The Epitome of Walking Fear

Rating: 10/10 (27 January 2010)

In 1978, John Carpenter, a filmmaker nobody had ever heard of produced, for $320 000, a simple little slasher movie in the vein of "Psycho" and "Black Christmas", that was about a six-year-old child who murders his older sister, grows up, and proceeds to rampage through his home town on Halloween. More than thirty years, half-a-dozen sequels, a remake, and a sequel to the remake later, we have what's been hailed as one of the greatest horror movies of the twentieth century, an impressive accomplishment considering... well, the entirety of the rest of the twentieth century, with a few equally great exceptions. Donald Pleasance, in the role that almost defined his career (would have, too, if not for Blofeld) as Dr. Sam Loomis, perfectly embodies the obsession with Michael Myers' evil, fused unrecognisably with his altruistic need to stop his inhuman patient. Jamie Lee Curtis, in the first role of a now decades long film career, shows us the true face of Laurie Strode, fearful but strong as she faces Myers' unstoppable force. Then there's Michael Myers himself, more pure darkness than human, too elemental to even belong to the faceless actor who plays him so well. The eyes, black, staring and soulless betrays no semblance of humanity as his ghostly white face shines from the shadows as though a fixture in the night itself. But it's the breathing, raspy and loud. It lets you know that he's there, all around you, shrouded too perfectly to see until it is far, far, too late. Whatever we tell children, this movie shows the truth. There is something to be afraid of in the dark. It's name is Michael Myers.