MasterChugs Theater: 'Halloween'

Halloween set the formula for almost every slasher movie that followed it, from Friday the 13th to A Nightmare on Elm Street to I Know What You Did Last Summer. On that last particular note, I’m not sure whether to praise it or condemn it, but regardless; it’s still the best of the bunch. Shot for a mere $300,000, it definitely has a small-budget look and feel to it, but that’s also part of its charm, I suppose. Want to know another thing that it has going for it? The title of being one of the two greatest slasher movies of all time.
Halloween starts off in 1963, where a young boy named Michael Myers walks up to his sister’s room and stabs her to death for reasons unknown. Off he goes to a mental institution, where he spends the next 15 years, until he manages to escape and heads back into his old stomping grounds. With a Halloween mask on, he sets about terrorizing several teenage girls of the town, and with the bodies piling up, it’s up to his doctor, Sam Loomis, to try to bring him down.

With its almost blood-free frights, gutsy heroine, and peerless score, Halloween became the gold standard for the late 1970s-1980s teen slasher cycle (as Scream cheekily acknowledged in 1996). Taking full advantage of the widescreen frame (and offscreen space), John Carpenter builds tension through the constant suggestion that something terrible lurks just out of Laurie's and the audience's view, whether it's behind a bush or in a passing car. Carpenter also shifts to the killer's point of view, leaving the audience with only the sight of the unaware victim and the sound of Michael's breathing. Evoking Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo, as well as Howard Hawks's original The Thing From Another World, Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill render Myers an inhuman force that paradoxically points up the psycho-sexual anxieties under the surface of small-town life, especially in the wake of the late 60s-early 70s sexual revolution.

What is the recipe for the perfect horror movie? Add in one perfect killer, mix together some wonderful actors, and add in a touch of the perfect musical score. Without the score, Halloween wouldn't be the classic it is. Many have noted that if you try watching Halloween without the score, it's a completely difference experience. Truer words were never spoken. Without the score, the mood and environment disappear. The marvelous score created by John Carpenter creates tension, fear, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It is absolutely brilliant and may quite possibly be the best musical score ever created.

Halloween is a pure classic in every sense of the word. For horror fans, it's our Gone With The Wind, our Casablanca, our Citizen Kane. It brings respect to a genre that is all too often disrespected. Halloween has suffered the same criticism as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with many claiming it is far too graphic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inspired in part by Hitchcock's Psycho (amongst many others), John Carpenter's Halloween has, at least for a horror film, light violence and little gore. As Carpenter and many other great horror directors have noted: "Sometimes what you don't see can scare you even more than what you do see!" You can't get much better than this movie.