Welcome to the month of October. The month of Horror.
To celebrate Live for Film is having a horror movie review each night in the 31 Days of Horror. You can see last years 31 days here. You can be involved by sending me your review of a horror film – new, old, good, bad, depressing, funny, disgusting, psychological. As long as it can be classed as a horror then you can send it over to me at phil@liveforfilms.com
Click here to see all the reviews for 2011′s 31 Days of Horror.
Today Paul Downey reviews John Carpenter’s Halloween.
The frustrating part of the horror genre lies in their ability to scare us once, but not twice.
This cannot be said of the original Halloween, which now clocks in at over 30 years old and still maintain that sense of dread and creepiness to this day.
As the series went on, the Halloween series became a very watered down affair, right up until the mess Rob Zombie made of ‘re-imagining’ the series.
Right from the outset of the very first scene we are taken to a dark place, as a person makes their way into a house in suburbia, only to take out a huge (and it is as well) butcher knife from the kitchen draw and proceed to stab a young teenage girl to death.
It is the first time that the POV shot is really employed in its truest form, as for the first time we are seeing what the killer is seeing.
The scenes are drawn out, and with the intensity of Carpenter’s superb score keeping the audience at breaking point until the death scene is finished.
First shock (for first timers) is it is a young child who has committed this atrocity. Fast forward 15 years later and the child (now a fully grown 21 year old) is to be assessed for parole, much to disgust of his doctor Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance).
The intensity that Pleasance brings to the Loomis role separates him apart from your horror cliché of the old man with a warning (sadly his character does become this later on in the series). Loomis is deadly serious about his views on this boy as not just a danger, but as pure evil.
The scene is set for Michael Myers to escape from the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, using Loomis’ car and head ‘home’ to Haddonfield, the scene of the crime 15 years ago.
From here to film swifts away from Myers’ escapades and focusses on young Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and wonderful world of babysitting on, wait for it….Halloween.
Myers now plays a somewhat elusive role, as Laurie starts to see him everywhere, and at some points doesn’t even see him as he stalks her and her friends Annie and Lynda.
Myers is cast as ‘The Shape’ in the final credits, and the blink and you’ll miss it moments are really intense as Laurie begins to think she is imagining this strange man in a white mask.
One of the defining parts of what makes Halloween such a special film, is that despite being just under 90 minutes long, relationships for the characters are allowed to develop; and by the time that Myers does re-start his killing spree, the audience is emotionally invested in the characters.
The character of Loomis, along with father of Annie and Sherriff of Haddonfield, Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) are kept on the outskirts, seemingly always one step behind Myers. This works to the films benefit as in tragic way Loomis’ rants of ‘pure evil’ and the ‘devils eyes’ all come to fruition but by the time they track Michael down it is too late for some.
Another factor which works to Halloween’s benefit, is the fact that Michael Myers’ actions remain a mystery throughout. Why did he kill his sister? Why is he stalking Laurie and her friends?
Carpenter realises it is scarier to let the audiences imagination depict what his motives; add to this the fact that during the intense finale he just won’t die, and you have one terrifying villain.
In summary John Carpenter’s masterpiece still stands the test of time, and harks back to a time when villains were scary, music was powerful and directors valued storylines over bikini lines.
