Halloween – review (original) (raw)

John Carpenter's best movies are his first four or five, made between 1974 and 1980, all of them genre flicks where imagination, intelligence, wit and chutzpah were called into play by the exigencies of low budgets and short shooting schedules. The third, the hugely influential Halloween (made in 1978 and revived for the forthcoming trick-or-treat fest) is the ultimate refined slasher movie, a style of exploitation picture spawned by Hitchcock's Psycho. The opening shot, a long, virtuoso hand-held take with a subjective camera, introduces us to the five-year-old murderer Michael Myers who 15 years later escapes from the state asylum to his midwestern home town, there to don a mask and terrorise high school kids on Halloween night. His name is a tribute to the independent British distributor Michael Myers, a great Wardour Street character, who did a fine job promoting Assault on Precinct 13. Making her screen debut as an intrepid babysitter is future "scream queen" Jamie Lee Curtis, whose mother Janet Leigh played Marion Crane in Psycho, and Donald Pleasence is a fierce presence as the psychiatrist pursuing Myers. He's called Sam Loomis, the name of Marion Crane's boyfriend. The movie was shot in 12 days for 320,000andtook320,000 and took 320,000andtook117m worldwide. Carpenter wrote the eerie music himself, and the widescreen cinematography is by Dean Cundey, who based the night scenes on Edward Hopper's sinister painting Rooms for Tourists with its absence of people, sharply lit facades and pitch-black night. Cundey was later to light the Back to the Future trilogy and Jurassic Park.