"It was the bogeyman."
Release Year: 1978
Country: United States
Genre: Horror
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Music: John Carpenter
Editing: Charles Bornstein, Tommy Lee Wallace
Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Nick Castle, Donald Pleasence
Country: United States
Genre: Horror
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Music: John Carpenter
Editing: Charles Bornstein, Tommy Lee Wallace
Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Nick Castle, Donald Pleasence
Back in 1978, a man named John Carpenter directed, wrote, and provided the music for his little film project that would later had a huge impact to Hollywood's horror movie industry. The film is called Halloween, and it is about a boy named Michael Myers. A boy who killed a teenage girl at the age of six, spend the next 15 years in mental asylum, and escaped one day to revisit his hometown in Haddonfield, Illinois. A boy who then sets his sight on an unfortunate high-school student named Laurie Strode (Curtis), while being chased by his former psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasence) who refers to him as the Evil itself...
There are lots of things that set Halloween apart from the numerous slasher/splatter/serial killer thriller movies where a bunch of attractive-looking teenagers are hunted and killed by a superhuman and super-evil psychopath. It may have a superficial similarity with its contemporaries' chase-and-kill franchises (Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.), but it is a much different creature compared to the majority of them; mainly because it is just so much more elegant and accomplished. It does not provide cheap thrills and it does not have geysers of blood, random shock scenes, and excessive gorn (pornographic gore); what it does have, however, is a tremendous amount of craft, solid and memorable characters, and a very strong atmosphere.
Here, Carpenter created some of the most iconic and memorable moments in the history of American horror cinema. He used inventive set-pieces (who can ever forget the first 15 minutes of the film, where we are placed in 6-year old Michael's point of view?), tinkered with camera angles and placements to maximize tension, and utilized lighting (reportedly inspired from Roman Polanski's classic film Chinatown) to great effect. Then, there is the music, the most influential element to Halloween's mood and tension. It is a collection of dissonant and menacing ditties that hardly ever let up throughout the duration; always there, always remind the audiences that Evil is nearby, and always does a great job in scaring the hell out of me.
Michael Myers (his six-year old self is played by Will Sandin at the prologue, the face of his 21-year old self is provided by Tony Moran during a single brief scene when his mask comes off, but most of what we see of him is played by Nick Castle, eerily credited as 'The Shape') is one of a kind antagonist. The motive and reasoning behind his murderous intent are never explained here, he is simply just there to kill and violates nature; and THAT is precisely why Michael is one of the scariest character the cinema ever conceived. The way he is physically presented is just as brilliant: obscured by shadows most of the times, wearing that unnerving white mask, and the only sound that ever comes from him is the heavy and terrifying sound of his breathing. He is the embodiment of evil, and as some characters put it, the bogeyman; something that resembles human but does not posses a human's heart or emotion, an indestructible shape used by mothers to scare their kids from not staying outside too late.
On the other side, there is Laurie Strode. She is played to perfection by Curtis, an actress with great charisma and an ability to produce terrific and very convincing screams (earning her the moniker 'Scream Queen' among fans). Laurie is established early as an intelligent girl, more familiar with books rather than boys, and a much more responsible part-time baby-sitter compared to her less virginal friends, Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda van der Klok (P.J. Soles). The presentation of the characters is hardly subtle (Laurie impressively explained F.E. Samuels' concept of fate in her class, Annie remarked snidely to Laurie, "You need trolley to carry all that books", and Lynda has a long rant where she derogatorily mentions the word 'books' as many times as possible), but there is no denying that Laurie is set up very effectively as the noble heroine. If Michael is Evil, then she (along with Loomis, whose single purpose is to find and destroy Michael) is the Good.
Yes, Halloween is practically a fairy tale in modern setting, only with an antagonist much scarier than any witches or dragons could ever be.
Operating under this Good vs. Evil motif, Halloween hardly wastes any time doing unnecessary stuffs. Michael is set free, Michael comes, Michael kills, and Michael faces Laurie; everything clocks in at only 91 minutes, mercifully free from a romance sub-plot or any other irrelevant embellishments. The ending fits really well with the whole theme; while it may ends in an apparent cliffhanger, it is actually a very elegant way to wrap up the whole thing and serves as a chilling reminder that Good may be able to defeat Evil, but Evil will keep coming back since it cannot really die.
Well, in the end there may be one thing that can truly kills Evil: money. Following this movie's success, a long list of sequels and remakes were eventually born to the world; none of them ever came close to the quality of the original film. Michael's motive is explained, gleeful amount of blood and violence is introduced, and the atmospheric set-up is replaced with the good old 'kill-them-all' formula. But, while it may had devolved to a cash-grabbing and brain-dead franchise, John Carpenter's first Halloween shall always be remembered as a horror masterpiece, made with so much skill and elegance; a dark fairy tale, featuring the Virgin Princess, The Avenging Angel....and The Bogeyman.
Happy Halloween.
There are lots of things that set Halloween apart from the numerous slasher/splatter/serial killer thriller movies where a bunch of attractive-looking teenagers are hunted and killed by a superhuman and super-evil psychopath. It may have a superficial similarity with its contemporaries' chase-and-kill franchises (Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.), but it is a much different creature compared to the majority of them; mainly because it is just so much more elegant and accomplished. It does not provide cheap thrills and it does not have geysers of blood, random shock scenes, and excessive gorn (pornographic gore); what it does have, however, is a tremendous amount of craft, solid and memorable characters, and a very strong atmosphere.
Here, Carpenter created some of the most iconic and memorable moments in the history of American horror cinema. He used inventive set-pieces (who can ever forget the first 15 minutes of the film, where we are placed in 6-year old Michael's point of view?), tinkered with camera angles and placements to maximize tension, and utilized lighting (reportedly inspired from Roman Polanski's classic film Chinatown) to great effect. Then, there is the music, the most influential element to Halloween's mood and tension. It is a collection of dissonant and menacing ditties that hardly ever let up throughout the duration; always there, always remind the audiences that Evil is nearby, and always does a great job in scaring the hell out of me.
Michael Myers (his six-year old self is played by Will Sandin at the prologue, the face of his 21-year old self is provided by Tony Moran during a single brief scene when his mask comes off, but most of what we see of him is played by Nick Castle, eerily credited as 'The Shape') is one of a kind antagonist. The motive and reasoning behind his murderous intent are never explained here, he is simply just there to kill and violates nature; and THAT is precisely why Michael is one of the scariest character the cinema ever conceived. The way he is physically presented is just as brilliant: obscured by shadows most of the times, wearing that unnerving white mask, and the only sound that ever comes from him is the heavy and terrifying sound of his breathing. He is the embodiment of evil, and as some characters put it, the bogeyman; something that resembles human but does not posses a human's heart or emotion, an indestructible shape used by mothers to scare their kids from not staying outside too late.
On the other side, there is Laurie Strode. She is played to perfection by Curtis, an actress with great charisma and an ability to produce terrific and very convincing screams (earning her the moniker 'Scream Queen' among fans). Laurie is established early as an intelligent girl, more familiar with books rather than boys, and a much more responsible part-time baby-sitter compared to her less virginal friends, Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda van der Klok (P.J. Soles). The presentation of the characters is hardly subtle (Laurie impressively explained F.E. Samuels' concept of fate in her class, Annie remarked snidely to Laurie, "You need trolley to carry all that books", and Lynda has a long rant where she derogatorily mentions the word 'books' as many times as possible), but there is no denying that Laurie is set up very effectively as the noble heroine. If Michael is Evil, then she (along with Loomis, whose single purpose is to find and destroy Michael) is the Good.
Yes, Halloween is practically a fairy tale in modern setting, only with an antagonist much scarier than any witches or dragons could ever be.
Operating under this Good vs. Evil motif, Halloween hardly wastes any time doing unnecessary stuffs. Michael is set free, Michael comes, Michael kills, and Michael faces Laurie; everything clocks in at only 91 minutes, mercifully free from a romance sub-plot or any other irrelevant embellishments. The ending fits really well with the whole theme; while it may ends in an apparent cliffhanger, it is actually a very elegant way to wrap up the whole thing and serves as a chilling reminder that Good may be able to defeat Evil, but Evil will keep coming back since it cannot really die.
Well, in the end there may be one thing that can truly kills Evil: money. Following this movie's success, a long list of sequels and remakes were eventually born to the world; none of them ever came close to the quality of the original film. Michael's motive is explained, gleeful amount of blood and violence is introduced, and the atmospheric set-up is replaced with the good old 'kill-them-all' formula. But, while it may had devolved to a cash-grabbing and brain-dead franchise, John Carpenter's first Halloween shall always be remembered as a horror masterpiece, made with so much skill and elegance; a dark fairy tale, featuring the Virgin Princess, The Avenging Angel....and The Bogeyman.
Happy Halloween.
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