HALLOWEEN: Who Is It That Wears the Mask?

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nancy Kyes, P. J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Tony Moran
Runtime: 91 mins.
1978

Halloween is, adjusted for inflation, one of the most profitable indie movies of all time. Made on a shoestring budget of $300,000, it's the film that shot horror great John Carpenter into the mainstream consciousness. Boy is it apparent how cheap it is, too.

One could hardly blame low budget horror for looking like low budget horror. It's just funny to note the ridiculous inconsistencies that rear their head in every other scene. It's supposed to be Halloween, yet every street full of lush greenery. Except for the arbitrary scene when they sprung for a bunch of dead brown leaves to blow down the sidewalk in a half-assed attempt at seasonal atmosphere. The screenplay also shows the shabbiness of a cheap, rushed production. Any cursory scrutiny will reveal plot chasms and incomprehensible timelines for what ought to be a rather straightforward set-up: a couple of teenagers stuck babysitting instead of going out to enjoy the Halloween festivities, and the monstrous killer who stalks them.

To focus on the details would be nitpicking--the shallowest and most banal form of film criticism. Sure, the failed satirists over at Cinema Sins would have a field day with Halloween, but none of that matters because the film is a self-assured pleasure to watch. Everything about it is paper thin, from the plot to the acting to the budget to the killer himself, but a good director can get a lot of mileage out of a little bit of material.

That aforementioned killer is Michael Myers, among the pantheon of slasher greats. On the page there's very little that's interesting about him: He's a crazy killer of women who doesn't speak and has been in an asylum for his entire pubescent and adult life. He lurks and lurks and lurks, and then he strikes. That's his thing--appearing in windows or around corners, then not being there when you look again. It's basic stuff, but perhaps the purity of it is what established his iconography.

Admittedly, watching Halloween at this point isn't quite as impressive as the mythology that has encrusted around its villain over the last four decades. One has to remember that what might appear dull and rote to us now must have seemed taut and novel to the folks watching it at the time. Halloween was one of the most important pioneers of what we understand now to be the slasher genre, so if it seems familiar that's because countless directors have since lifted cues from Carpenters urtext. In fact, so many have stuck so closely to the structure of Halloween that in order to set themselves apart, horror films became increasingly shocking or gruesome rather than innovative. For that reason as well, Halloween might strike us as surprisingly tame. It's a mostly bloodless affair with a slow bubbling tension that isn't flashy in the ways we're used to from this type of movie.

Other than the silly subplot featuring Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis, concerned psychiatrist who stands around and delivers menacing monologues for most of the movie, the film centers around Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), one of the babysitting teenagers. The movie has a laid back slice of life vibe, as we watch Laurie go about her day. That sense of small town normality only heightens the dread of Michael Myers lurking at the periphery. The acting is scattershot, but Curtis is great in her crucial role as the lynchpin of the film. Since we're just hanging out with her for an hour and change, a lesser actor would have made the experience unbearable.

It's hard to say whether Moran does a good job portraying Myers, exactly, because the character is such a blank slate. Certainly Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey (!) frame him exquisitely, either anchoring us in his disturbed perspective or locating him just far and askew enough that his features are blurred by distance. It gives the impression of something unknowable. Of course that feeling is enhanced by his infamous mask, as created by production designer Tommy Lee Wallace from a two dollar Captain Kirk face. For my part, the most effective moment for the character, and the entire film for that matter, is the opening scene of a killer stalking a young couple. The entire scene is shot in one unbroken take, using a steadicam technique that was fresh and unfamiliar at the time. Not only is it deeply unsettling to be put in a killer's shoes and forced to stalk his prey by proxy, but the climactic reveal that the killer was a little boy the entire time validates and contextualizes the potentially show-offy technique in a brilliant way.

Certainly the only other contender for the best aspect of the film is Carpenter's score, which is justifiably one of the most iconic pieces of horror music in existence. Much like the rest of the film, the greatness of the Halloween score is about finding elegance in simplicity.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS