Halloween (1978)

Impressions: The original Halloween is one of the most iconic movies in the horror genre. It is also the film that renewed my interest in horror. I grew up with all of these movies, watching everything from old Universal films to the various slasher movies that were popular when I was a kid. With no way to really explore more of these classics, I got bored with watching the same ones, again and again, and refrained from watching any for a few years. Then, in October 1996, I caught Halloween on cable and it was like seeing it for the first time, all over again. It had been some years in between, and this completely reinvigorated me and fueled my desire to get back into these movies that had long been so important to me.

Plot summary: The film begins on Halloween night, 1969, when a six-year-old Michael Myers, kills his older sister with a large kitchen knife. His parents arrive just afterward to find him in a trance. The boy spends the next fifteen years at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis. He spends the first several years trying to reach out to Michael, but then realizes that nothing can be done for him and goes to great lengths to keep in in custody. As he put it, he saw no remorse, no semblance of human conscious in the Michael. He claimed that he, "had the blackest eyes; the devil's eyes".

We fast-forward to October 30th, 1978 as Myers escapes from the sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield, in order to kill Laurie Strode. At this point, no one knows that she is his sister. This isn't revealed until the sequel. Michael takes the jumpsuit from a truck driver that he murders and steals a Halloween mask and begins stalking Laurie and her friends. He eventually goes through them, one by one, until the climax where he attacks Laurie. Being much more resourceful than her friends, she manages to fight him off a few times. After stabbing him in the throat with a knitting needle, she believes that he is dead. This is what audiences thought, back in 1978. Then, the horrifying realization comes that he is no normal man. He gets up and continues his assault. Again, she thinks that she has defeated him, after jamming a straightened-out wire hanger into his eye. In one of the most eerie scenes of the film, you see her weeping in the doorway, as Michael rises in the background. Alerted by the screaming children, Dr. Loomis (who has been working with the sheriff, all this time, in an attempt to track down his former patient) arrives just in time to shoot the masked killer. In fact, he shoots him six times. However, the terror increases as Loomis looks to the ground below the balcony from which Myers fell, only to discover that his body is not there. As the film ends, you get images of the various places where Michael had been, throughout the movie, and you can hear him breathing. This gives the impression that he could be anywhere, or everywhere.

Conclusion: This is the movie that made John Carpenter a legend. Filmed on a fairly tight budget, Carpenter and Debra Hill managed to create something very special that has endured the test of time. A funny side note is that early screenings of the film weren't so favourable, since they lacked the incredible score music. However, once this was added in, it really brought it all to life and added the final touch. If you haven't seen this movie, then by all means do so. You don't know Halloween or Michael Myers until you've experienced this.