Released: October 25th 1978
Length: 91 Minutes
Certificate: 18
Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Nancy Kyes, Charles Cyphers and John Michael Graham
Slasher films throughout the seventies and eighties were often trashy and exploitative, relying mainly on shock value to get audiences in the seats. It’s even more impactful then that visionary director John Carpenter, on the incredibly low budget of three-hundred thousand dollars, delivered a key part of horror history and one of the most terrifying film villains of all time.
The film takes place in 1978 on Halloween night, where homicidal maniac Michael Myers (Officially credited as Nick Castle but played by several actors) escapes from a mental institution and returns home to Haddonfield, Illinois, where he begins to stalk the town’s residents. One of these is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut), who has an unknown connection to the masked murderer. Meanwhile, Michael’s doctor Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) also arrives in the town, hoping to track down his insane patient. What makes Halloween work as a narrative is its simplicity; the film leverages its ninety-minute run-time to slowly build up Michael’s presence and once night falls, the viewer is put on edge throughout. The frights continue to build all the way to the film’s chilling conclusion, a climax that ranks among the best in horror history.
Despite its grim source material, the frights of Halloween come not from explicit gore and bloody carnage but instead the gradual building of tension and creating a sinister atmosphere. The music is crucial to this; John Carpenter wrote the now iconic score himself and it’s a perfect complement to the film. The foreboding piano notes blended with the howling synth chords matches the film’s pacing with precise cues, allowing the frightening moments to hit the audience hard and keeping the anxiety high. Many, often manipulative camera angles are employed from point-of-view shots and others that slowly pan around the environment. We rarely see the dreaded killer in full, as he is often concealed by pieces of the environment or hidden in shadow. On top of this, Myers is also silent, his hollow breathing hanging over the setting like a shroud; much of the fear comes from the fact that he could be anywhere and it’s relentlessly successful in its execution.
For the film’s excellent scare factor, the actors do a mostly solid job. Laurie Strode, following in the footsteps of her mother Janet Leigh from Psycho brilliantly delivers the terror of the situation, especially in the final act. She’s matched by Donald Pleasance, who around halfway into the film, delivers one of the best monologues of his career, easing us into Michael’s backstory. If there’s any gripe, it’s that Laurie’s friends are rather stereotypical and some of the lines delivered by actresses Nancy Kyes (Annie) and P.J Soles (Lynda) stick out as ditsy and jarring. Luckily though, they don’t take up a high portion of dialogue and this typical trait of slasher films is mostly put aside when Michael begins his hunt.
Aside from some awkwardly forced dialogue, Halloween is a superbly crafted horror film. It knows exactly how to build tension and scare the audience, accomplishing both with a very minimalistic style and budget. It may be forty years old, but John Carpenter’s horror classic remains phenomenally unrelenting and unnerving.
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