HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
We have officially made it! If you've been watching along with us and choosing all our recommendations, then thank you! There's nothing else to say, other than without any further ado... here is our final pick!
Day 31 - John Carpenter's Halloween
"The Night HE Came Home!"
Of course it was going to be John Carpenter's classic! The alpha and omega of slasher films is the quintessential Halloween watch. The story of Michael Myers, or as he is better known in the film as The Shape, stalking a babysitter has basically become classic. A true watershed film and a benchmark for the genre, Halloween not only changed the game but it spawned countless of imitators leading to the entire slasher subgenre boom in the 1980s. This is another one of those films where direction is everything - Carpenter takes a page from Hitchcock's textbook and allows suspense to become the key ingredient of the film. Originally titled "The Babysitter Murders," Carpenter and producing/writing partner Debra Hill craft a slasher classic that essentially lays the groundwork for everything that the genre will utilize, destroy, and parody in future films; including the unstoppable monster, the resourceful heroine, and the prologue that starts with a tragedy that sets up everything. Part of what makes Halloween so incredibly effective is the filmmaking on display. Whether its the specter-like quality of the camerawork by Dean Cundey or the beautiful anamorphic widescreen compositions that portray Michael as a haunting specter rather than a man; Carpenter's Halloween is full of amazing visuals and performances that still hold up to this day. Jamie Lee Curtis is wonderfully cast as Laurie Strode, one of the best final girls of horror, as she brings a resourcefulness and liveliness that makes the audience immediately root for her. Without a doubt, that is one of the best aspects of the film - the relationship between Laurie, Annie, and Linda. The audience is terrified at the outcome of everything that happens because they care about them and all of that is Debra Hill's contribution. Famously, Carpenter and Hill split up the writing segments - Hill would take care of all the babysitter stuff with Laurie (Hill actually had experience working as a teenage babysitter) and Carpenter developed all the Loomis speeches regarding The Shape's soulless humanity. Everything from the masterful opening segment with Michael's POV, to the stalking scenes, and the confrontation between Michael and Laurie just perfectly complement Carpenter's desire to bring an elemental evil of Halloween and turn it into a suburban nightmare. Perhaps the genius move by Carpenter is the brilliant decision to not give Michael a motive and have him remain a complete mystery to everyone in the film and the audience - only Loomis (an incredible Donald Pleasence) knows that he might've been human at some point but as he says, he spent 15 years trying to reach him and nothing. It is just the right amount of mystery to give Halloween an elemental quality that makes it so timeless (almost like a pulp mystery novel). Plus, Carpenter adds ideas about growing up, fear of the unknown, and voyeurism that elevate Halloween to first-rate motion picture and timeless standard. Every other slasher or horror film that came after it, has borrowed something from Halloween. Not to mention that the Carpenter score, and that theme, are the best - again, simple but so incredibly effective and powerful. Halloween is filled with simple decisions and simple choices in storytelling that make it utterly effective storytelling and horror filmmaking. The ending of the film remains one of the most haunting of all time. Influential, scary, and filled with iconic characters Halloween should be mandatory viewing for spooky season. Like a twisted companion to Bob Clark's seminal Black Christmas, Halloween takes the scariest night of the year and makes it scarier by adding a heady dose of atmosphere (with little to no blood), the boogeyman, and chills and thrills to spare. Carpenter's film takes the idea of suspense that Hitchcock devised with his classics and multiplies it by relying solely on long tracking shots, mysterious shots of Michael, and an impending sense of dread that is inescapable and only gets scarier and scarier as the film progresses.
*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog!
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