Halloween (1978)

 

Maskernes nat

I am not a fan of the slasher genre, so while I am aware that Halloween is an entire franchise with new movies still coming out today, it is something I have never sought out or watched. That may have been a mistake because, as I have just found out, the original Halloween from 1978 is a masterpiece.

Six -year-old Michael Myers stabs his sister to death in cold blood and is locked away for 15 years, until he escapes. His doctor, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) fears he has gone back to Haddonsfield to kill some more. That is exactly what Michael (Nick Castle and Tony Moran) has in mind, in as far as anything is going on in that mind of his.

Near his old house he spots Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) whom he starts to follow. Laurie meets her two friends Annie (Nancy Loomis) and Lynda (P.J. Soles), which makes for three targets. It is Halloween evening and Annie and Laurie are both babysitting in houses just across from each other. Michael, wearing his scary mask, is the boogeyman become reality, and starts at Annie’s house…

The story is really not complicated and that is as it should be. This is all about how it is done.

The setting is as normal and familiar as can be, small town /suburban, quite roads with middle class homes. The girls are ordinary teenagers who do what teenagers do, nothing special there. Into this comes the Boogeyman and on Halloween of all nights. He is like a shadow, something you see out of the corner of the eye, immobile and unfaced and gone the next time you look. He is the reflection of your fear, and you are powerless against it.

We are observers, very literally. Sometimes from the viewpoint of the boogeyman, sometimes from the victims and sometimes we are that third entity who is there but unable to interact, standing on the stairs or behind the bushes, but you always, at least in the scenes with tension, have the feeling of being THERE.

As the Book also says, this is very much like Hitchcock. Probably a bit gorier, but the tension is not in the actual killing but the threatening presence, the looming danger of something only half-seen. Like the pool scene in Tourneur’s “Cat People”. It is this element that Carpenter here condenses to excellent effect.

It helps that it is accompanied by an excellent score, which again is simple but very effective. To my surprise I learned that the score is also Carpenter’s work. A talented man.

I believe this was Jamie Lee Curtis debut film, but she does not come about as an amateur. On the contrary, she was very convincing and very curious to see this very young Curtis with longer hair. Then again, she is out of an acting family and her mother got stabbed pretty badly in “Psycho”, a movie not that different from “Halloween”.

On Wikipedia, there is an entire section devoted to an analysis of “Halloween”. I did not read it, but I do understand the temptation to read some deeper motives into the movie. This happening on Halloween, the apparent immortality of Michael, the Boogeyman and the fact that Laurie as sole survivor is a virgin. This layer seems unnecessary, but maybe it does help tickling our subconscious.

A small, but amusing, detail: The movie the children are watching is “The Thing”, the movie Carpenter would go ahead and make a remake of a few years later.

Halloween is brilliant because it takes a simple idea and perfects it. Very little extra, just this, the ultimate subliminal tension. Highly recommended.