Here we are in October. “Spooky season.” Pumpkin spice, if that’s a thing where you live. (I don’t think it’s quite so ubiquitous in Poland.) Let’s kick things off with a short look at one of the most iconic of the seasonal offerings:
Halloween (1978)
This is going to be pretty short—more of a blurb than anything else as I assume that everything that needs to be written about this one has already made it to print. It may no longer have the power to scare me as I’ve seen it plenty of times, but it is surely a kind of comfort food, satisfying in so many different ways.
I like the characters. I’m not rooting for them to bite it, as might occasionally be the case with the nameless casts of the many later imitators which would follow in Halloween’s footsteps. I mean, they’re not exactly exercises in depth, but I buy them as people, as friends. There are laughs to be had and their relationships are believable. And at the same time, they are drawn with broad enough strokes that the dominant feeling when they die is the jolt of terror rather than the weight of mourning.
The film making is confident and precise, while still operating on a tight budget, and makes economical choices that pay off in atmosphere and artistry. It’s really something how this movie, filmed in May in California, really evokes a midwestern fall. Apparently it was too warm for real fallen leaves, so they scattered paper leaves around, which they had to collect after each shot so they could be reused. The score, while repetitive, is also relentless and so simple. Both the film and its killer are playful with their scares, making it such a fun popcorn scary movie.
And, at the same time, it really contributed to placing horror in, and showing the lie of, a new setting—cozy, suburban, small town America, a place where your kids can feel safe walking to school and you don’t have to lock your doors, but when a teenage girl is screaming for help in the middle of the night, people will turn off their porchlights and pretend not to be home, rather than stick their neck out for someone else in need.
Many things can be scary, but in this moment of seeing just how little these comfortable suburbanites are willing to go out of their way to help a terrified kid, it is really chilling, and it offers a moment of horror: the chilling comprehension that “this is probably true—this is how people would behave—I may greet my neighbors with a smile and a nod, but if I really needed help, there’s every chance that they’d close their doors, and if one is to be totally honest, if the situation were reversed, I may very well close mine.” That realization—that confrontation with a terrible truth—is really the essence, I think, of horror as a concept and this is a good, simple, very effective example.
While this was certainly not the first slasher, it surely fixed the formulas, even when it did so inadvertently. Laurie is the platonic ideal of the final girl archetype, down to and including the nigh Freudian way that she adopts a series of different sharp, long, pointy, penetrative objects to fight back with, but that all of them imply some kind of traditionally coded feminine element—the coat hanger, the knitting needle, even the kitchen knife—all of which can be read as markers of ‘women’s work’ and the domesticity that is being invaded by this very masculine-coded killer.
And still, I take Carpenter at his word that he was not thinking about these things. They just came out of the setting—out of the situation. These are the available weapons in a home that doesn’t have guns. Laurie doesn’t end up being the final girl because her friends are punished for being sexual. Rather, she is alone, lonely, and paying attention. They are distracted, having fun, fooling around and, therefore, easier targets.
And there are just so many standout moments: the opening tracking shot, featuring presumably the fastest off screen sex scene ever (the young couple leaves the living room to go upstairs and 85 seconds later, we see the boy coming out of the bedroom, putting his shirt back on—it’s fast!), so effective and chilling and clever; Dr. Loomis going on about “the blackest eyes, the devil’s eyes”; the growing irritation/comedy of Linda “totally” only seeming to know one word; the moment when the shape appears out of the shadows that Laurie had been backing into; Michael tilting his head to examine his handiwork after stabbing Bob to the wall; and of course, the final moments after the killer has disappeared and the camera shows us the empty hallway, the empty stairwell, the empty street—there are shadows everywhere and anything could be waiting in them—nothing will ever feel safe again.
For all these reasons and so many more, this one is a classic which can really help set the tone any October.