Did you really think Halloween would come and go without me busting out a very special holiday edition YNTE Horror Night for the film that started them all? Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you: Halloween.
As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!
Remember last time, when I was complaining that some films, no matter how important they are to their genre, just do not stand the test of time? Well, some films, 30+ years later, are still awesome. This is one of those films, but it takes a while to get there.
The movie starts off with a First Person POV scene of someone looking through the windows of a house. Inside we see a young babysitter, who instead of watching the child is having SEX WITH A MAN. The viewpoint character puts on a mask and then proceeds to stab her several times with a kitchen knife. The camera angle switches and we see that the murderer is a little boy in a clown costume. It’s revealed that this is Michael Myers, and he just murdered his sister.
Next, we meet Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence, who, 15 years later, is on his way to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium with a nurse who he is training to be Michael’s new caretaker. Apparently there has been some sort of breakout, and the inmates at the asylum are all running loose. One of the crazies, presumably Michael, steals their car, leaving Loomis outside in the rain. Loomis babbles about how “the Evil” is gone for a bit; then he abandons the nurse in the mud.
We now meet Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her young friend, Tommy, who she will be babysitting later that night. The walk by the old Myers house which Tommy calls the “spook house”. We see an eerie shadow within the house. Michael pops out of the house as Laurie walks away and creepily stares at her for a very long shot.
Laurie heads to school, but Michael follows her; we once again see him staring at her, and this time we see his signature dark blue/grey jumpsuit, and white spraypainted mask. Then, he goes and stalks Tommy for a bit. The majority of the beginning of this movie is just him looking at people, and while it does get a bit old, it is creepy as shit.
We meet a couple of Laurie’s friends. It becomes very clear that Laurie is the quiet bookish one, and her friends are the drug using slacker whores who are not long for this world. Michael stalks them in a car. Loomis yells about Evil being loose to anyone who will listen.
Eventually Laurie heads off to babysit. on the way she smokes a cigarette with her buddy. Normally this would doom her to death, but she coughs a lot, showing its not her thing. Loomis runs into the sheriff, who is investigating a break in at the hardware store, where the only thing stolen were masks and knives. I wonder who stole them?
Loomis and the sheriff go to the old abandoned Meyers house. Loomis tells some more stories about how Michael is PURE EVIL. We get it, dude. He also decides that the best course of action for him to take will be to wait alone in the haunted house, and tell as few people as possible about the murderer.
We cut back to Laurie, who is mow babysitting. She is reading a book to Tommy. He declares that he doesn’t like books anymore and pulls out his secret stash of magazines from under the couch that his mom didn’t want him to have. But as awesome as it would be to see the scene where Tommy shows the babysitter his porn, it turns out that these are just comic books – comic books with such awesome names as “Lazer Man”, “Neutron Man”, and “Tarantula Man”.
Laurie’s friend calls and apparently has set her up with a date for homecoming. Tommy sees Michael, who is simultaneously stalking just about everyone. Laurie’s phone friend spills something on herself, so she takes off all her clothes. We know how this ends! She puts on a shirt, which delays her fate, but she’s still pantsless, so her death is pretty inevitable. Then she doubles down, forcing Laurie to watch the kid she was supposed to be watching so that she can then have sex with her boyfriend. Before she gets the chance to sex her man, though, Michael strangles her. This movie took almost an hour for the first death (but it picks up from here).
Two more “teenagers” show up (I use the air quotes, because everyone in this movie looks at least 35). They find the house mysteriously empty (because no-pants is dead) and have sexual relations with one another. On screen sex, plus exposed breasts, it all means that things are not going to go well for these two.
The guy goes downstairs to get a beer, and Michael lifts him up and stabs him to a wall. Then there’s a really iconic shot of Michael just standing there staring at the guy, sort of tilting his head. Shots like this are what really drove the movie to iconic status.
Michael covers himself with a bedsheet to disguise his identity, then goes upstairs to murder the girl. She calls Laurie, but then Michael strangles her with a phone cord. History lesson for the kiddos: phones used to have cords.
Laurie, after receiving the strange call, heads across the street to check it out. She finds her friends dead and then Michael pops out from behind her and makes with the stabbing. Since Jamie Lee was the last girl though, and she’s been pretty chaste, she manages to get away. She runs back across the street, but Michael follows. She manages to grab a knitting needle and stab him in the throat. He falls down, and Laurie is relieved, but he gets back up.
Instead of fleeing the house or doing something useful to defend herself, she runs upstairs and hides in a closet, then screams. Michael finds her. She pokes him with a coathanger, then he drops his knife and she stabs him with it. He “dies” again.
Laurie sends the kids away by themselves to go to the neighbors’ house and call the police. Loomis sees screaming children and goes to investigate. Michael gets up and is about to get Laurie for real, but Loomis shoots him several times and he falls out a window. Loomis looks out the window and see’s Michael’s lifeless corpse below. Dead for real this time!
Loomis goes to comfort Laurie for a bit and then looks back out the window, and the “corpse” is gone! Michael is gone! Almost as though there will be a long series of sequels!
So, did the movie hold up? Yes and no. The way movies are paced has changed significantly in the intervening years, to the point that an hour of nothing happening is really hard to watch. But the last half hour? Where Michael is doing his murdering? Brilliant. Almost no special effects, its all just framing and composition – old fashioned filmmaking. There’s one scene where Laurie is standing in front of a dark background, and its lit in such a way that Michael slowly moves forward and just his mask is lit behind her. Creepy as shit! Pretty much every aspect of the last half hour of this movie has been copied a ton of times since, even down to the fact that you never seen one story houses in slasher flicks anymore. That stems from here. Even set design was influenced by this film!
So its worth a watch, but if you fast forward the early bits, I won’t blame you.
Catch up on past installments:
The Amityville Horror (1979)
The Last Exorcism
Friday the 13th (1980)
Scream 4
Scream 3
Freddy Vs. Jason
Scream 2
Scream
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan
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