Halloween

**Halloween** is an American slasher movie directed by John Carpenter.

## Plot

The movie starts with the classic Halloween theme over a Jack-o’-lantern and the credits in orange. We see a shot that pans around the Myers house in Haddonfield from the perspective of a young Michael Myers, where he kills his sister. 15 years later, we then see Michael escape from his mental asylum and go back to Haddonfield, where he kills a mechanic for his clothes, and steals a white and expressionless mask from a store. We see Laurie Strode and her friends, Annie Brackett, and Lynda Van der Klok, walk home.

Later we see Laurie babysitting Tommy Doyle, while Annie babysits Lindsey Wallace. Throughout the night we see Michael spy on the two babysitters, later we see Michael kill Annie. Before Annie is killed though, she takes Lindsey to Laurie so she can babysit her. Later we see Michael kill Lynda and her boyfriend in exceptionally gruesome ways.

Laurie gets suspicious and checks on Lynda to find her dead, she then flees into the hallway where she is attacked by Michael, she runs back to the Doyle house and orders Lindsey and Tommy to hide, Michael follows her and attacks, but Laurie stabs him with a knitting needle. believing him dead she checks on the kids, but she finds Michael alive, she tells the kids to hide in the bathroom, and she hides in the closet, but Michael finds her, and attacks her again, she stabs him and for some reason drops the knife after she believes he has been killed. But Michael is actually alive and tries to attack Laurie but is shot by Dr. Loomis and falls off the balcony. The camera then shows underneath the balcony and we see that Michael is not there and, in the background, we hear his breathing.

## Production

Independent film producer Irwin Yablans sought out John Carpenter to direct a film about a psychotic killer that stalked babysitters, after seeing Carpenter’s movie Assault on Precinct 13. He and his then girlfriend began drafting the story, originally titled The Babysitter Murders, but Yablans requested the movie be set on Hallowe’en and be named Halloween instead. the screenplay was written in just 10 days, with the script taking 3 weeks, and after casting the movie was shot on a $300,000 budget, over the course of just 4 weeks. Because of the low budget and time crunch, most of the props were bought at the store, including the famous Michael Myers mask, which was a Captain Kirk mask painted white, with some other small adjustments. Also the entire score was composed in 3 days by John Carpenter.

## Critical Response

### Contemporary

When Halloween came out, it became extremely successful even without much actual advertising, this is mostly due to word of mouth. Though most critics seemed uninterested or downright distasteful of it with Pauline Kael writing “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…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.” On the other end of the spectrum, you have Roger Ebert who is usually critical of slasher movies saying “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.”

### Retrospective

Halloween is usually seen today a pioneer in the slasher genre. Halloween is a movie that has basically been used as a blueprint for how to make a successful slasher film since its release.

## Relationship with the Williams family

Islwyn Williams enjoys this movie and he made a video about it called, Some Halloween for Hallowe'en (Review).

## Notes and references

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2wIsQTRZLQ