everyone's entitled to one good scare

1978, over 30 years ago now and this movie still holds up and still one of the best.
this is prerequisite viewing for any aspiring horror director.

in an era where horror films are still trying to up the ante with more and more vile depravity, i had some question about whether this could summon the same fears it did when i was a kid. granted there is no way a movie could scare me as much now as it did when i was...shall we say...more innocent. halloween doesn't rely on shock value though. it is a simple plausible murderer who stalks and kills. nothing more, nothing less. michael myers as the kid gone bad has exactly zero lines in the movie; he never says a word, never lets us know why he does it, nor does anyone else give us some psuedo-psycho babble about why he does it. his doctor simply calls him "blank" "expressionless" and "evil". one thing which i had forgotten is that in the movie the beginning starts before he is put away. it shows the original murder. whats surprising about this is that its no blood bath, cringe worth grueling tour of torture; its one simple stabbing murder of his sister shown from his point of view. the movie uses michael's point of view often and one could analyze this effect on us as viewers but ultimately its a direct filming method sort've thing that is simply used very effectively.
in the end halloween's death count is fairly tame by todays standards; micheal only manages to kill 6 or 7 people and 2 dogs and leaves all the main characters alive. he doesn't linger in killing either, almost all the characters are caught and killed in one quick action. the longest death is a choking death in a car, which is quickened with a knife to the neck. we don't even get to see much of micheal; in the first sequence we see him at the end...a little boy in a clown costume. most of the movie shows him as a walking torso length man or an out of clear view standing creeper, head and persona obscured for all but a very few scenes. the longest of which shows him curiously questioning the look of his just killed victum. here its the suggestion of stalking, the drive to kill, and especially the "unknown" which gets under our skin and creates a fear within us.

there are a few 'old school' horror errors which are bothersome. stupid decisions that characters make that are hardly plausible. improbable situations. people who can't seem to ever find a light in a house, nor figure out how to unlock a door. stabbings in the movie have that weird difficult-to-believe angle. a lot of dark scenes with little details (which frankly i prefer to the 'night filtered, day shot' look). none of which detract from the clarity of the vision and the drama of the horror.

pure classic essential of the sort everyone wishes they could make again.



10/10