Halloween: Simple Yet Extremely Effective (TDOH Write-Off)

Modern horror cinema definitely has it's problems. Horror movies nowadays seem to rely more on deep plots and underlying tones, but people should look to the past for more inspiration. I love low budget horror, there's just something about gritty picture quality and bad acting that really interests me. Of course nowadays most horror movies are made with flashy special effects, and remaking older horror movies, but these remakes usually turn out as disgraces to the originals (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Ring both come to mind). The originals are golden though. One of the most memorable of the classics is a film that was directed by John Carpenter, and it's probably his most well known horror movie. This movie is Halloween. Being the festive guy that I am I decided to review it for this day. Halloween may be an older movie, but it's still one of the best slasher flicks ever created, and to this day it stands out amongst the rest.

Title: Halloween
Year: 1978
Genre: Horror
Directed By: John Carpenter

Right now I'm sitting here next to the TV as I write watching Halloween, so these are my fresh impressions. Of course I've seen the movie many times before this, but it's on and so I figure why not. Halloween is one of the masters of low budget horror, but the film makers made do with what they had and this worked out very nicely. I have great appreciation for this film, and even though I don't particularly like John Carpenter's other work, I gotta give him props for his job with this film. Most people dislike this film because of how simple it is, but I find this one of the main reasons to like it.

Quite a few people critize this film for being so simple. Now I'm not going to try and tell you that Halloween is deep and meaningful, because it's not. It's actually one of the cheapest made slasher flicks this side of Friday the 13th, and while this does sound like a bad thing it's really not. I often critize films for being so shallow, but in this rare case I'm going to sing this film praises because of it. In no other film does being simple work so well for the overall movie, and that is saying a lot. The sequels ruined this aspect of the film quite a bit by adding rhyme and reason to the killer's train of thought, when this was completely unnecessary.

Another thing that people often say about Halloween when critizing it is that it's extremely cliche. What these people don't realize is that Halloween invented a few of these cliches. Alfred Hitchcock's The Psycho was one of the earliest slasher flicks, but Halloween (teamed with Friday the 13th) is really what sent the sub genre into full swing. The biggest thing Halloween has going for it is it's simplicity. It is so shallow and simplistic that even the original Friday the 13th is more complex than it. In the original Halloween Michael Myers kills for the sake of killing (that and because he's crazy). It just doesn't get any simpler than that, even Freddy Krueger has more depth to his character.

Story
One Halloween night 1963 a young boy, Michael Myers and his sister are at their house. An unseen killer slowly makes it's way into the house, up the stairs, and it eventually arrives at Michael's sister's room. From the viewpoint of the killer we see it brutally stab the sister. Of course as you may guess this is Michael Myers alright, but not Austin Powers Michael Myers mind you.

Now fastforward fifteen years into the future. Michael Myers has long since been put into a mental institution ever since that one Halloween night. A man named Dr. Loomis is Michael's doctor, and one day when he heads down to the mental institution he notices that some of the patients are outside of the building. It isn't until his patient Michael steals his car what kind of a mistake has been made. It looks like Michael is heading home for a Halloween reunion with the town.

Now meet Laurie Strode. She's your typical teenage female bookworm living in the town where Michael lived when he killed his sister. Her father is in to real esate and is working on selling the old Myers house. Laurie really doesn't have much of a social life, and so for Halloween she has made plans to babysit. The child she is babysitting continuously mentions the "boogeyman", but she simply dismisses this as nothing more than children's talk. What she doesn't know is that Halloween will be the worst night of her life because of this so called "boogeyman" the children keep speaking of. Laurie begins getting the feeling that she is being watched. This feeling continues throughout the day, and we occasionally see a shadowy figure staring at her from secretly.

It isn't until nighttime that the murderous rampage begins...

While all of this stuff is going on Dr. Loomis is desperately seeking out Michael in hopes that he can stop him from killing anyone. The Dr. knows that Michael has been waiting for this day for a very long time with eerie patience, and he doesn't want to know exactly what the maniac is going to try to pull. People think the doctor is overreacting, but Loomis decides that this isn't so when he discovers a dead body on his way to the town. He knows that Michael will kill again if given the chance, and so he's going to try everything in his power to stop him from repeating what happened 15 years ago.

If you haven't already seen this movie then you'll probably think that this movie is more complicated than it sounds just from reading about it, but it's more simple than you would suspect. As far as the movie allows us to believe, Michael kills people only because of the fact that he's insane. It doesn't get any more simple than that. What's more is that the only character that we get to know anything about is Laurie, and yet she's still extremely shallow as far as background information goes. One of the main reasons why the Halloween series gets progressively worse is because the film makers tried to make things more complicated, and this really wasn't necessary at all. The only sequels that I liked were part I and II, along with IV.

Performances in this film are just short of terrible. This actually benefits the movie though. As far as I know Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance are the only actors who really made a name for themselves in the business after her performance in this movie. Well at least they're the only two who I can remember off the top of my head. None of the acted roles are really convincing, except for maybe the guy who plays Myers, but then again he has no speaking parts in the movie and covers his face with a mask for nearly the whole movie. Speaking of the mask, it looks extremely cheap. You can tell how big the budget was just by looking at which mask they chose for the killer to wear.

One of the most distinguishable trademarks of the film is it's music. Anytime I hear it I can recognize it right off the bat. It's the equivalent of the violent violins in Friday the 13th, and the song that plays in the exorcist. With that said, John Carpenter really knew exactly when to implement the accursed jingle. Michael Standing outside motionless was made that much more powerful with the trademark jingle playing in the background. Without the music, Halloween would have turned out to be less than half the movie it is today.

One of the reasons that I believe Halloween was so scary to people at the time was because they weren't accustomed to cheap slasher films yet. Did the movie Scream scare you? Maybe Freddy Vs. Jason? I do understand that these movies have scared people out there, but I was just making a point at how accustomed we are to these type of films nowadays because of how many have come out throughout the years.

Final Recommendation
Sure it's cheap, predictable, has cheesy acting, simple plot basis, but Halloween is a shining example of the golden days of horror cinema. I would personally rate this game above nearly every slasher film I've ever seen. Definitely recommended to horror fans, but I'm not sure how much a non horror fan would enjoy this movie.

This has been a submission to Jiggyjay's 10 Days of Halloween Write-off. Check out his profile page to see the other participants:

http://www.epinions.com/user-jiggyjay