Halloween

This review is written in rebuke to the incredibly negative bashing inflicted by my colleague (see James Brundage).

If Halloween was released today, I doubt it would have been as successful, considering that the 80’s saw hack jobs rise out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Bloody horror films involving sexually active teenagers was a Hollywood staple for several years, until they finally started to fizzle at the box office. Lately, however, with the enormous success of Scream, Scream 2, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, horror films are back with a vengeance. We owe all of this history to one film... Halloween (cue creepy John Carpenter music here).

To be as effected by Halloween as I am every time I pop it into the VCR, you have to get yourself in the right mood. Bear in mind, that this film cost absolutely nothing to make. For so little money, the result really does look very good. If nothing else, one must be forced to admire this excercise in terror based solely upon its craftmanship- that any film costing so little could look so good is simply amazing. Mr. Carpenter sure knows how to work a budget. Also to be kept in mind is that all the Friday The 13th type rip offs were not around when Halloween was produced. My colleague claims that the film is cliche ridden, but such an accusation is unsupported because, at the time, following a creepy noise into a dark, ominous setting, was not a cliche. In the end, Halloween did not follow any cliches at all- it just invented them.

And so, you sit back, forget everything that was beaten into our heads about horror movies from the countless rip offs, and enjoy the show. Once you get past this mental block, you’ll notice that the acting ranges from decent to pretty damn impressive (yes, Jamie, we hear you screaming and screaming and screaming). Also to be noticed is the very real, very creepy atmosphere that the film creates. It’s the first film to imagine suburban paradise as the slaughter fields for a deranged killer, and the only film to have enough guts to say "the hell with motive, this guy is just f****** insane, and that’s all there is to it". Halloween can best be described by one word- relentless.

To all of those who don’t appreciate Halloween, just remember why you lock the doors before going to bed. I don’t think a lot of people did that before that faithful night in 1978.