Results

Halloween (1978): Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and Nancy Loomis. Directed by John Carpenter, Screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.

Of the month’s worth of posts in 31 Days of Horror, just over half of the films mentioned have either been remade or are scheduled fir remake. I’ll leave it to you to decide what that says about the originality rampant in Hollywood today. The last film on this list is no exception, and while I will admit that the Rob Zombie remake of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” is more of a love-letter to the film that made Carpenter a true master of horror, it still pales very much to the original.

Carpenter and long-time producer Debra Hill were directly inspired by Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and the way that even though he kept most of the gore off-screen, you still had the impression after seeing the film that you’d witnessed a lot more than you actually did. It’s ironic, then, that the huge success of “Halloween” in 1978 is credited with the surge of slasher films in the early eighties.

The film is certainly mild, on the gore front, by today’s standards, but delivers 100 times the shocks of anything made in the last 20 years. Carpenter establishes the mood in the first few seconds of the film with a very stark title sequence and pounding synth title theme (composed and performed by Carpenter himself and now as recognizable as the shower sequence music from “Psycho” or the shark theme from “Jaws”). Frequent uses of subective camera from the killer’s POV are used throughout, something rarely used in American films at this point, putting the audience in the uncomfortable position of knowing death is approaching it’s victims before they know it in a much more effective way than just seeing something shadowy over their shoulder.

While the film is a terrific shock-fest, it’s great for repeated viewings with numerous references to classic b-movies and other horror films, such as Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, Donald Pleasence’s character us named Sam Loomis after John Gavin’s character and of course, casting the daughter of the lead actress from “Psycho” (Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh) certainly helps as well.

“Halloween” cost only $325,000 to make, grossed $47 million in the US, spawned seven sequels and launched Jamie Lee Curtis to stardom. John Carpenter himself reached a new level in Hollywood, but he remained true to the horror genre, bringing us such classics as “The Fog” and “The Thing”.

“Halloween” is a classic, still holds up today, and what better movie could you watch on the last night of October?

Happy Halloween.

Get it at Amazon.com:
Halloween

Related posts:

1. “The Thing” (1982)
   There are two kinds of horror films: there are films that scare your pants off and then there are films...
2. NoOoOooooo!!
   The day will come when I no longer have to embarrass myself constantly bitching and complaining about remakes, but that...