Every October 31st I treat myself to John Carpenter’s classic horror film "Halloween". For me it is the quintessential scary movie. It’s everything a horror film should be. In today’s age of blood and gore "Halloween" is proof that all an effective horror film needs is suspense, mood and atmosphere.

Filmed on a budget of only $350,000 and shot in a matter of weeks, "Halloween" marked the arrival of director John Carpenter. Though he had made student films in graduate school and had directed two features ("The Dark Star", 1974 and "Assault on Precinct 13", 1976), "Halloween" brought him both critical and financial success. Sadly, though he has directed several films since "Halloween" in 1978, none have been as successful as his excursion into middle-America fear and terror (though you can find some fine moments in both "The Fog", 1980 and his remake of "The Thing", 1982). Carpenter’s masterpiece is, and more than likely always will be, "Halloween", a simple story about a young woman brutally murdered one Halloween night in 1963. Her killer is institutionalized, only to escape fifteen years later to return to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, bringing with him more murder and mayhem. “The Night He Came Home,” screamed the movie’s tag line. Sometimes the best movies hinge on slight stories with uncomplicated plots. In "Halloween" the story is secondary to the action. This is not an actor’s movie, it’s a director’s movie, in whiche style and technique outweigh the script and acting. Carpenter relies on carefully chosen camera angles and subdued, shadowy lighting to weave his tale. We also see much of the action unfold through the eyes of his characters. Rarely in the history of film has there been so much subjective camerawork. By employing this technique Carpenter (like Alfred Hitchcock) makes voyeurs of us all. It also gives the film a slightly claustrophobic feel, and the action is more immediate. On that level, "Halloween" is nearly a visceral experience.

Hitchcock once said he enjoyed playing the audience like a piano. John Carpenter may be playing the same tune. There’s a weird sense of humor at work in "Halloween", from the opening credits that include a grinning, glowing jack-o-lantern, to Carpenter’s decision to exploit the innocence of a child, as his killer claims his first victim at the age of six….and dressed in a clown suit. In Carpenter’s vision of middle-America evil is masked behind the eyes of a seemingly wholesome child.

"Halloween" has many striking images that set it apart from the average, run-of-the-mill horror film. It quickly establishes that there is, in fact, a bogey man lurking in every corner. He is omnipresent, a ghostly apparition that is reinforced by Carpenter throughout the film. The killer, Michael Myers (referred to simply as ‘The Shape’ in the end credits, a send-up no doubt of those 1950’s horror monsters like ‘The Thing’ and ‘The Blob’), escapes while clad in a white hospital gown. The heroine, Laurie, sits in class gazing out the window, where she sees a tall man wearing a white mask. She looks down, then out the window again only to find him gone. She later sees the same man standing by some bushes; again he vanishes. Moments later she sees him standing in a neighbor’s backyard, between some flapping bedsheets on a clothesline. Someone is playing tricks on Laurie…and the audience. Later the image of the killer-as-ghost comes full circle. In an inspired scene, a young girl lies in bed waiting for her boyfriend to return. The bedroom door opens and The Shape stands motionless, a white sheet over its body and the boyfriend’s glasses over its face. Carpenter’s ghost image is fully realized. When the girl, assuming her boyfriend is playing a trick on her, jokes, “What’s the matter, can’t I get your ghost?”, a devilish smile may form on our lips. We know what’s under the sheet; she doesn’t. It’s a wonderful moment of dramatic irony.

There are, in fact, plenty of inspired moments in "Halloween". A tombstone is taken from a cemetery, only to be used later as a girl lies dead, the tombstone looming behind her like a cruel epitaph. A young boy sees The Shape carrying a lifeless body across the lawn and into a dark house. A sequence in which a young woman finds her car door locked, goes back for her keys, and returns only to now find the door unlocked. And a long passage in which the character of Laurie, sensing something is terribly wrong, crosses a wide-lined street and toward a big dark house. The camera follows her at an agonizingly slow pace. It recalls a similar scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho in which character Lila Crane walks toward Norman Bates’ menacing Victorian home. Hitchcock had Crane move at a brisk pace, whereas Carpenter lets the scene play longer. With each slow step Laurie takes the audience grows more restless because it knows what horrors await her across the street.

Finally, there is the cruelest joke of all, the slam-bang ending in which Carpenter plays the ultimate trick. He lets the final minutes unfold like a nightmare that never ends. Just when we think The Shape is dead, It vanishes into the night. The terror will continue because, as one young boy says, “You can’t kill the bogey man.”

Though "Halloween" was praised by many critics when it was released (“the scariest movie since 'Psycho',” screamed Us magazine), it also received a good deal of criticism because of the host of gory, witless imitators it spawned, including the "Friday the 13th" series which started two years after "Halloween’s" release. "Halloween" may have kick-started the “dead teenager movie” craze of the 1980’s, but long before Carpenter’s film there was "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) and "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). The drive-in monster horror craze of the 1950’s may be the best place to start if you want to blame something for the modern horror film. Critics may also be quick to forget that despite its violence, "Halloween" contains very little on-screen gore and a surprisingly low body count. It relies on suspense (as well as its memorable synthesizer-like music, composed by Carpenter himself) to get its much-deserved jolts. "Halloween" did not invent the slasher film. It may, however, have perfected it.

"Halloween" remains one of the greatest horror films of all time. Director John Carpenter takes his audience into a netherworld painted in drab daylight (to emphasize ordinary, daily life) and ominous, penetrating night (to tap into our fears and anxieties of the dark). The film is a prime example of “director” movie-making, with the camera being the primary star. It’s an extra-sensory masterpiece filled with humor and horror, and plenty of in-joke references for film buffs. Our characters sit in darkened living rooms watching The Thing, while a TV announcer warns, “Lock your doors…bolt your windows…and turn out the lights…” Carpenter lets his audience in on the jokes, but turns the tables on his characters. With Halloween Carpenter takes us on a journey into midwestern American fear. Our very own homes become stalking grounds. Our own children become evil incarnate. And the bogey man is everywhere. For a first-rate exercise in terror and a strong example of low-budget, high-fright filmmaking, treat yourself to another viewing of John Carpenter’s "Halloween". Thirty years after its release, it remains the ultimate frightfest.

Thrills and Chills,
Darren M.