Halloween - 1978 quick review
Halloween - 1978 Dir. John Carpenter. Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Staring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis
It was a toss up if I was going to start my Horror A-Go-Go series with this film or Evil Dead. I ended up saying what the heck, tis the season let’s go with a nice classic horror slasher.
For those that have never seen Halloween, briefly, Michael Myers is an escaped patient from a mental institution. As a child he murdered his sister one Halloween night. 15 years later he travels over a hundred miles to his hometown and, for reasons not explained until the sequels, he stalks high school babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
The reasons for why Michael goes after Laurie are complicated. Well they aren’t, but there are two conflicting reasons that depend on which timeline you want to follow. Yes, there are timelines in this franchise. Halloween was intended to be an anthology film series. Each year a new Halloween film would come out and it would tackle a completely different story. Because the first film did so well the studios demanded a direct sequel, which they got in Halloween 2, where the story picks up just after the end of the events of the first film. Director John Carpenter figured that was fine and proceeded to make Halloween III: Season of the Witch which has no connection to the previous films. In fact the movie playing on televisions throughout this film is the original Halloween. So Halloween III is its own thing. Halloweens 1, 2, 4, 5, and Curse of Michael Myers all follow the same through line in stories. Each one building on the last and getting weirder with each film. Halloweens 1, 2, H20, and Resurrection makeup another timeline, one that ignores the existence of the main character from 4 and 5. Then there are the two Rob Zombie films that are its own world. Finally there is Halloween (1978), Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills (2021), and Halloween Dies (2020), this last one ignores the bombshell that happens in Halloween 2. It is also the franchise that feels the most disjointed. Halloween Curse of Michael Myers with Paul Rudd as a grown up Tommy Doyle is far more enjoyable than any of the most recent films.
The two main reasons we are given are either there is a family bond between Laurie and Michael or there was no reason and Michael just needs to kill. Also there might be a cult involved. I feel there is a weird possibility for another reason why Michael decides to clomp after Laurie Strode. I think he was just upset that she came up onto the porch of his house.
Early in the film Laurie goes to the Myers’ house on her way to school to drop keys off as someone is coming to look at the house and her father is the realtor that is trying to sell the house. Michael sees this and then quickly starts to follow both Laurie and Tommy Doyle. He seems a bit more obsessed with Laurie than Michael but he does do some light car stalking of the child when he walks home from school. When Laurie and her two friends are walking home from school Michael is following them and one of her friends, Annie, yells at Michael for speeding (and really for being a creep). I think that interaction sealed Annie’s fate. Linda’s fate was just bad luck that she decided to go to the house Michael was using as a murder place. I kind of like the idea of Michael just being annoyed at people bothering him.
There is another weird thing people don’t question too much I’ve found. Why does Michael steal his sister’s grave stone and leave it in the house he’s been murdering in? Towards the end of the films Laurie goes to investigate the house Annie is babysitting in (and where Michael is murdering her friends). When she gets up to the bedroom Laurie finds Annie’s lifeless body posed on the bed with Michael’s sister’s gravestone resting against the headboard. All the other murder victims are in this room but strategically placed so they get discovered when Laurie freaks out. This is all odd. Eventually this idea of dead bodies being presented again through the climax of the film resurfaces in other horror films, but I don’t think a film before had used the shock of seeing an already killed character turn up in a place they weren’t killed. Michael had to stage this. He had to take the time to plan this corpse parade out. It’s a trait that he uses again in the sequels. It’s actually the only part of the most recent three films that I enjoyed as those films take the corpse posing to hilarious levels, that make less sense the more you try to figure out why this mute psychopath would do this. Also silly, when Michael decides to use a sheet to disguise himself as a ghost.
Halloween stands up still. It is a slow burn of a film compared to the later installments in the series. It also has very little blood or gore. Most of the scares tend to be the building of tension. We know Michael is around, but the characters don’t. This is one of the early yell at the characters to move films. It’s all very effective. For me the scariest part is towards the very end. Laurie has just saw her friends’ dead bodies and is being slowly chased by Michael. She gets outside to the street and starts to scream for help. She is in the middle of suburbia, you would think someone would hear her. And you would be right, someone does. She reaches a house, the occupants turn on the porch light, pull up the blinds and look outside at her then close the blinds and turn off the porch light. To me that is horrifying. Help is literally within reach and the people behind the door purposely decide nope, not helping. It’s realistic, but not something you would expect in a film.I hate it.
Love the film though, always worth a rewatch. As for the sequels, I would say watch them all at some point. There’s some interesting things in them. The Cult of Thorn I still can’t really figure out. Halloween (2018) is a not fun remake of H20, going so far as to recreate some themes and scenes from H20 but messing them up. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the best though.
Silver Shamrock from Halloween III: Season of the Witch
(This is entry is part of a mini-series for the month of October. I’m going to be watching a horror film almost every day and doing a quick write up on those films. Horror A-Go-Go is a go!)
