It’s difficult to review Halloween as it’s arguably not just a film, but rather the definitive stab at a brand new horror sub-genre: the slasher flick. Since 1978 it’s had sequels of varying quality (although none of them really attain a level beyond “adequate” or “guilty pleasure”), many imitators and a remake by rocker/director Rob Zombie.
Thirty years after John Carpenter directed this classic the argument about who started the slasher flick is still raging. Admittedly mainly on the Internet, but still you’d think some kind of consensus would have been reached.
The argument stems from the fact there were already elements of the sub-genre floating around pre ‘78. You had Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) (aka: Bay of Blood) directed by Italian legend Mario Bava. While this was more of a whodunit it had many elements of the slasher film (including a couple-skewered-in-the-bed death scene and other gory delights that early Friday the 13th entries went on to, erm “borrow”). There was Bob Clark’s brilliant Black Christmas (1974), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and hell, the grand daddy of them all Psycho (1960).
However these precursors weren’t pure slasher flicks, they had similar fundamentals but they also laboured under “plots” and “reason”. Quite honestly some of them are better, or at least more fleshed out, films than ‘the night he came home’.
Carpenter stripped away pretty much everything for Halloween. We open with a classic stalking sequence from the killer’s POV. A couple has sex, the guy leaves and the killer takes a carving knife and stabs the woman to death.
Then we see the killer was in fact six-year-old Michael Myers.
Allegedly there were audible gasps in early screenings at that now-overplayed reveal.
Next thing it’s fifteen years later and Michael Myers has escaped from the insane asylum and is coming to Haddonfield, his home, to butcher a bunch of babysitters, horny teenagers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Myers is the “boogey man”. There is no reason for his killing spree, although they tacked the whole ‘Laurie Strode is Michael’s sister’ thing on in Halloween 2 onwards – but the original is basically just a guy in a mask killing people because he’s pure evil.
Halloween stands the test of time, certainly the clothes and actors are starting to look a little dated, but this pristine print is a must-have for horror fans or those who’d like a little scare.
Simple, effective, classic.
SCORE: 4/5
