Halloween (Review)
Friday, 14th August 2009, 14:43

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I only have two film traditions: on December 24th I watch It’s a Wonderful Life and on October 31st I watch Halloween. Last night I closed the blinds and curtains to cut out the light and settled back to see what one of my favourite horror films would look and sound like in high definition.
 
Before Jason and before Freddy, there was a psychopathic serial killer who caught the public’s imagination and became a household name: Michael Myers.  After working together on Assault on Precinct 13, John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote a screenplay for a horror film – Hill providing the babysitter element by drawing on her own experiences and Carpenter adding the ‘evil’ factor. The script was titled The Babysitter Murders, Carpenter was persuaded to change the title by producer Irwin Yablans to Halloween and set it around the scariest of holidays – many were to follow, such as April Fool’s Day, Happy Birthday to Me and Prom Night.
 
Opening with a long one-take shot, influenced by Touch of Evil, we see someone stalking a house before entering, picking up a large kitchen knife, walking upstairs and stabbing a young woman, his older sister Judith, to death.  The killer is revealed to be Michael, a six year old boy. 
 

 
Fifteen years later and Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is travelling with a nurse to the mental hospital where Michael has been kept ever since in order to transfer him, as he is now 21, to a maximum security prison.  As they approach the gate, several gowned inmates are milling around and, whilst Dr. Loomis gets out to contact the hospital staff, Michael jumps on the car, attacks the nurse and takes the car. 
 
As Loomis has studied Michael since he was a boy he knows that he is going home, to Haddonfield, Illinois. The day began quite normally with Laurie and her friends Annie and Lynda talking about school, boys and the upcoming dance with Annie and Lynda planning to ditch their babysitting duties and spend time with their boyfriends in the empty houses with their parents away. As resident ‘girl scout’ Laurie Strode babysits her neighbours’ children on Halloween, the worst night of her life begins as, one by one, her friends can’t be reached and the figure that had stalked her earlier on is intent on doing away with babysitters.
 

 
It’s unusual to shoot a film set on October 31st in spring in California where the trees are green and lush so the art department had to make hundreds of fake brown leaves and, whilst the effect is not entirely convincing, you soon forget about the foliage as Laurie’s night of terror sucks you in. After the numerous sequels and other slasher films, including the reflective Scream trilogy, the first of which referenced this beautifully, I half expect to be so jaded and used to these that it would have no effect but am pleasantly surprised each time.
 
Jamie Lee Curtis is such a great casting choice as she has that youth and naiveté needed for the role and, being as much as nine years younger than the actresses who play her more worldly wise friends, really seems their junior and someone needing a bit of coaxing. When it comes to surviving Michael’s onslaught, she shows why she was (and still is) regarded as one of the great ‘scream queens’ with a great face for showing terror and a fair pair of lungs! Providing the experience and knowledge is Donald Pleasence who was paid $20,000 of the film’s $300,000 budget for his five days work but added much needed know-how and a recognisable name – the only one in the cast – for the marketability.
 

 
Although the slasher genre was really started by Bob Clark with Black Christmas, Halloween was such a massive hit that most regard it as the film that established the conventions and led to all the imitations and spin-offs that dominated American teen horror in the 1980s. Michael Myers is such a great killer as he has no emotion and the murders are almost inexplicable – everyone will have their own explanation why he does what he does.  My own interpretation is that the babysitters resemble Judith and Michael is only picking up where he left off fifteen years earlier.  Of all the slasher films this is by far my favourite and age has not affected how much I like it as, if anything, I appreciate Halloween more now than when I first saw it all those years ago.

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