Halloween (1978)

The most iconic and influential of the "slasher films" a horror sub-genera that would come to be a dominate force in 1980's American cinema, while Halloween did not invent this kind of movie it did set the template for what was to follow. A film literacy film that had hear to for escaped me, post 1960's horror is largely an undiscovered country for me, I saw it with a friend in a revival showing at the old Tower Theater in downtown Salt Lake, an appropriately creepy venue.

The origins of Halloween as a movie might be said to begin at the 1976 Milian film festival when producer Irwin Yablans and financer Moustapha Akkad approached director John Carpenter after seeing and being impressed by his sophomore film Assault on Precinct 13. The two were interested in commissioning a film about a psychotic killer who stalkes babysitters, inspired so they said by the success of the semi-recent movie The Exorcist. Carpenter agreed on certain conditions, including full creative control and  his then girlfriend Debra Hill producing and co-writing the screenplay with him. Originally to have been tilted 'The Babysitter Murders' the name of the film was changed to 'Halloween' at the suggestion of Yablans.

Filmed in southern California in the spring of 1978 on a budget of between $300,000 and $325,000, Halloween is set in the suburban Midwest in the fall which necessitated being very selective in the locations and angels used in the film, as well as somehow procuring fall leaves, which had to be recycled throughout the movie. It is the story of Michael Myers, or rather the beginning of his story as this would ultimately turn into quite the franchise saga. Six year old Michael would violently murder his older sister on Halloween night 1963 after she had sex with her boyfriend, thus introducing the troupe of pre-marital sexual activity being punishable with death in these kind of movies.

Michael would spend the next 15 years under the care of Dr. Samuel Loomis (top billed Donald Pleasence in his best known role) who remained suspicious of his patients supposed near catatonic state and  repeatedly requested increased security to no avail. Michael escapes from the institution where he was being held on October 30th, 1978, steals a car and travels well over a hundred miles to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois in time for the 15th anniversary of his original crime.
Hiding inside his abandoned former home he sees  local teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut, cast in part to exploit the parallels with her mother Janet Leigh's casting in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)) who has stopped by to place a key under the floor mat, her father being a real estate agent trying to sell the old place and with perspective buyers set to stop by later that day, a plot point which now that I think about it was thereafter abandoned, serving merely as a "McGuffin" (Hitchcock again) to allow Michael to see her and become fixated on her.

Michael would stock the straight laced Laurie throughout the day, culminating in a killing spree that night while Laurie was babysitting and resulting (Spoiler!!) in the murders of her two best friends and one of their boyfriends. Dr. Loomis on the trail of Michael would arrive in time to save Laurie from a similar fate, which is not to say her character was merely some damsel in distress, she inflicted some serious damage on Michael throughout their altercations.

Halloween is not a movie in a hurry to get where it is going, it's largely a creepy mood piece with a slow build and many "Lewton bus" false scare moments. This really works for the film so that when the true horror arrives it's able to maintain itself and run on a rather intense momentum. This film has a great energy to it, not as graphic as I had anticipated but with some genuinely scary/tense moments which must have been all the more so in the 1970's when this kind of film making was new. Strong performances from the only two real names in the cast, and satisfactory ones from the supporting players. Extremely effective filmmaking this well made movie plays strong even today, I'd give it ***1/2 but owing to its historical significance its arguably a ****.