#1 - Halloween (1978)
The night he'll always come home
Yep, you knew this was coming. From John Carpenter and Debra Hill comes the most simplistic, yet the most iconic slasher film of them all. In 1978, on a budget of $320,000 and with a cast & crew whose average age was no higher than 30, a little film by the name of Halloween was released to theaters and instantly became the highest grossing independent movie of all time, making returns of well over 10,000% (if I do percentage correctly, which I don't. So double check that number.)
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| Woah. That's a long way down... |
The simple tale follows that of a young boy named Michael Myers. On Halloween night, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers enters his home, takes up a butcher knife from his kitchen, slowly and creepily makes his way to his sister Judtih's bedroom and butchers her mercilessly. He is sent to Smith's Grove-Warren County Sanitarium and placed under the care of Dr. Samuel Loomis. Fifteen years later, on October 30th 1978, en route to escort Michael to court to be tried as an adult for the murder of his sister, Loomis and nurse Marion Chambers are attacked by Michael. Michael, now an adult, steals their car and escapes the Sanitarium. Loomis deduces that Michael is heading back to his hometown of Haddonfield and sets out to track him down. Meanwhlie, three high school students Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Lynda van der Klok (PJ Soles) and Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis) exit school the following day on Halloween, 1978. Laurie, at occasional points during the day, sees a man in a white mask and mechanic coveralls looking at her from a distance, be it outside of her classroom window or from behind a hedge on the walk home with Annie. She even sees him in her backyard when she returns home that evening. That night, Laurie and Annie begin babysitting Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace, respectively, while Dr. Loomis meets with Annie's father, Sheriff Leigh Brackett, and begins looking for Michael in the streets of Haddonfield. As Annie coordinates with Laurie to drop Lindsay off so she can meet with her boyfriend Paul, she gets in her car to go pick him up. From the backseat springs Michael, who slits her throat and kills her. Later, Lynda and her boyfriend Bob arrive at the Wallace house and seeing that Annie and Lindsay aren't home, they go upstairs to have sex. Bob goes downstairs to get more beer, but is impaled on the wall by Michael. Michael then goes upstairs and kills Lynda by strangling her with a phone chord while she's on the phone with Laurie. Laurie, who calls back and gets no answer, tucks the kids into bed and goes across the street. There, she finds Annie's body on the Wallace's bed with Judith Myers' tombstone, Bob hanging inside the close and Lynda tucked away in another closet. Michael appears and chases Laurie back across the street but she stabs him in the neck with a sewing pin. She then goes upstairs to tell Tommy and Lindsay that she killed him but Michael reappears. Laurie traps herself in a closet which Michael breaks into, but she pokes his eye out with a hangar and then stabs him in the chest with his own knife. She then goes and grabs the kids again and tells them to run down the street to call the police. They run outside and as they're screaming, Loomis looks inside the house and deduces that Michael may be nearby. He then goes inside the house to find Michael, who has risen again, attempting to strangle Laurie. Loomis shoots Michael six times and watches him fall out of a second-story window. Upon further inspection, Loomis looks down on the lawn and sees that Michael has disappeared into the night....
Given what the sequels would later tell us and temporarily putting that out of mind, Halloween comes off as your basic tale of escaped mental patient who travels to a location to stalk random teenagers. The sequels would attempt to give him motives and a backstory, but back in the day, John Carpenter merely envisioned Michael as "evil incarnate". Nothing more than an unstoppable force in mechanic's overalls and a mask.
Speaking of the mask, I forget if I mentioned this previously or not, but Michael Myers's mask was cheaply acquired for the movie. The budget was a mere $320,000 mind you, so much of the props needed to either be store-bought or used out of the actors' personal belongings. Michael's mask was a two-dollar William Shatner Captain Kirk mask purchased from a hardware store. The hair was pulled and teased out, the face was painted a ghostly shade of white, and the eye-holes were widened. The expressionless face of a ghoul makes for the perfect personification when it's covering something that Loomis describes as absolutely "pure evil". A truly faceless evil.
In terms of Dr. Loomis's character, several comparisons can be made with the story of Moby Dick. Loomis himself can be described as Captain Ahab, obsessed with hunting the white whale, which is Michael Myers. Loomis is first introduced to us in the car on the way to transfer Michael to his sentencing. He's calm, but weary. He's well aware that Michael is close to being locked up forever but is anxious that something could go wrong at any moment. Loomis's obsession comes to a point when Michael escapes the sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield. Loomis knows full well Michael's apparent danger to the populace, but cannot find a single person who can believe him. Haddonfield's town sherrif, Leigh Brackett, is the only one that eventually begins heeding Loomis's warnings. Together with Loomis, he searches the town's streets at night while Michael stalks the three girls from the shadows. Loomis fights off Michael at the very end by shooting him six times, but to no avail. Michael escapes into the night anyway.
The movie's opening sequence made use of the steadicam, showing us Michael's first murder on Halloween night, 1963. Little Michael enters his parents' house, grabs a butcher knife, walks up the stairs and murders his sister while she's brushing her hair in front of a mirror. It's interesting because people think that entire opening shot was done in a single take. Not true. There are two cuts in the opening shot that turns it into three shots. The first cut is when Michael puts the mask on over his face, and then the second shot is when Michael whips around after having murdered Judith. Still though, the opening shot in and of itself perfectly sets the mood and lets the viewer know what they're in for. It's also one of the most memorable scenes in the movie because it's entirely from six-year-old Michael's point-of-view.
The film is notable because of its' lack of gore. Each of the kills are clean on screen with very little, if any, blood loss. Annie gets her throat slit? No blood. Bob gets pinned to a wall by a knife? No gore. Lynda gets strangled with a phone chord? Nothing. The movie was marveled for its simplicity, and films later on tried their best to emulate it at first. Then horror movies started to get gorier and gorier, with Friday the 13th going over the top most of the time.
The score of Halloween is triumphant. It's creepy, sets the mood for a night of chilling suspense, and was only composed in four days. The Halloween theme is one of the most replicated tracks played on pianos and keyboards. Carpenter's score was one of the first all synthesizer keyboard scores to be come so widely well-known. The theme song is written in a rare 5/4th signature, a rhythm John Carpenter learned from his father. The chase music when Michael begins stalking Laurie is one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Laurie's theme is my second-favorite, behind the movie's theme itself. Laurie's theme is totally apart of the season. Whenever you play Laurie's theme (sometime's called "Halloween 1978" on some soundtrack releases), it immediately puts your mind in the mindset that it's Halloween indeed. The leaves are orange, the air has a cool, crisp feeling to it, and there's a killer lurking around your town, unseen to your eyes.
While I do have almost nothing but praise for the movie, I do have some complaints. The first and foremost being the acting. Nancy Kyes, who plays Annie, is a tremendously poor actress. She draws out all the wrong syllables in her dialogue and has almost no change in vocal octave, mood, or mannerisms. "I have a place for thaaaaat..." It cracks me up everytime. PJ Soles isn't bad, but she gives a pretty big bimbo-esque performance, including her excessive use of the world "totally". She has a memorable death scene when Michael strangles her with a phone chord, and her open shirt allows her breasts to flop around as she's being flung back and forth. It eventually comes off pretty laughable when Jamie Lee Curtis is the only one of the three delivering a worthy performance, and she's acting next to a barbie doll and a block of wood. You know what though? Somehow, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it works. When I was growing up first watching these movies, Nancy Kyes's bad acting didn't hit me like it does today, so you tend not to notice it.
Three things make the first Halloween the most memorable and the greatest of the entire franchise; the score, the suspense and the mood. The sequels, the remake and the remake's sequel, love them or hate them, do what they can for the franchise but this one is the one that takes the cake. The Halloween franchise can be said to be one of the smarter horror film series' that came around that era of late 70's to early 90's. The first film itself is a classic to watch during the Halloween season. It kickstarted an entire subgenre of horror movies, it revolutionized the independent film market, it made a Hollywood icon out of Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter, it set the standards for how suspense in movies should be paced, it raised the bar as a whole in creepy, moody storytelling. What more can I say? A legendary masterpiece.
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| Stop! In the name of Love! I mean...Loomis. |
Speaking of the mask, I forget if I mentioned this previously or not, but Michael Myers's mask was cheaply acquired for the movie. The budget was a mere $320,000 mind you, so much of the props needed to either be store-bought or used out of the actors' personal belongings. Michael's mask was a two-dollar William Shatner Captain Kirk mask purchased from a hardware store. The hair was pulled and teased out, the face was painted a ghostly shade of white, and the eye-holes were widened. The expressionless face of a ghoul makes for the perfect personification when it's covering something that Loomis describes as absolutely "pure evil". A truly faceless evil.
In terms of Dr. Loomis's character, several comparisons can be made with the story of Moby Dick. Loomis himself can be described as Captain Ahab, obsessed with hunting the white whale, which is Michael Myers. Loomis is first introduced to us in the car on the way to transfer Michael to his sentencing. He's calm, but weary. He's well aware that Michael is close to being locked up forever but is anxious that something could go wrong at any moment. Loomis's obsession comes to a point when Michael escapes the sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield. Loomis knows full well Michael's apparent danger to the populace, but cannot find a single person who can believe him. Haddonfield's town sherrif, Leigh Brackett, is the only one that eventually begins heeding Loomis's warnings. Together with Loomis, he searches the town's streets at night while Michael stalks the three girls from the shadows. Loomis fights off Michael at the very end by shooting him six times, but to no avail. Michael escapes into the night anyway.
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| I seeeeeeee yoooooouu.... |
The movie's opening sequence made use of the steadicam, showing us Michael's first murder on Halloween night, 1963. Little Michael enters his parents' house, grabs a butcher knife, walks up the stairs and murders his sister while she's brushing her hair in front of a mirror. It's interesting because people think that entire opening shot was done in a single take. Not true. There are two cuts in the opening shot that turns it into three shots. The first cut is when Michael puts the mask on over his face, and then the second shot is when Michael whips around after having murdered Judith. Still though, the opening shot in and of itself perfectly sets the mood and lets the viewer know what they're in for. It's also one of the most memorable scenes in the movie because it's entirely from six-year-old Michael's point-of-view.
The film is notable because of its' lack of gore. Each of the kills are clean on screen with very little, if any, blood loss. Annie gets her throat slit? No blood. Bob gets pinned to a wall by a knife? No gore. Lynda gets strangled with a phone chord? Nothing. The movie was marveled for its simplicity, and films later on tried their best to emulate it at first. Then horror movies started to get gorier and gorier, with Friday the 13th going over the top most of the time.
The score of Halloween is triumphant. It's creepy, sets the mood for a night of chilling suspense, and was only composed in four days. The Halloween theme is one of the most replicated tracks played on pianos and keyboards. Carpenter's score was one of the first all synthesizer keyboard scores to be come so widely well-known. The theme song is written in a rare 5/4th signature, a rhythm John Carpenter learned from his father. The chase music when Michael begins stalking Laurie is one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Laurie's theme is my second-favorite, behind the movie's theme itself. Laurie's theme is totally apart of the season. Whenever you play Laurie's theme (sometime's called "Halloween 1978" on some soundtrack releases), it immediately puts your mind in the mindset that it's Halloween indeed. The leaves are orange, the air has a cool, crisp feeling to it, and there's a killer lurking around your town, unseen to your eyes.
 |
| Jamie Lee Curtis looks like she wants to strangle somebody |
While I do have almost nothing but praise for the movie, I do have some complaints. The first and foremost being the acting. Nancy Kyes, who plays Annie, is a tremendously poor actress. She draws out all the wrong syllables in her dialogue and has almost no change in vocal octave, mood, or mannerisms. "I have a place for thaaaaat..." It cracks me up everytime. PJ Soles isn't bad, but she gives a pretty big bimbo-esque performance, including her excessive use of the world "totally". She has a memorable death scene when Michael strangles her with a phone chord, and her open shirt allows her breasts to flop around as she's being flung back and forth. It eventually comes off pretty laughable when Jamie Lee Curtis is the only one of the three delivering a worthy performance, and she's acting next to a barbie doll and a block of wood. You know what though? Somehow, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it works. When I was growing up first watching these movies, Nancy Kyes's bad acting didn't hit me like it does today, so you tend not to notice it.
Three things make the first Halloween the most memorable and the greatest of the entire franchise; the score, the suspense and the mood. The sequels, the remake and the remake's sequel, love them or hate them, do what they can for the franchise but this one is the one that takes the cake. The Halloween franchise can be said to be one of the smarter horror film series' that came around that era of late 70's to early 90's. The first film itself is a classic to watch during the Halloween season. It kickstarted an entire subgenre of horror movies, it revolutionized the independent film market, it made a Hollywood icon out of Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter, it set the standards for how suspense in movies should be paced, it raised the bar as a whole in creepy, moody storytelling. What more can I say? A legendary masterpiece.
So that's my ranking. Whether you liked it or hated it, I at least hope you learned something.
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