Shocktober: Halloween

Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Donald Pleasance (Dr. Sam Loomis), and Tony Moran (Michael Myers)
Cinematography by Dean Cundey
Edited by Charles Bornstein and Tommy Lee Wallace
Released in 1978

There are two simple techniques Carpenter employs to add an unsettling edge to every shot in Halloween. The opening shot famously takes place from the Myers' point of view and sets up the long, fluid takes that make up most of the film's visual language. Once the plot moves to Laurie and her friends, Myers either randomly pops up in Laurie's field of view or is revealed to be watching the unfolding scene by a slow pan backwards. As a result, every scene is called into question, and those two tricks show why cinema is perfect for horror.

Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there's a sick joke at the center of Halloween. I don't know if Halloween was the first horror movie to be explicitly set in the suburbs, but that location is used to great effect. And Carpenter's film uses the "dark doings in a small town" trope years before Blue Velvet and American Beauty. Once the adults go out for the night, the entire town of Haddonfield becomes a wasteland, with only one, ineffectual cop to protect it. "Nothing bad could happen here right? This is a suburb!" is a thought that must have gone through every parent's head. It's one of the reasons why Myers' rampage is accomplished so easily, and it makes for a tense, painful scene where Laurie runs around yelling for someone to help her to no avail.

There's also a fun, anthropological quality to Halloween. I didn't know what $100 would buy you at JC Penny's in the 70's, but I do now! While elements of the slasher were set in place before Halloween (mainly by Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), the sub-genre that would engulf horror for the next 15 years basically begins here. It's interesting to consider the differences between Halloween and its successors. The most notable being that Halloween relies very little on shock, blood, or gore. Almost all of the dread and scares come from good-old-fashioned suspense filmmaking. Even the trick of Myers doing nothing but staring at Laurie has its roots in classier fare. Mainly, Jack Clayton's Gothic ghost tale, The Innocents.

When the kills do come, they're terrifying and brutal, but they never wallow in violence and they never dip into "enjoy watching assholes get their comeuppance" territory. It's true that many of the problematic elements of slashers are found in Halloween. The characters who smoke marijuana, drink, and enjoy sex end up dead and the character who abstains from those activities is left alive. However, I don't think Halloween is anti-sex or anti-drug or that it's trying to impart regressive, puritan values. I'm not going to say that the dialogue between the three main female characters is realistic, but their dynamic is believable and the scenes of them just bullshitting help make their deaths more impactful. On the subject of these problematic elements Carpenter had this to say: "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."

If Halloween has any problems, it is with Donald Pleasance's Dr. Loomis. He doesn't do anything important until the end (a role that could have easily been filled by Annie's cop father. The random cutaways to the good doctor during Myers' rampage detract from the rising tension and, near the beginning, Pleasance is forced to sell some awkward dialogue setting up Myers as an ultimate evil.