Halloween. It’s the scariest night
of the year. The night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the
dead is at its thinnest. It is the night he
came home: the boogeyman.
Halloween
(1978) is often called one of the scariest movies ever made. It is credited
with begetting an entire subgenre of horror, the slasher film. Its subversive
blend of suburban setting, relatable high school kids, and a mythical prior evil
is so effective, that it has been done, redone, and done again.
The film is also renowned for
launching the career of Jamie Lee Curtis and making stage veteran Donald
Pleasance a household name. It has spawned nine subsequent movies (seven
sequels and remake with its sequel). And everyone, whether they have seen the
film or not, will recognize the signature white facemask worn by the killer
Michael Myers.
Still, it is a bold statement to
call this low-budget masterpiece the greatest horror film of all time. Is it
the simplicity of the story? The exactingly deliberate pace of the scares? The
chilly minimalism of the score? What makes Halloween
such an effective and frightening work of cinema?
In Spring of 1978, director John
Carpenter began principle photography on a film he had co-written with business
partner and producer Debra Hill. The shoot was scheduled to last three weeks
and boasted a meager budget of just over $300,000. $20,000 of it was spent
simply to get known British actor Donald Pleasance for five days. Also on board
was the 19-year old daughter of actress Janet Leigh (famous for her role as
Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
[1960]), Jamie Lee Curtis. It was her first feature film, and her first
starring role. Previously, she had only worked on television, appearing in
single episodes of both Quincy M. E.
(1977) and Columbo (1977) and as
a recurring character on the short-lived cult favorite Operation Petticoat (1977). Halloween,
however, would make her a star.
When John Carpenter came up with the
concept of a masked killer, stalking teens in Anytown, USA, it was originally
titled The Babysitter Murders. But
when he pitched the concept to Irwin Yablans of Compass International Pictures,
the one change made was a renaming: Halloween.
This ambiguous, yet instantly recognizable moniker may be the first and
foremost attribute that moved the film from just another grindhouse circuit shocker
to a cultural phenomenon.
October 31st is a day
with innumerable associations. It is a day for ghosts, a night for ghouls. America
celebrates the macabre by dressing up in costumes that range from the innocent,
to the ghastly, to the racy, to the sinister. Pumpkins are carved into toothy
grins, backlit by the warm, gothic glow of flickering candles. Cool winds blow
across suburban streets, carrying with them the brown, yellow, orange, and red
of dried and crunchy fallen leaves. Television stations run endless marathons of
black and white fright flicks. And best of all, friends and neighbors throw
parties filled with all manner of activities, from bobbing for apples to
haunted houses; while children travel up and down the sidewalks from house to
house with the singular goal of a bag so full of candy that it will last until
Santa fills their stocking at Christmas.
When anyone sees the name Halloween, it inevitably conjures up all
of the fears, joys, and experiences of that one uniquely spirited night of the
year. And honestly, when else could the boogeyman be real?
If the mythology of the film’s
setting perpetuates the intrigue, it still only provides that first impetus to
view it. It does not stand on legend alone. For it to be something truly
special, it must pull off the most elusive of magic tricks – it must actually
be scary.
A movie that is legitimately
frightening does not cease to be so after being viewed once. Very few works in
the history of cinema have managed such a feat. Even critically and culturally
praised pictures such as Alien (1979)
and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
have not managed to prolong their effectiveness in this way, even as they stand
the test of time as masterful and inspired entertainment. But Halloween, on the other hand, does. Viewed any number of times, it
remains just a scary, just as unsettling, just as thrilling as it was
thirty-five years ago.
Perhaps one important reason for
this is the distinct lack of certain benchmarks of horror films that are found
in nearly every example of the time period: Graphic violence, gratuitous
sexuality, explicitly adult language and material. In spite of being held as
the progenitor the slasher craze of the early 1980’s (most of which feature an
endless parade of blood, gore, sex, and drugs), Halloween shows remarkable restraint. The violence is virtually
bloodless, and doesn’t even truly begin until more than halfway through the
runtime. The body count is similarly conservative; from beginning to end there
are only five souls who meet an unfortunate end. Quite a contrast to the
immediate sequel Halloween II (1981)
which features a procession of ten victims, all of whom expire in comparatively
graphic ways.
Also, while characters converse
about sex the way teenagers often do, there is only one brief moment of the act
itself. So brief and unfocused on, in fact, that in light of any dozen of
similar scary movies, John Carpenter’s film is tame and practically PG by
comparison.
Additionally, Halloween also bears very few marks of contemporary 70’s pop
culture, and therefore finds itself considerably less dated than it’s garishly
80’s counterparts. Case and point: another Jamie Lee Curtis slasher Prom Night (1980), which features enough
synth and neon to light up Times Square.
Now to the film itself. Effective
horror pictures do not rely solely on the promise of bloodletting and fake-outs
to deliver to the audience the adrenaline and goose bumps they’ve come to see.
The pay-off is only as great as the build-up and Halloween seems to understand that in a way few films can. For the first
fifty minutes of its runtime, the plot stays subdued and ominous. Beyond the
ingenious first-person prologue, the action is reined in like a jockey
restraining his horse at the starting line.
Often, the camera is positioned in
such a way to stage the audience as voyeurs. Key images are in the background,
or seen from a distance. Unlike many horror films where the camera is used to
place the audience in the center of the action, cinematographer Dean Cundey
uses space to affect the viewer’s perspective, so that at any one instant we
are sharing moments with Curtis’ Laurie Strode, Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis, or with
the killer Myers.
This tactic plays beautifully and
allows for all manner of subtleties in each frame. At any given second Michael
may be glimpsed peaking around a tree, or through a window. Carpenter often pairs
these far and away shots with the unsettling sound of the antagonist’s heavy
breathing. Yet when the moment affords an opportunity to kill, and we as the
audience expect it, it does not arrive. The best friend, Annie Brackett, gets
unstuck safely from the laundry room, Michael disappears from behind the
hedgerow, Laurie safely delivers the key to the Myers house. The message
becomes startlingly clear: these kids do not accidentally stumble into bad
luck, Michael Myers is a meticulous planner and chooses very deliberately when
he will make his move. And in the audience, we know we are being hunted.
The last major component, and
perhaps the most crucial one, is Carpenter’s minimal and haunting score.
Composed of electric piano and few organ lines, a soundtrack has never been so
brilliantly spine-tingling. Halloween
owes much to Psycho already: the
girl-next-door lead, the butcher knife as weapon of choice, the faceless serial
killer. But more than anything, the jarring and sparse theme music is at heart
the keyboard counterpart to Bernard Hermann’s orchestral stings.
Alternating dissonance nestled
snugly in a minor tonality clue us in that the killer is there, watching,
waiting. But more effective than the music itself is its strict placement
designed to elevate the senses and make the nerves twitch with unease and trepidation. It is this fine-tuned precision that carries the suspense through
the bare first half of the film, and builds the anxiety and anticipation of the
audience.
Even more telling is the fact that,
upon viewing an early screening without music during post-production, a 20th
Century Fox executive reportedly said the film “wasn’t scary”, yet immediately
changed her mind upon viewing with the score added.
When Halloween was released on October 25th, 1978, it garnered
no immediate praise. Then, as word of mouth spread about the independent film
that was “The scariest movie ever made”, it expanded to theatres across the
nation. By the end of its theatrical run, the movie that had a production
budget of $300,000 had earned $70,000,000. The evil in your backyard has since
become a pop culture phenomenon and does not seem to intend on going away any
time soon.
So this October, turn down the
lights, make sure the doors are locked, and curl up on the couch with this boogeyman.
Because, after all, it’s Halloween!
Everyone is entitled to one good scare!
