| Halloween, the 1960s: a young boy kills
his older sister and is incarcerated in an asylum. Halloween, 1978: now
fully grown, Michael Myers (Nick Castle) escapes from the care of his
psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), and goes on a killing spree
in his home town - it's up to Loomis to either capture or kill him
before it's too late... John Carpenter's Halloween is the
benchmark of quality by which all other slasher films are judged. A
masterpiece of minimalist technique and good old fashioned scares, it
eschews the explicit sex and gore of its sequels and concentrates on
evoking an atmosphere of suspense. The young filmmaker, who came to the
attention of critics with his gritty urban thriller
Assault on Precinct 13 (1975),
employs all the tricks he had learned from directors like Howard Hawks,
Terence Fisher, Dario Argento and Sergio Leone and creates a film that
is steeped in a love of the medium. Carpenter has confessed that he
sought to Americanize the complex gialli of Argento, and in doing so, he
created a template that is still very much in use to this day. Typical
of films that spawn inferior sequels and imitations, Halloween
is often underrated by contemporary critics, but it has lost none of its
suspense or ability to entertain. A typical criticism leveled against
the film is that it adopts an arch-conservative mentality that dictates
that the sexually promiscuous victims reap their just rewards while the
virginal victim is spared because of her purity; this extremely
superficial interpretation ignores Carpenter's left-wing political
mentality and doesn't really address what the film is really about.
Halloween is not a deep, profound political commentary - it's
a spook show, a rollercoaster ride of thrills that aims to scare the
hell out of the audience. That the victims are sexually active and the
heroine is not is beside the point - if anything, Laurie Strode (Jamie
Lee Curtis in the role that made her a modern day Scream Queen) is
spared because she is more alert and unencumbered by the distractions
that allow Michael easier access to his victims. Halloween also differs
from its many imitatiors in that it's an extremely well made and acted
picture. Donald Pleasence, cast after Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee
both passed on the film, adds a touch of class and theatricality as the
determined Dr. Loomis; through his melifluous delivery, potentially
campy lines of dialogue ("The evil is gone!") sound utterly credible.
Curtis embared on a string of low budget shockers after this film's
success, and it's easy to see why she became a fan favorite - she plays
Laurie as a sincere, sweet natured girl forced to fight for her life as
the tension mounts, and she's never less than 100% believeable in
everything she does. The remainder of the cast is equally fine, with
Nick Castle's background as a choreographer evident in Michael's
wonderfully smooth and lithe physical presence; as Carpenter has noted,
later incarnations of the character were played by stunt men unable to
duplicate the grace of Castle's movements. Carpenter, as usual,
contributes a terrific synthesizer soundtrack; the main theme is a
simplified, but very effective, variation on Goblin's theme for
Deep Red (1975) and has
become the sound of the horror genre. Dean Cundey's expert camerawork
makes fantastic use of the Panaglide camera to create a kinetic sense of
motion and urgency. |
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