Halloween

Introduction

Before Jason and before Freddy, there was a psychopathic serial killer who caught the public's imagination and became a household name: Michael Myers. After working together on Assault on Precinct 13, John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote a screenplay for a horror film - Hill providing the babysitter element by drawing on her own experiences and Carpenter adding the 'evil' factor.

Opening with a long one-take shot, influenced by Touch of Evil, we see someone stalking a house before entering, picking up a large kitchen knife, walking upstairs and stabbing a young woman to death. The killer is revealed to be Michael, a six year old boy.

Fifteen years later and Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is travelling with a nurse to the mental hospital where Michael has been kept ever since in order to transfer him, as he is now 21, to a maximum security prison. As they approach the gate, several gowned inmates are milling around and whilst Dr. Loomis gets out to contact the hospital staff, Michael jumps on the car, attacks the nurse and takes the car.

As Loomis has studied Michael since he was a boy he knows that he is going home, to Haddonfield, Illinois where his younger sister Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) now lives under the name Strode. As she babysits her neighbours' children on Halloween, the worst night of her life begins.

Video

Shot in Panavision (2.35:1 anamorphic), this looks very good with deep blacks and vibrant colours; there is some noise on some of the low-lit scenes, but nothing to detract from the otherwise fine picture.

The cinematography is excellent and began a long relationship between John Carpenter and Dean Cundey. The film is remarkably bloodless, relying on tension and the presence of 'The Shape' played by Nick Castle, to give Michael a real menace just with sly reveals in shadows.

Audio

The disc has the options of the original mono, a stereo track or Dolby Digital 5.1. Over the years I have watched the film with each and actually prefer the 5.1 as the surrounds provide much more tension through the atmospherics and Halloween features the finest score that John Carpenter ever wrote and one of the best in the horror genre. It's a relatively simple soundtrack but stunningly effective - if you watch the more scary scenes with the sound off, they lose almost all of the tension.

Extra Features

The commentary by John Carpenter and Debra Hill is well delivered and informative, with Carpenter doing most of the talking, but what Hill has to say is worth hearing.

There is the Halloween Unmasked retrospective from 2000 in which Carpenter, Hill, Moustapha Akkad, Jamie Lee Curtis and others talk about the film and its impact on their careers.
The rest of the extras are comprised of two galleries, one with stills and posters and the other with behind the scenes photos, there are biographies, trailers, TV spots, radio spots and an interesting trivia section where you can flick through miscellaneous facts about the film.

The second disc in this set contains the television version of the film - normally that would imply a cut down 'family friendly' version with all the expletives altered with plenty of 'freaking', 'funking' and 'damn' but this isn't the case here. NBC wanted a version that would fit into a two hour timeslot so Carpenter shot extra scenes, adding an additional 10 minutes to the running time. Most of the additional material is unnecessary, covered by exposition later on or is simply a slightly longer version of a scene. This is a case of 'less is more' as the shorter theatrical version is by far the most effective.

There is also an eight page booklet and the whole package comes in a slipcase with a holographic cover.

Conclusion

I only have two film traditions: on December 24th I watch It's a Wonderful Life and on October 31st I watch Halloween. This is an extremely effective horror film with a heroine with whom you empathise, a killer who is an emotionless psychopath and one of the best scores in the genre. There are also plenty of jumps to keep the more nervous viewer in a constant state of suspense.

Made for just $300,000 and shot in 20 days, this was low budget filmmaking at its best. Everyone's friends helped out, make up was done in a Winnebago and some, including John Carpenter and Debra Hill, worked for free. Halloween gave the then TV actress Jamie Lee Curtis her big break, spawned a huge franchise and, together with Black Christmas, led to the whole stalker/slasher sub-genre. It is one of the most influential horror films ever made and still retains its power to scare and shock even now - Halloween is one of the greats of the genre and a personal favourite.