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It's Alive!

10 reasons why John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN is still the best modern horror film.

There are films, which mean a lot to us because we watched them with our first love, and there are films which are like a first love. It might seem strange, but HALLOWEEN is that kind of film for me.

HALLOWEEN is one of the films which made me fall in love with cinema, and keeps me going back there over and again. It is why I dream of the cinema, and ultimately also the reason why I wanted to make films myself some day.

Nostalgia

When I saw HALLOWEEN for the first time, it was in the spring of 1979, and I was 13 years old. I was visiting Berlin and was able to sneak out alone for the late showing in the Kant cinema. In Wuppertal, my home city, I would never have managed to slip through the age control, because HALLOWEEN was rated "18" - still eons away. But at the Kant cinema, no-one cared.

Besides me, there was only a handful of people in the audience, and before the film began, the atmosphere was one of complete calm. Probably, for the most part, they were just tired, but I was so excited, that I read the others' quiet as tense, reverent anticipation. Then the curtain swept open, nice and wide - panavision - to present one of the (still) most musically and optically beautiful title sequences ever, and a film, the likes of which I had never seen before.

Beauty

More than anything, HALLOWEEN is a beautiful film. Beauty in cinema can be created in different ways, but is rooted in simplicity. And John Carpenter was the most fascinating minimalist of American cinema, although sadly only for half a decade. His cinema had nothing whatsoever to do with the buzz of accelerated speed, such as characterised montages, effects and staging in the 80s and 90s.

It is no coincidence that Carpenter made his best three films (DARK STAR, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and HALLOWEEN) in the seventies, the decade in which American cinema dared most to explore undiscovered terrain, and in which, moreover, a lot of time was required.

HALLOWEEN is a calm murder story, and the longer the film goes on, the clearer it becomes that it is the calm rather than the story which sucks viewers in. The film gradually creates a floating climate of uncertainty, and the secret heart of this climate is simultaneously the subject of the film: fear.

It is a film about our primeval fears, the fear of being alone, the fear of darkness, the fear of the „Boogey Man". But also about the fear of fear, and ultimately, about the fun within it.

Full of invisible experiments, so smooth and clear in conception, yet so rich in complex associations, HALLOWEEN is one of the most beautiful horror films of all time.

Plot

HALLOWEEN is a tale of the „Boogey Man". Michael Meyers is his deputy. As a six-year-old, he slaughtered his sister, after having watched her having teenage sex with her boyfriend. 15 years later, he escapes from a lunatic asylum and returns to the place of the crime, looking for new victims in the neighbourhood. Again it is young people who pay for their physical urges with their lives, and the only one to get away with it, is the virginal heroine Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis).

What was really shocking about HALLOWEEN (more then than now, following a hundred imitations), was that there was no motive for the murders. Even if they contain puritanical patterns of punishment, ultimately someone is just killing someone else for the sake of it. In omitting to characterise his lead (always masked but for a tiny, disturbing second) his actions are particularly unnerving. The film doesn't explain what "evil" is, "it" is just there.

And the worst of all is that when Laurie defends herself, her bravery proves to be absolutely useless, because the murderer always just gets up again, no matter how much has been taken out of him.

These days, we have seen dozens of films in which the killer keeps getting up over and over again. HALLOWEEN was the first film to celebrate this principle in such a pure form, and which, moreover, didn't offer us any kind of explanation for it. Carpenter makes it clear that he, unlike the morals of almost all genre films, doesn't for a second believe that we have effective weapons to fight the shadow sides of our souls.

It might be hard now to understand the concern unleashed by the open end of the film, but in 1978 it was a crazy imposition: a cold-blooded killer escapes and over the last images of daily life, we even hear his heavy breathing which is transformed into gasps of panic? Back then, as I walked home across Kantstrasse in Berlin, this breathing was hanging over me.

HALLOWEEN opens our imagination in several directions, which make it hard for us to sleep. We fill an (opulent) empty space with our personal demons, and Carpenter knows that these are what really scare us.

That is the secret: It isn't Carpenter who looks inside us and recognises our fears and our weaknesses - no, we do it ourselves. And we know best of all where our most uncomfortable apprehensions are lurking. HALLOWEEN doesn’t create fear, it unleashes it. That might sound therapeutic, and to a certain extent, it is. In this film we allow forbidden, suppressed thoughts to come forward, and then we play with them. Here, Carpenter shows us, as cynical as he might sometimes appear, that horror films can be inspiring and liberating.

Films like HALLOWEEN only have one disadvantage, and that is that they make it hard to fall asleep alone at night.

Heroes

Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a psychiatrist, who is convinced that in Michael Meyers he is fighting someone who is the embodiment of 'absolute evil'. Pleasance plays the doctor, both manically and seriously, leaving us in no doubt whatsoever about his belief. Pleasance is what makes Michael Meyers really threatening in the first place. His absolutely real fear of the threat out there as long as this creature walks freely, enables the film to run for almost an hour before another murder is committed.

Pleasance, acting in an unusual mixture of CUL DE SAC and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, is important for us as viewers. His character means there's at least one who knows there is almost no way out of the situation. And however illogical, that generates hope. Although he does save Laurie at the end.

No film which was a part of the slasher genre which followed in the wake of HALLOWEEN, had a protagonist who was anywhere near as interesting, credible, unhysterical - even SCREAM doesn't pass muster (maybe Drew Barrymore should have lived longer), and Heather Langenkamp didn't compare in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode is the quintessential horror film heroine. She is young, nice, natural, honest - and (so far) asexual. That makes her comparable to Brian de Palmas' CARRIE. But Laurie Strode is more relaxed, more intelligent, and of this world. A perfect identity factor.

Secretly, I am still of the opinion that her part in HALLOWEEN has remained Jamie Lee Curtis' strongest role. More attractive than in A FISH CALLED WANDA, more powerful than in TRUE LIES.

Timing

No-one (with the possible exception of Brian De Palma) has gone further with the possibility in film to string out the escape of a protagonist so that it appears absolutely endless, but which in reality is just real-time. The 'real' time which for example is needed to cross a street in order to get from one house to another, becomes a nerve jangling eternity if we know that the murderer is waiting at the other side. And even more so when it's the boogey man.

HALLOWEEN is full of little miracles which prove that time spent in the cinema can be so full of tension. The film has a brilliant start, with two climaxes one after the other. First we see how the boy murders his sister, directly followed (15 years later in the film) by his spectacular escape from the institution.

From that moment on, we know what kind, and moreover how much horror awaits us - and then the film throttles its speed to a point of virtual standstill. Carpenter leads us in, catches us, and lets us fall into his trap over and over again.

"It is not a question of knowing that something will happen, but when. The game is to make people believe that something is about to happen, which in reality is not. You have to increase the tension, manoeuvre the viewer to a place where they are all attention - and then you come with the surprise when they are least expecting it." (John Carpenter, 1980)

Evil has time. Even when Laurie runs screaming hysterically from it, it never tries to catch up with her. With a stoical calm, it follows her, giving off a horrible certainty that it will win in the end. This fearful excitement which is mostly expressed through a stubborn physical motoric, has only ever reached one other film character, and that was T-1000 in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY. The self-confidence of the machine: it doesn't want to kill, it will kill.

Locations

Haddonfields, Illinois.
HALLOWEEN is set in a small town. Bare but magical. Why? The streets are empty, but for a few pedestrians. Autumn leaves blow above them, there are barely any cars. One has the impression that this world is only there for our film characters, as if it were waiting for something to happen in it. But when someone can be made out in the distance, it is generally not an indication of something good to come. Someone is observing his future victim.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD comes to mind, with its unforgettable opening sequence. A young couple are in a fairly bare graveyard on an autumn afternoon. The only sound around and about is that of the wind rustling through the forests. And far in the distance an unlikely, but large man is stumbling about, initially inconspicuous. This man is pure horror, but first-time viewers wouldn't even be able to dream up the fast sequence of events which constitute this scene. George Romero's scene is the best from the best of all zombie films.

HALLOWEEN has five times that to offer: Scenes in which the boogey man appears in the distance and merely watches his victims, in which the gentle wind blows and the autumn leaves are blown across the tarmac, and which we remember forever when we walk home alone on an autumn afternoon.

Music

Five-quarter-beat, which is actually pretty hard work. Here, there is only one rhythmic irritation, which is countered and perfected by an absolutely constant, driving percussion element which creates a wholly uncomplicated overall effect. With incredible courage for repetition, Carpenter uses the central piano theme as a basis for the whole film. The music is both self-assured (because it characterises the film) and reserved (because it becomes pure mood and atmosphere and is therefore no longer a conscious sound).

The HALLOWEEN theme is a classic, which fills countless CDs. A stroke of musical genius, similar to the compositions by Bernard Herrmann for PSYCHO or VERTIGO - just much more reduced.

Subjectivity

Subjective Camera? These days a steadicam is the most standard form of style, and is used in almost every TV production. Back then it was highly unusual, and Carpenter opened his film with one of the longest and most complicated POV zooms in film history. From outside to inside and then back, with wildly different sources of light, massive light changes, murderous shifts in focus, a narrow stairwell, ultimately even a mask which is shoved over the camera lens - Carpenter didn't leave anything out in his bid to make his opening into a technical tour de force - and into the suggestive trip in the interior perspective of a murderer.

Then comes the shock: After the act, the killer moves back outside where he is unmasked - and for the first time we leave (after more than four minutes!) the POV of the slaughterer. And we see it was a child. A six-year old boy. We were a six-year old boy who killed his sister.

From that point on, our faith in the camera is shaken, every further subjective camera movement could force us to slip into the skin of a killer. Carpenter and the cameraman Dean Cundey use this chance to successfully unnerve the viewer, and to heighten the tension with increased caution.

CinemaScope

CinemaScope is a format which leans towards two extremes: Epic and chamber drama. Both extensive space or extreme enclosure particularly benefit from this image format.

HALLOWEEN belongs to the second category. The film works almost exclusively with spatial limitations, and the image width lends itself generously to the growing claustrophobic character.

Equally, it is not a close-ups film. Carpenter arranges his characters in moveable Tableaux, almost never using classic shot/reverse angle shot, and always leaving a space at the side or in the background for potential surprises.

Incidentally, HALLOWEEN is a film, which it is almost impossible to enjoy on video. Because the so carefully composed, increasingly claustrophobic shots completely fizzle out in the grainy buzz of the monitor.

HALLOWEEN'S images need space. The huge black areas from which the murderer could step forward at any moment; the radical, sometimes even expressionistic play of light and shadows; the undertow effect of the smooth and restless camera all gets lost on the monitor. Video reduces HALLOWEEN to its history, and that is definitely too weak. HALLOWEEN in the cinema, however, is intoxicating.

Economy

HALLOWEEN is the dream of every producer. Created with minimal expenditure, the film made a dozen times what it cost to make. After that Carpenter got bigger and bigger budgets and his films got steadily worse. That is the only sad thing about HALLOWEEN.