Every year I have a themed horror movie festival with my daughter in October, and this year’s theme is Halloween itself. So what better movie to start with than Halloween, the film named after the holiday? Now, I have to admit, slasher films are not my favorite sub-genre of horror, but this was the original, the one that started the whole 1980s fad (the superficially similar Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which came out four years earlier, had a totally different purpose and feel). Also, it was only the second movie directed by John Carpenter and on practically no budget. Let’s see how it holds up!
The plot is very basic for anyone who knows anything about this genre. We open with the camera from a first-person viewpoint, stalking around a suburban house and peeking in through the windows. It’s Halloween night and on the street kids are passing by in costumes. Inside the house, a teenage girl is making out with her boyfriend, and they go upstairs, presumably to have sex. The person whose vantage we’re viewing from grabs a big knife in the kitchen, goes up the stairs, hides when the boyfriend leaves, advances into the room, and stabs the girl repeatedly. The person descends the stairs and waits on the front porch until a mom and dad arrive home. They exclaim, “Michael!” and then the camera pans back, showing a six-year-old boy in a clown costume holding a bloody knife.
The next scene is fifteen years later, and on a stormy night, a psychiatrist and a nurse are driving to a state mental hospital. The psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (played by Donald Pleasance), is explaining the patient they’re going to visit, who he’s been treating for fifteen years and is pure evil. When they arrive at the hospital, the power is out and patients are wandering the grounds. Dr. Loomis leaps out of the car and to the phone at the front gate, trying to find out if his patient is still there. While he’s on the phone, a man attacks the nurse in the car and drives off. In a later scene, we see the nurse has been murdered.
Back in Haddonfield, it’s Halloween, and we follow Laurie (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) through a typical school day, except that out of the corner of her she keeps catching glimpses of a mysterious man. He’s hiding behind bushes or watching her through the windows of a classroom, but she’s not actually sure there’s somebody there or if she’s just imagining it.
On the way home from school, Laurie walks with her friends Annie and Lynda and they discuss their plans for the evening. Laurie has to babysit and hopes she can get some studying in after the kid’s in bed. Annie will be babysitting across the street from Laurie, and wants to get in some private time with her boyfriend after her charge has gone to sleep. Lynda wants to come over afterward with her boyfriend and take advantage of a spare bedroom in the house.
Unfortunately for the three girls, the houses where they’re babysitting are just down the street from Michael Myers’s old house (abandoned all these years since he went to the mental institution) and he’s come home. Also, for whatever reason, he really, really doesn’t like teenage girls who have sex with their boyfriends. Soon, he’s stalking the girls and their boyfriends and killing them off one by one in gruesome ways (although not nearly as gruesome as later movies in the genre, as it later became necessary to outdo the previously released slasher films in gore).
Laurie has to not only escape the masked killer, but also protect the six-year-old boy she’s babysitting, as well as the six-year-old girl Annie had been watching and had brought over to Laurie so she and her boyfriend could have some privacy. Dr. Loomis has been watching the old Myers place, expecting Michael to show up, but finally realizes the killer is busy down the street. Will he make it in time to help Laurie?
One question I had after watching the movie is whether Michael Myers is superpowered. He’s pretty strong, as he’s able to leap on top of a car in one scene and overpowers an athletic high school boy in another, lifting him off the ground as he chokes him. He’s also stabbed, shot, etc., by Laurie and Dr. Loomis as they fight back against him, but still he keeps on coming. It’s not actually clear to me, though, whether he’s simply so focused on killing that he’s impervious to pain, or if he’s actually meant to have some kind of evil supernatural power. Most likely I won’t bother watching any of the sequels to answer this burning question.
A couple notes–1) I found it interesting that the kids Laurie is babysitting are watching The Thing From Another World, a movie John Carpenter would remake only four years later as The Thing. I guess it was his personal favorite horror movie? I certainly preferred his version over the fairly mediocre original.
2) The kid Laurie is babysitting is reading a comic book at one point. Laurie picks it up and looks at the cover and says “Neutron Man?” Later on, however, we see the comic sitting face up on the sofa and it’s clearly an issue of Howard the Duck. Not a big deal, just something I noticed.
Halloween (1978)
Story/Plot/Characters— Stereotyped characters. “High school girls.” “Small town sheriff.” “Concerned psychiatrist.” Only Laurie has any depth. Dialogue is functional but not terrible, and acting is better than usual for a low budget horror, thanks to Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance. Pacing is snappy, so often the downfall of the low-budget horrors. (2 points)
Special Effects— Not a movie that’s real heavy on the special effects, and what special effects that exist are mostly shot in near darkness. (.5 points)
Scariness— Moderately scary in parts, but not too frightening overall. I mean, i wouldn’t show this to a little kid. But it’s predictable, and whatever shock value it might have had at the time doesn’t hold up considering the dozens and dozens of slasher films to follow in its wake. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— The fictional small town of Haddonfield, Illinois (but apparently actually filled on location in Pasadena, California), where a typical suburban neighborhood turns into a dark, isolated site where neighbors close their blinds at teenages screaming for help, provides some atmosphere. Michael’s mask and demeanor, never really explained except as being pure evil, are kind of freaky, I suppose. (1 point)
Total=4.5 points (Okay)
A pioneering movie that jumpstarted a whole horror sub-genre–the slasher film. Unfortunately, it’s a fairly brain-dead genre and the pioneering part was that John Carpenter made it so cheaply that movie studios realized they almost couldn’t lose money on similar movies, leading to a glut of cheap slasher films in the 1980s. Fast paced and not too dumb, this one holds up as well as any of them and better than most, but overall is still a fairly mediocre viewing experience.