Month of the Living Dead #0: HALLOWEEN

*cue catchy jingle*

No more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.
No more days to Halloween - Silver Shamrocks!

Welcome Boys and Ghouls to Month of the Living Dead, my thirteen day (and then some) tribute to that most wonderful of holidays ever - Halloween! Join me, wont you, as I watch the sinister and the silly, the morbid and the macabre, the violent and gruesome in a two week bloodletting that comes to a boil on the eve of all saints.

*cue thunder and lightning effect*

So sit back, turn the lights down low and get ready for today's presentation of. . . .

HALLOWEEN! Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

*cue commercial break*

Honestly, how can I do my horror movie review-a-thon without hitting the King of horror flicks. It doesn't fit thematically with the zombies (well, I guess you could say that any guy that gets shot a bunch of times, dropped off a second story balcony, wandered around town for a couple of hours bleeding, shot in the eyes and then blown up and set on fire could arguably be counted as supernatural undead), but Michael Myers aka, "The Shape" is not your typical FLESH EATING GHOUL!

You know what - screw it. My marathon, my rules. Halloween stays.

This is one of those "why bother reviewing it" movies, where people far smarter and more eloquent have analyzed and over- analyzed every frame of this thing to death. Everyone and their brother know the plot of Halloween, even if they don't do horror movies - call it the "Casablanca Effect" if you will, where the cliches brought to the table by John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill have become so ingrained in the popular culture that people who have never seen a slasher movie know this film intimately.

We open in Haddonfield, Illinois circa 1963, where a beautiful young teenage girl has just been brutally slaughtered - by her ten-year-old brother. For the next fifteen years, Michael was locked in a mental ward under the supervision of Dr. Sam Loomis (nod one to Hitchcock's Psycho) in Smith's Grove, Illinois. During his stay, Michael sat quietly in the corner of his room, fooling everyone but Dr. Loomis who "spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up" because he "realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil". On October 30th, 1978, Michael escapes - and doctor Loomis knows exactly where he is headed: home to Haddonfield. . .

In the post modern horror movie sensibility, the plot to Halloween may seem quaint and nothing special. Heck - one has to wonder if it was very scary back in the late 70's. No, what the film has going for it - in spades - is that it's creepy. No, not all that scary, but it's suspenseful and disturbing like you wouldn’t believe.

And that - unquestionably - is what makes Halloween a classic in the genre.

The Shape standing behind a tree; The Shape slowly moving amongst the bushes; long moments of tension and character development slowly building to a conclusion that shows that there's something deeper at work in Meyer's demented brain. Michael Myers is more the distilled spirit of murder itself than just an axe wielding maniac. The blank, white mask he wears - well, we never really see the face beneath the mask because the man doesn’t matter. The pillowcases and hockey masks worn by other masked killers were intended to hide their identities; Michael’s Halloween mask, on the other hand, reveals his true self by giving him a new face as empty and expressionless as his own soul.

In the later movies, this aspect of character completely fell apart as the movies progressed and they turned into some kind of superhuman monster complete with some half assed druidic cult supernatural nonsense. The Shape works the best when borrowing a page right from the Psycho playbook, a normal killer in an everyday setting, simply fueled by black-hearted evil and limitless willpower.

Critics of horror often describe slasher films as sadistic, exploitative, and misogynistic garbage - and you know, it's hard to defend against that position. Most of the time, slasher films feature lots of blood and guts and gore, at least one set of naked boobies, a ton of drug use, and a lots and lots of extremely violent death, usually against women. Another reason why Halloween stands out - Films like it may not come around very often, but Halloween had style and grace about it.

And of course Halloween opened the doors to the Golden Age of horror movies in the eighties - a genre that's very near and dear to me. Oh, certainly the origins of the genre go back all the way to the Italian giallo films of the sixties and seventies, in which women are stalked and slaughtered by a mysterious killer - but Halloween was the first mainstream American hit and ushered in a golden age of slasher films. Some were good, some were bad and some were so bad they’re good - Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Sleep Away Camp, Slumber Party Massacre, Terror Train, and a ton of other killer-in-a-funny-mask-slaying-on-a-holiday flicks. Were they any good? Probably not - but they were fun.

Then the 1990s appeared on the scene, and you can see exactly where the horror movies turned on inwards and started feeding on itself. Scares, gore and disturbing creepy was out, ironic self mockery and dark comedy was in. Suddenly horror fans were suddenly "in the know" and making fun the very movies they loved. I blame Scream. It was an ok film, but it destroyed the genre with the movies left in its wake. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination, and new sub-genre of torture revenge movies like Saw - terrible, terrible films. For every well done effort (the Ring remake) or throwback to the eighties (Jason X), we get five utterly dreadful films.

Woah - sorry. That's my "You damn kids, get off my lawn" moment.

Anyway, I could go on and on about how good the movie is, how The Shape is damn scary even just in standing there, or how the lighting and cinematography really sell the movie or how Carpenter's minimalist score is brilliantly eerie and instantly recognizable, or how much Carpenter and Hill obliviously cared for the film and shows in every frame. No, odds are you've seen the movie a dozen times by now - so just go buy the damn thing.

TOTAL BODY COUNT: 6 (7, oddly enough, in the TV version)
MOST MEMORABLE KILL: The guy pinned to the wall, while The Shape lovingly admires his work (creepy!)
GALLONS OF BLOOD USED: 3
SPRING LOADED CATS: 1
THE MORON OF THE MOVIE AWARD GOES TO:
BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
BEST LINE: "I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall - looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it."

THE DVD -
Halloween is one of those cows that Anchor Bay loves to milk. There's at least 3 different versions that I know of. I'd avoid the 25th Anniversary edition, because I understand that the color timing is different from what it was originally. The blue tints are mostly gone, and the daylight scenes look more like summer (when it was actually shot) than autumn. The newest version released by Anchor Bay is simply a re-release of their original DVD transfer from 1999. It has the proper color timing, but isn't a great transfer and shares disc space with a full-frame version which means half the available bitrate of the Divimax version. Really, the best option is get the Limited Edition from '99 - but that'll cost you a pretty penny.

THE EXTRAS -
Anchor Bay really knows how to stuff a DVD full of swag. We get theatrical trailers, TV spots, some radio ads (always weird), some static talent bios, a gallery of stills and posters, and a really well done documentary from 2000 (which means Deborah Hill was still alive to take part). I've seen better, but not many.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Lets see . . . horror classic that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, well rounded DVD packed with extras, at a low price. Ok, I wish the disc had a bit more room to breath by ditching the full frame version, but still - a must buy if you're at all into horror.


Well, it's time for your crypt keeper to return to his coffin for another year. I hoped you enjoyed your journey through the macabre. Until we meet again . . . pleasant SCREAMS! Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

*cue thunder and lightning effect. Roll credits.*

My Month of the Living Dead reviews:
* THE EVIL DEAD
* NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
* PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
* THE FOG
* REVELATION OF THE DALEKS
* DAWN OF THE DEAD
* THE LAST MAN ON EARTH/HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
* DAY OF THE DEAD
* RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
* THE OMEGA MAN
* NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D
* THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES
* LAND OF THE DEAD
* MASTERS OF HORROR - HOMECOMING
* 28 DAYS LATER
* WHITE ZOMBIE
* HALLOWEEN