page_title: Halloween (1978 film)
section_title: Contemporaneous
hierarchical_section_title: Halloween (1978 film) / Release / Critical response / Contemporaneous
caption_attribution_description: English: Roger Ebert, the film critic, giving an interview at a Chicago public radio station, on Sound Opinions program in 2006
context_page_description: Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The plot tells about a mental patient who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his teenage sister on Halloween night when he was six years old. Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown, where he stalks a female babysitter and her friends, while under pursuit by his psychiatrist.
  Filming took place in Southern California in May 1978, before premiering in October, where it grossed $70 million, becoming one of the most profitable independent films. Primarily praised for Carpenter's direction and score, many credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Bob Clark's Black Christmas. Some critics have suggested that Halloween may encourage sadism and misogyny by audiences identifying with its villain.
context_section_description: Upon its initial release, Halloween performed well with little advertising—relying mostly on word-of-mouth, but many critics seemed uninterested or dismissive of the film. Pauline Kael wrote a scathing review in The New Yorker suggesting that "Carpenter doesn't seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions" and claiming that "Maybe when a horror film is stripped of everything but dumb scariness—when it isn't ashamed to revive the stalest device of the genre (the escaped lunatic)—it satisfies part of the audience in a more basic, childish way than sophisticated horror pictures do."
  The Los Angeles Times deemed the film a "well-made but empty and morbid thriller," while Bill von Maurer of The Miami Times felt it was "surprisingly good," noting: "Taken on its own level, Halloween is a terrifying movie—if you are the right age and the right mood." Susan Stark of the Detroit Free Press branded Halloween a bourgeoning cult film at the time of its release, describing it as "moody in the extreme"  and praising its direction and music. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a beautifully made thriller" that "works because director Carpenter knows how to shock while making us smile. He repeatedly sets up anticipation of a shock and delays the shock for varying lengths of time. The tension is considerable. More than once during the movie I looked around just to make sure that no one weird was sitting behind me." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, writing "Since there is precious little character or plot development to pass the time between stalking sequences, one tends to wish the killer would get on with it. Presumably, Carpenter imagines he's building up spinetingling anticipation, but his techniques are so transparent and laborious that the result is attenuation rather than tension." Lou Cedrone of The Baltimore Evening Sun referred to it as "tediously familiar" and whose only notable element is "Jamie Lee Curtis, whose performance as the intended fourth victim, is well above the rest of the film." Tom Allen of The Village Voice praised the film in his November 1978 review, noting it as sociologically irrelevant but ceding its Hitchcock-like technique as effective and "the most honest way to make a good schlock film". Allen pointed out the stylistic similarities to Psycho and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968).
  The following month, Voice lead critic Andrew Sarris wrote a follow-up feature on cult films, citing Allen's appraisal of Halloween and writing in the lead sentence that the film "bids fair to become the cult discovery of 1978. Audiences have been heard screaming at its horrifying climaxes". Roger Ebert gave the film similar praise in his 1979 review in the Chicago Sun-Times, referring to it as "a visceral experience—we aren't seeing the movie, we're having it happen to us. It's frightening. Maybe you don't like movies that are really scary: Then don't see this one." Ebert also selected it as one of his top 10 films of 1978. Once-dismissive critics became impressed by Carpenter's choice of camera angles and simple music, and surprised by the lack of blood and graphic violence.
caption: Roger Ebert, an often vocal critic of slasher films,[82] praised Halloween upon its release
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