“Halloween” (1978): an Appreciation for a Masterpiece

John Carpenter is often referred to as one of the great masters of the horror genre, and that is pretty undebatable. I might even go so far to say that he is the greatest living horror director for a few reasons. 

To be sure, his output in later years has been spotty; however, little of it has been anonymous in the sense of feeling like the work of a hired gun. Even in second tier Carpenter, there is a play of ideas and an understanding of characters and relationships that is rare in the genre. Certainly, among the more recent generation of filmmakers are many who have learned from Carpenter (and others) and approach horror with a similar sense of commitment and understanding that, yes, characters matter and relationships have to have some substance so that when the eventual threat arrives, the stakes feel vital.

All of that aside, it is confession time. I’ve seen much of Carpenter’s work; however, until last night, I’d not seen “Halloween”, his second feature and one of the most innovative films in the field. It is a briskly told masterpiece of mounting terror and pervasive dread and I suspect that had I seen it upon release, it would rate up in my pantheon of genuinely disturbing (and therefor, highly effective) horror films. As it is, it is most assuredly in my top ten, easily. 

The innovation is, in part, in the omnipresent point-of-view and tracking shots. The film opens with Michael Myers’ first kill at six years old when he murders his sister and is shot from his perspective. Carpenter opens up the subjectivity so that at any given moment we are aware of the potential victims and impending danger; the field of vision - extensive, often expansive wide shots in Panovision in 2.39: 1 aspect ration. The film almost becomes a nature documentary for a serial killer. It also lends a sense of complicity and ambiguity.

However, if that were all it were, it would only be “interesting”, at best, dry at worst, and dull. “Halloween” is anything but that. It starts out with a murder and then builds for the better part of an hour a degree of queasy expectation and tension. Even in the last third, when we see Michael murder Annie, Lynda, and Bob (and Lynda’s dog!), we know that Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis in her first onscreen role) will be Myer’s next victim. I wonder if audiences in the seventies sensed that Laurie would survive? This many decades later, we are so inured to the conventions of the genre, that we would simply expect her to. But I’m not so sure that would have been the case in 1978. 

We know that the two kids Laurie was babysitting escape, so that avoids plunging the movie into darker nihilism. We also know that Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis is nearby and sees the kids flee, so the assumption would be that the doctor would show up and pump bullets into Myers whether or not Laurie lived. Even knowing that she does, does not detract from the unrelenting nature of evil that reanimates over and over again.

Like “The Exorcist” before him, Carpenter does not waste time on exposition on why Michael’s back story. Loomis denies the villain any humanity by referring to him as “it” early on and later, tells anyone who will listen, that we are dealing with evil. Just plain, pure evil. Unlike Friedkin’s film, there is no redemption from that evil. 

While not killing children may not have brought “Halloween” into the darkest terrain of ugliness, the film exists in and as a quagmire of dread and fate. In class, Laurie is half-listening to the teacher discussing views on fate and answers with a rote, memorized reply. Her teacher confirms the point under discussion, that “fate is immovable, like a mountain.” The idea of fate that doesn’t change is explicitly underscored as Laurie sees Michael across the street and then, looking again, sees him gone.

Michael Myers is death. He is the absence of being or becoming and he is inexorable for those whom he chooses. At the same time, he is a presence, one that does not cease to arrive, pursue, and kill. 

But Laurie has now seen Fate yet again. She saw Michael earlier, while she was walking with Lynda and he appears before her or the boy she babysits as the Boogey Man. Myers is unconscionable, perhaps even unconscious id-driven assault and destruction. 

“Halloween” also brought into the lexicon of what has become known as the slasher film sub-genre, the trope of the final girl who survives because of her purity/virginity while the promiscuous teens die. I have had issues with this since I first became aware of it as a narrative element. 

On the surface, it is regressive and misogynist. However, I can’t help but feel the use of the trope depends on the filmmaker. “Halloween” was co-written with Debra Hill and I wonder if the  film is actually a critique of the idea that a patriarchal society devalues women unless they are “pure” or “virginal”; once sullied by sexual experience, they are no longer worthy of masculine attention except as commodities. 

There is another dimension to the trope, as well; that the initiation into the mysteries of sexual existence - i.e., the loss of virginity/innocence, is the death of childhood. I find that supportable but not very interesting, but it should be noted, too, that all of the parents are absent. Most damning is Lynda’s father who is a the town’s chief of police working with Loomis to hunt down Michael Myers. The abandonment of children by parents is a source of trauma, of course, and in the present context, the unwitting neglect is deadly and will be traumatic for all involved.

There is also the meta moment when we see Laurie and the kids she’s babysitting watching the nineteen fifties’ “The Thing.” It’s unlikely that Carpenter knew he’d be directing his version in a few years, but the use of the earlier film - along with snippets from “Forbidden Planet” - points up the thematic richness of the film at hand. 

In the Howard Hawks’ production of “The Thing”, a community binds together to fight an enemy that can assume any form and in the latter film, a protean creature from the Id (called “the Id” in Pal’s film) both presage and round out the idea of an evil that may be environmental but remains unseen for much of both films. Thus, the earlier films both comment on “Halloween” and render it a commentary on them; it’s a reflexive relationship between all three films. At the same time, the use of these other texts provokes reflection on the nature of the darkness in the current work. Unlike the older works, the evil in this one is left undefeated, ultimately. Undefeated and pervasive.

And here is where Carpenter’s film presents us with the sense of a new world, both cinematically, but also in relation to what was going on in the world around us at the time. The post-Vietnam period, the aftereffects of Watergate, domestic and international inflation and recession, and the ongoing Cold War and superpower imperialism, all weighed heavily on us at the time. Vietnam and Watergate signaled the rot within and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act in the previous decade didn’t end racism, but it put it at center stage and was another facet of the darkness at the heart of the American Dream. 

Lastly, the sexual revolution, the passage of Roe v. Wade, and the fruition of the battles waged by feminists and gay people, while being significant victories, also shined glaring lights on the patriarchy and homophobia endemic to so-called “Moral Majority” of the day. Michael Myers wasn’t just a masked golem from a couple of writers’ nightmare visions. 

It is this last point that is driven home when Laurie rips Myers’ mask to reveal him just an ordinary, disoriented young man. In some ways, I feel that owing to that scene alone, “Halloween” may be more relevant than we care to admit.

Carpenter’s score is also continual and where that is often off-putting in the hands of lesser directors, here its unending presence serves to point up the silence of scenes before the other shoe (or blade) falls. 

For what is often pointed to as being the first slasher film (though it does have precedents in Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and Powell’s “Peeping Tom”), it is remarkably blood free. The violence is submerged in darkness or takes place with a veiled speediness that triggers the brain to fill in the blanks. We don’t register the lack of bloodshed; we are shaken by the speed and alacrity with which Michael dispatches his victims. 

His repeated resurrections in the film are less weird, strange, or contrived than truly surrealist and commentarial. Michael is the stuff of the violent recesses of Freud’s Id or even the manifestation of Jung’s darker regions of the collective unconscious; he is the Shadow made more real in this world of so-called waking reality. 

My understanding is that the sequels like so many others to original works, don’t hold up or are outright ridiculous. Carpenter and Hill went on to write the second film and produce the sequels (I think only up to the fourth installment) but from what I’ve read, after the second film, the mythology was either inconsistent or too outlandish to be taken seriously.)

I suspect that I will, at some time, familiarize myself with “Halloween II” since it follows immediately on the events in “Halloween” and I’ve also been led to believe that the entry on the series 20th anniversary (“Halloween: H20”) is worthwhile as a reset and course correction, but I don’t know that either is necessary. I doubt I’ll review them, if I do (though I most emphatically am going to see “Halloween Ends”).

“Halloween” is simply a perfect film, horror or otherwise. The storytelling is efficient and economical, but there isn’t a false or bum note in it. The performances are variable but seem heartfelt and if there is something mournful about the proceedings, it’s that the film couldn’t be left to exist alone on its own, as is. 

Additional technical notes

Dean Cudney was Carpenter’s preferred Cinematographer for this and many of his seminal works. He would also go onto lens the “Back to the Future” series and even a couple of episodes of “The Book of Boba Fett.”

I can’t say enough about the editing. To be sure, it is very often the director’s choice at the end of the day, but both Charles Bernstein (who had edited “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” a year earlier) and Tommy Lee Wallace who would go onto become a director in his own right shortly after “Halloween” by directing the third installment) deserve mention. While the images and score are impressive supports for the narrative, the editing is what keeps the rhythm of the movie puling. There is no fat on this film; not a cut wasted and each one serves the story and the characters. 

Special Milestone Note

This is the one hundredth and I am looking forward to hundreds more! I don’t usually shill or emphasize that I have a Patreon page and a PayPal account, but I do and should anyone want to throw some coins of the realm my way to defray the costs of subscriptions used to see these films, I’d happily accept. Also, I’m exceedingly more than happy to write about a film or something film-related on spec. If you have something you’d like me to see and explore, comment and let me know. Twenty US dollars will get you a two thousand word piece (maybe a smidgen more!); for longer pieces, we can negotiate. If you have an idea for a longer work, contact me at myreactionshots@gmail.com. If it’s a serious inquiry, I’ll reply! Seriously!