting some cruel & twisted adult, it is in fact the 6 year old boy of the sister he has just stabbed to death. And not only that but when the police arrive and capture him we find he was wearing a hockey mask throughout the entire murder.
An absolutely shocking first few minutes that totally unsettles its audience right from the very first note of the film score to the removal of the hockey mask some 6 minutes later. Carpenter is clearly very influenced by the works of Hitchcock but he succeeds where other lesser directors failed and packaged an opening with such calculating menace that lets the audience know we're going to be in for a roller-coaster 90 minutes of terror.
Throughout the film the lingering threat never seems to go away, even during the daylight scenes. Most horror films only really come alive when all is dark & sinister, but not so with Halloween. Carpenter uses everyday things to play hide & seek with our wits. One of the best examples is the escaped killer hiding behind a line of white bed sheets as he stalks the unsuspecting Jamie Lee Curtis. We get to see him only for an instant thanks to a sudden gust of wind that reveals his identity as the bed sheet tosses in the air. But for that one moment is just as terrifying as anything that goes on during the night, when an audience is expecting something horrible to happen.
Carpenter, very much like Steven Spielberg's Jaws, likes to tease us and tantalise us with never revealing the presence of the "monster" too early. He likes to play mind games with us so that we ourselves feel like we're been stalked in the same way.
Another highlight in the film is the way Carpenter unsettles us even more with the treatment of the dead people the maniac has killed. Perhaps the best example is the corpse of a murdered girl lying on her bed with her throat cut and the real tombstone of the killer's first victim at her head. Such simple little devices that work so well in Carpenter's hands.
Another similarity with the shark in Jaws is that this particular monster simply will not die as any normal person would do. Not even bullets, knives or falling out of first floor windows have any desired effect until perhaps the very ending. And as a consequence neither the audience or the potential victim in Curtis is allowed off the hook with a standard good-guy kills bad-guy finale.
The acting, chiefly, from old master Donald Pleasence and newcomer, Jamie Lee Curtis, is to be honest the weakest part of the film, although Curtis just does enough to make us care enough for her welfare.
Its also interesting that most of the killings that take place throughout the film occur usually straight after the eventual vicitms have had sex. I guess a lot of psychiatrists watching had a great deal to say about that.
It is not surprising, therefore, that this film became one of the biggest box-office successes in the horror genre ever, and by itself created a whole new industry of what is now somewhat unkindly called "slasher movies" but spawned some great films like "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday 13th", and both of those films had their own franchises as well.
As for Carpenter, well he hasn't hit the high notes ever since "Big Trouble In Little China" back in 86 and even that film wasn't all that great. Ever since then he has had a succession of poorly directed or poorly received horror movies that simply don't have those key ingredients so evident in Halloween, which is a great great shame.
The logic of Halloween doesn't stand up to close scrutiny but back in the late 70s this film set the world alight and Halloween nights were never quite the same again!
***/*****