John Carpenter’s “Halloween” was one of those movies that changed the landscape around it. Much like “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” its success re-wrote the rules in the Hollywood playbook and altered what people expect to see in a movie theater. Unlike the two other classics I just named, however, “Halloween” was a low-budget, independently financed picture that started with a pitiful little release in a smattering of theaters. There was no marketing campaign, there were very few commercials, and all signs indicated that this little horror flick about a madman stalking babysitters would fade into obscurity forever.
But then something magical happened, because John Carpenter’s little movie had one important thing in its corner: it never left an audience unsatisfied. Like a wildfire spreading from a tiny little flame, journalists and everyday people would run home and write up rave reviews about this new indie picture that had scared them half to death. One by one, nearby theaters starting picking it up, and the next thing anyone knew, “Halloween” was everywhere. In a time before internet, the buzz was still unstoppable; this film was so damned good it rode to worldwide distribution deals on the backs of satisfied customers, who happily did the heavy lifting. A sensation was born.
Watching “Halloween” now still hits with force, even though the plot conventions that Carpenter and co-writer Deborah Hill came by honestly are now tired and crass. Knock-offs like “Friday the 13th” have a trashy, low feel to them, but Michael Myer’s debut remains a great experience because it’s about something. It is a grave error to assume that just because a long succession of slasher flicks have offed promiscuous teenagers on tradition alone, “Halloween” must also fit this mold. It doesn’t. There is a deep psychological undercurrent beneath the surface which remains haunting long after the “boo” moments have worn off. “Halloween” is an elemental film.
I’ll do a twenty second plot recap, although I doubt it’s necessary: in the small town of Haddonfield, IL, a young boy named Michael Myers stabs his sister to death on Halloween night. He is quickly institutionalized and spends the next fifteen years in utter silence, invulnerable to any kind of rehabilitation. Then, as Halloween rolls around again, he escapes and returns home to continue what he started, trailed by his doctor, Sam Loomis, who is the only man fully aware of how evil his patient really is.
“Halloween” is separated from its clones first and foremost by the lessons that John Carpenter learned from his hero, Alfred Hitchcock. The first is to downplay not only the blood and gore, but even the bad guy himself; after all, the audience’s imagination will always render far scarier things than a movie can if you give it ammunition. Just like Janet Leigh’s death scene is etched in our collective memories because we saw little and imagined much, Michael Myers is at his scariest when all we can see is the white of his mask, hovering in the dark. The second is to keep the budget down. By the time Hitchcock made “Psycho,” he had the clout to bring in giant piles of money, but he deliberately shot on a shoestring budget, because he felt that low-rent horror films had a danger and edginess that studio pictures couldn’t duplicate. He was right, and Carpenter echoed the same principle into his bare bones production. Now it’s worth pointing out that “Halloween” couldn’t really afford disgusting special effects and piles of money, and consciously adapted to make the best of their situation; I don’t truly know if John Carpenter would have taken the high road if he hadn’t been forced to. After all, it’s a well-known fact that he re-shot several death scenes in “Halloween II” to make them more gruesome, even though the original director had wanted to honor his bloodless example. “Halloween,” it seems, may well exceed the talents of the people who made it.
Of course, the center of “Halloween”‘s success is that it’s terrifying. Using slow-burn horror, Carpenter gently ratchets up the threat level on his unsuspecting protagonists, whose ignorance of the monster lurking so close to them becomes maddening. Scene after scene surprises the viewer with its outcome, Michael never does exactly what you expect him to. He waits patiently for his moment, observing potential victims with an off-putting curiosity. We the audience want to believe that Michael is just a crazy dude who’d like to kill something the first chance he gets, but somehow he’s up to something more.
And here we have stumbled on some of “Halloween”‘s real genius: unlike too many other cinematic butchers, Michael has hints of a personality. We don’t consciously register his motive, but on a gut level, we recognize his behavior as social. Killing these girls is not an act of passion or malice for him, he simply wants to connect with them somehow, and he doesn’t know of any other way. This is why Michael’s stalking so frequently coincides with his targets talking about or engaging in sex: intercourse frustrates and befuddles the Shape (as he is referred to in the credits), because he is wired to desire the closeness that lovemaking provides, but his circuitry is broken and he cannot get to it. Murder is the only intimacy he has access to.
There is a single scene, which lasts around ten seconds, that perfectly captures this. We see Laurie Strode walking away from the camera down a sidewalk, singing a love song to herself: “I wish I had you all alone…just the two of us…” No music is playing, the birds chirp, the wind blows. Michael’s shoulder suddenly slides into frame, and now we are watching Laurie from his perspective, his breathing steadily flapping against his mask. There are two brilliant things here: firstly, Laurie is walking away from Michael, she is slowly escaping his grasp, even though she doesn’t know it. Second, the lyrics that Laurie hums to herself are likely echoing in the Shape’s mind, because just like his prey, Myers wants to feel intimacy with other people. This scene sets up the force that will drive Michael to try and murder this girl and her friends: he wants to connect to her, and he feels she is constantly slipping away.
And, of course, there is the prey: Laurie, virginal and overwhelmingly shy, is the heart of the story. Consider that she and Michael are very much alike: both of them are frustrated by an inability to be intimate with people even though they would like to be. Laurie has a crush on a boy named Ben Tramer, but she can’t develop the social vocabulary to inform him of this, even when she discovers the feeling is likely mutual. The major difference is that Myers has found an activity he can use to bridge the gap for himself, even though it destroys the other party, whereas Laurie would rather martyr herself into loneliness than harm someone else. It’s not up on the surface, but the fact that these two characters are so alike, and feel so many of the same emotions, tugs gently on your mind as you watch, and little things like this separate a movie you treasure many times from something you use and dispose of.
Next there’s Annie Brackett, one of Laurie’s two best friends, who is completely her opposite: loudmouthed, cocky, sexually experienced and cynical. Annie is the sheriff’s daughter, and it may be that she is too used to feeling safe and protected, even if she actually isn’t; of all the people killed in “Halloween,” she is the only one who never sees it coming. Despite her brash and mocking demeanor, she is intensely likable, probably because the actress who plays her, Nancy Loomis, has a natural maturity that contradicts her childish antics in a pleasing way. We always feel like she knows she’s being immature, and might snap out of it soon, and that makes her interesting. I doubt that Annie was anywhere near that sympathetic in the script, which just goes to show you the magic of casting.
Lastly, there is Lynda van der Klok, who is as blonde and ditzy as they come; we definitely do not get the impression that this one is going to grow out of it. Although P.J. Soles plays her well, there really isn’t an awfu lot to say about Lynda, because she is meant to personify the intellectual ambivalence that gets a lot of kids killed during this movie. Danger is very near here, and she simply doesn’t take the time to notice it.
And here we reach a central theme of “Halloween.” Many have suggested that a puritanical code of ethics is built into this movie, since only the virgin survives, but I think the truth is more intellectually compelling. The virgin does indeed survive, but not because sex is dirty and people who do it must suffer, but because these are teenagers who are playing with things they don’t understand. They smoke, drink and get laid without even pausing to consider the consequences, certain of their own invincibility. Michael Myers personifies the danger they don’t so much flirt with as ignore completely, so it’s appropriate that he is always hovering around while sex is happening or alcohol is being consumed. He is a symbol for the harsh realities of life, and his ability to sneak up on the girls while they aren’t looking is a powerful allegory about the dangers of careless youth.
Laurie, on the other hand, is too shy to adopt a devil may care attitude, so her eyes are more open to what’s happening around her. She catches Michael hanging around early on, and never takes her eyes off of him if she can help it. We should not think that Laurie is some paragon of feminine chastity that Carpenter is trying to hoist on his audience, because the “reward” for her virginity is a series of traumatic experiences that leave her emotionally wrecked as the credits roll. She doesn’t survive because she won’t have sex, she survives because her shyness makes her feel vulnerable, and that makes her pay attention. It’s also significant that Laurie never attempts to extract a motive from the Shape, even when he’s just watching her. Maybe she would have, but it never occurs to her to try, because loners understand each other, even when they don’t want to.
Ah, and of course, the great Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis. A legendary British actor, Pleasance imbues his dialogue with solemn credibility, then just a sprinkle of cheesiness to keep things lively. He knows when to push the lines for maximum drama, and when to let them sink in gently. Loomis functions as the Cassandra of this movie, casting out prophecies of doom that no one will listen to. We the audience know he is right, however, and we heed his warnings gravely. Many compare him to Ahab, but I’ve always thought it was a bad parallel: Moby Dick’s adversary selfishly desired the white whale for his own sense of conquest, but Dr. Loomis’ obsession comes from moral obligation. He knows that he is the only person who can see what is about to happen, and he has to try and stop it.
One of the quirkiest things about “Halloween” is Michael’s inexplicable, supernatural threshold for punishment. This is a quality that is escalated to parody within a few movies’ time, but in the original it holds a haunting ambiguity. There is no attempt to justify how the Shape gets shot five times, falls out of a window, then gets up and runs away within ten seconds, but we never need one. In most movies this would completely shatter the suspension of disbelief, but in a film this masterful, it is simply the solemn confirmation of a fact we already knew: this man is something beyond a man.
“Halloween” has been ripped off for decades, and with each new iteration, the intellect that made it so powerful is slowly sapped away, leaving only the misogynistic ritual of watching girls get naked, then pretending to stab them to death (cough Rob Zombie’s unforgivable re-make cough). I hate these movies, and I hate that they trace their lineage back to Carpenter’s masterpiece. It breaks my heart that “Halloween” is sequeled over and over without even passing regard for what made the first one a landmark, and I fear it keeps people away from the movie who might appreciate quality horror. So, on this Halloween weekend, I felt it was approrpriate to signal my respect for this masterpiece of horror. What a great film.
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