Halloween (1978)

 

Halloween

(1978)

 

 

 

There is much to admire in John Carpenter's half-century of filmmaking. Not only are most of his films good, but a very large group of them are also legitimate landmarks. Though mostly associated with the Horror genre, his output has actually been quite diverse, and he’s displayed equal comfort in a variety of subject matters and styles. He’s mastered most aspects of the process, so he doesn’t just do the Director’s job, he’s a Screenwriter, Composer, Editor, has taken charge of casting, color design, etc, in virtually every one of his 32 directorial credits. When taking on a Producer’s role on projects he didn’t Direct, he often tutored the hired talent, maybe not to the degree of Val Lewton or Steven Spielberg, but enough that his creative influence was explicit. And I think there’s another thing especially praise-worthy of Carpenter:

 

He never quit.

 

One of his student short-subjects, “Captain Voyeur” (1969), a rather crude comedy about a masked peeping-tom was visually inventive and featured exceptionally fluid stalking-shots with a hand-held camera. The camera work anticipated what Carpenter would become famous for in "Halloween," a technique clumsily borrowed by countless others, but he, himself, would begin to downplay almost immediately thereafter.  His later films explored different visual and narrative ideas. That exceptional hand-held camerawork was done by Joanne Willens; though she was obviously skilled, she apparently quit cinema, because that is the only screen credit for her that I have been able to find.

 

This was followed-up with another short, “The Resurrection of Broncho Billy” (1970) where he was co-Scriptwriter with Director James Rokos, as well as Editor and Composer. The film won an Oscar, a rare achievement for a film student. Perhaps that remarkable, and forgotten, accolade sustained him in the bumpy years to come. As for Rokos, he would stay in the film industry, generally in a Producer’s role, but his list of credits is far shorter than Carpenter's and far less interesting. Rokos made mostly Promotional films made for Las Vegas concerns like, “Female Mud Wrestling Championships” (1981) and “International Championship of Magic” (1985).

During Carpenter's first decade Directing features, ten films stretching from “Dark Star” (1974) to “Starman” (1984), most of his movies were initially commercial and critical failures, yet of those first ten, at least eight are now considered classics.

 

“Halloween” was Carpenter’s third feature: what would’ve happened if it bombed like the first two? It was very low budgeted (though somewhat more than those that came before it) and wasn’t adequately marketed. It was heavily derivative of Bob Clark’s film “Black Christmas” (1974), it could’ve easily been shoved to the margins like Clark’s film once was.

 

We’ll never know. “Halloween” became a phenomenon.

 

It was “Black Christmas” and “Halloween” combined that created the sub-Genre of the Slasher. They share a remarkable number of plot-points and even some stylistic flourishes (according to Bob Clark, “Black Christmas” not only influenced “Halloween,” but at one point in early pre-production, there was consideration of making it a direct sequel to his film), but Carpenter's film is still strikingly distinct. Comparing the two side-by-side, one learns a lot about how important the individual vision of an Artist is, because though they were both fine Directors, they light-years removed from each other, tackling nearly the same material with much different concepts of what elegance was.

 

The plot of “Halloween” is thin, but full of hints of something larger and more complex. It is the story of the Victims of a Serial Killer but allows the Killer more potency. The Killer is given a name and biography but remains faceless, ambiguous, even potentially Supernatural, and that ambiguity allows audience’s ability project themselves into that POV.

 

The film begins with a title sequence and prologue that even people who hate this movie praise. The first image is a Jack-O'-Lantern placed against a black backdrop, set to the left. To Carpenter’s sinister, minimalistic, and throbbing score, the camera movies in (no cutaways) and the titles appear and disappear to the right. Slowly, the Jack-O’-Lantern fills the scene. Finally, an unseen person blows out the candle.

 

It is perfection in its simplicity and, as J.P. Telotte wrote, it, "clearly announces that [the film's] primary concern will be with the way in which we see ourselves and others and the consequences that often attend our usual manner of perception."

 

Then prologue is a long, a continuous shot from the POV of our Killer, whom we will soon learn is Michael Meyers (Will Sandin). He is lurking around a house and stalking an attractive blonde girl. Soon, we will learn it his own house and the girl is Judith Meyers (Sandy Johnson) who proves to be his own sister. Judith engages in sexual activity with her boyfriend. This disturbs Michael. Without ever breaking the continuity of the POV shot, and without ever letting us see his face, Michael grabs a large knife, dons a cheap Halloween mask, and, after the boyfriend departs, enters his sister’s room. The framing is expertly composed, the mask’s two almond-shaped eyeholes both disguise and reveal Judith’s nudity while Michael brutally stabs her to death. Michael has yet to say a word, nor will he for the whole rest of the movie.

 

The next shot is shot not from Michael’s POV but outside the house. The devastated parents and police have arrived. Michael is unmasked.

 

Michael is six-years-old.

 

Fifteen years later Michael (now played by Nick Castle) escapes confinement and returns home to the picturesque suburb of Haddonfield, Illinois, and starts another killing spree. Again, we must wait long to see his face. 

During this spree he's being pursued by his Psychiatrist Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance). There are obvious similarities between most of the new Victims and his dead sister -- he primarily targets teenage girls Judith’s age, seems to focus on Babysitters (part of Michael’s back story is that his sister was an inattentive Babysitter) and he especially prefers to kill the sexually promiscuous.

 

And that is the whole plot.

 

Nope, there’s a bit more going on. As Michael begins to hunt and kill, most all of his Victims prove to be part a small circle of friends. In total he kills five, tries for a sixth, plus two dogs, and four of the Human Victims and one of the dogs knew each other; despite the connections with each other, these people apparently unknown to him, yet he almost unerringly chooses the one whose loss would cause devastating grief to the next of his Targets. Though with no obvious Supernatural elements, there is something Mystical in his Evil, making his eventual targeting of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) a matter of fate. It's as much a sick Relationship as it was a Victimization, only Laurie had no idea that she was in this relationship.

 

Borrowing from the Italian Crime/Horror sub-Genre of the Giallo, “Halloween” is far more about the Stalkings than the Murders, and the dynamic between Villain and central Victim would be a key element in most Slashers that follow (starting in 1980, there would be about ten Slashers released almost every year for a decade/decade-and-a-half) but I can’t think of another Slasher that explored this Relationship dynamic nearly so well until “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984).

 

Carpenter collaborated on the script with his then-girlfriend Debra Hill, and for decades to come she would be his most important Collaborator (in the prologue, her hands were used as Michael’s for the POV shots). Though it seems unlikely that anyone was dreaming of a franchise at the time, Carpenter and Hill were conscious of unspoken subtexts that would provide the foundation for the Mythology emerging in later films. Even without obvious Supernatural elements Carpenter wanted to communicate the idea of an old Haunted House film, and Hill’s idea of Michael was influenced by her readings of the folklore of Samhain, a Gaelic festival that became the foundation for our Halloween. In Michael’s relentless, silent, predation, it is obvious that Michael ceased to be Michael at some time long ago, and now was an embodiment of Evil, and as the last scene famously suggests, Evil never dies.

 

Though Carpenter’s immediately previous film, “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976) received only mixed reviews and bombed financially, it impressed enough people at Festivals to lead directly to this project. Independent Producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to Direct a film for them about a psychotic Killer that stalked Babysitters (this was a common enough trope, but at this point in history, not yet over-used). Yablans also suggested the film be set on Halloween night. After that, per his agreement, Carpenter had complete creative control.

 

The POV shots famously allow the (mostly young and male) audience to step into Michael’s shoes at vital moments of Stalking and Violence. Wrote Nicholas Rogers, the "frequent use of the unmounted [note: ‘unmounted’ is an error, I’ll get to that later] first-person camera to represent the killer's point of view ... invited [viewers] to adopt the murderer's assaultive gaze and to hear his heavy breathing and plodding footsteps as he stalked his prey." But, when the film isn’t from his POV, he’s general shot at middle-distance or a background figure. The foreground is a nice, conventional, Suburban reality about to be violated by something emerging from the unseen depths.

 

Adult Michael is deliberately opaque, and he masked for all but a few-second shot during the film’s climax (in that one shot, he’s played by yet another actor, Tony Moran). Despite the script giving him a name, the credits refer to him as “the Shape.”

 

On the other hand, Doctor Samuel and Lauri are well-developed characters. Michael’s other Victims are some-what less so, because of less on-screen time, but one cannot accuse the script of leaving them under-developed. Roger Ebert wrote, “The performances are all the more absorbing because of ... [their mundane-ness] the movie's a slice of life that is carefully painted (in drab daylights and impenetrable nighttimes) before its human monster enters the scene.”

 

Much has been made of the fact that of Michael’s four key Targets, Judith and Laurie plus Laurie’s best friends Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda Van der Klok (P. J. Soles), the only survivor was the virgin. Carpenter and Hill have stated numerous times that the film was not some kind metaphor for the dangers of casual sex, Carpenter, "It has been suggested that I was making some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In ‘Halloween,’ I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers."

 

But his answer took on a different character in a different interview, claiming the critics "completely missed the point there…The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him [technically, almost killed him]. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy.”

 

But to me, that counterargument seems an affirmation of the original suggestion. Intended or not, it is there, and obvious. It became a Slasher movie cliché, and probably the most mocked of all of the sub-Genre's many clichés.

 

This didn’t really start with “Halloween” though. "Halloween" was clearly inspired by an unsolved True Crime. It isn't even the first film the Crime inspired. In 1950, 13-year-old Babysitter Janett Christman was butchered in the home of the children she cared for, though the sleeping children were left untouched. This may have influenced "I Saw What You Did" (1965) and was clearly the basis of a once-popular short-subject “Foster's Release” (1971, and no, I have not seen it). The latter film is now forgotten but was once commonly shown to High School Home Economics classes to illustrates the importance of responsibility and consequences of deviancy. Apparently, the film was most popular in Illinois, the setting of “Halloween” even though the actual filming was in California (there are even palm trees in the background of one shot).

 

Nicholas Rogers wrote, “I have seen the slasher movies since ‘Halloween’ as debasing women in as decisive a manner as hard-core pornography." As Slasher cinema, as a whole, proved overwhelmingly misogynistic, one must ask how true that is of this film, that inspired all that followed.

 

Several point out that Laurie only survives because Doctor Samuel (both male and an authority figure) arrives at the last moment, but, as Carol J. Clover counters, Laurie is still a strong heroine. Pre-“Halloween” Horror films, women were often depicted as helpless victims and are not safe until they are rescued by a strong masculine hero; here; despite Loomis saving Laurie, she is still a self-assertive “final girl” (a phrase Clover coined) who triumphs when most of the rest of the cast is already dead and she must face the Beast alone.

 

Laurie had showed herself to be a responsible person throughout, long before she even suspects there is a threat, and when she fights back against Michael, she severely wounds him; had he not been Super-Human, Laurie’s attacks would have killed him. (Notably, not even Loomis’s six bullets kill Michael.)

 

Art Director Tommy Lee Wallace contributed two vital things to this film. First was Michael Myers’ trademark mask (having the killer wear a mask throughout the film would quickly become a Slasher film cliché). It was a pale, expressionless, rubber mold of an unremarkable face. One would need to look twice to realize it was a mask if one passed Michael quickly on the street, but once its mask-ness is recognized it is creepier than a more traditional monster-mask, because it is almost, but not quite, human. This effect is sometimes referred to as “entering the valley of the uncanny” and is often used to describe how we generally prefer CGI figures that are obviously cartoonish (“Shrek” (2001)) over those that imperfectly tried to imitate the humans realistically (“Polar Express” (2004)). This mask, now among the most famous props in the history of Horror cinema, was a $1.98 rubber mask from a costume shop on Hollywood Boulevard. The face was of “Star Trek’s” (TV series first aired in 1968) Captain Kirk, so actually the actor William Shatner. Wallace widened the eye holes and spray-painted the flesh a bluish white.

 

His other contribution was actor Jamie Leigh Curtis. Carpenter admits that "Jamie Lee wasn't the first choice for Laurie. I had no idea who she was. She was 19 and in a TV show at the time, but I didn't watch TV." But Wallace just happened to be dating Curtis, and that was how the introduction was made. Curtis proved talented and the child of Hollywood royalty, the daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Said Hill, "I knew casting Jamie Lee would be great publicity for the film because her mother was in ‘Psycho’ [1960, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock]" It was a lovely synchronicity, as “Halloween” was the most Hitchcock-influenced of Carpenter’s works.

 

Curtis, herself, was less convinced she was perfectly cast as Laurie, “I was very much a smart alec, and was a cheerleader in high school, so [I] felt very concerned that I was being considered for the quiet, repressed young woman when in fact I was very much like the other two girls." But one does not turn down leads when they are offered, and ultimately, she gave the film’s finest performance.

 

Carpenter wanted to role of Doctor Samuel to go to an actor the audience would recognize from other Horror films, and approached Hammer Studio veterans Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee but they both turned it down (Lee would later tell Carpenter and Hill that was the biggest mistake of his career). The role instead went to Donald Pleasance, a Horror Veteran and James Bond villain (“You Only Live Twice” (1967)), with nearly on the same recognition-level of Cushing and Lee. Samuel is a Heroic character in the film, but his Heroism deliberately evokes some discomfort. He’d been Michael’s Doctor in the Sanitarium, he knew who Michael was better than anyone else on Earth, but in truth knows nothing about him at all, because Michael is fundamentally impenetrable. Samuel’s smart enough to recognize his own ignorance, as he states explicitly when talking to Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers):

 

“I met him, 15 years ago; I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this... six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and... the blackest eyes, the Devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.”

Sammuel is not nice, his obsessive Vigilantism is well-grounded, but it also makes him seem Villainous. 

 

In his prior two films, Carpenter proved an expert at stretching minimal budgets to their absolute limit. That is true of this film, but maybe not to the same extreme as he had slightly more money than when he tried to evoke “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) in “Dark Star” or stage an urbanized version of “Rio Bravo” (1959) in “Assault on Precinct 13.” Suburban settings lend to less expensive filmmaking and many of the actors wore their own clothes. Curtis' wardrobe was purchased for film, its total cost was only a hundred dollars because the Filmmakers went to J.C. Penny.

 

Wallace described the filming process as almost-uniquely collaborative, with Cast members often helping move equipment, cameras, and helping facilitate set-ups. Most of those involved in this film went on to fine careers, many because Carpenter’s comfort-zone was to work with the same people over-and-over again, both in front and behind the camera. This was true of at least one of the three Actors who played silent and impenetrable Michael Meyers (well, there were four if you count Debra Hill’s hands, and five if you count the rubber William Shatner mask). Nick Castle's future wasn't mostly as an Actor though, but as a Writer and Director. He made a number of notable films, some in collaboration with Carpenter and my favorite that was without Carpenter was “The Last Starfighter” (1984).

 

One thing that I was surprised to learn as I researched this is that Carpenter used a Steadicam. The stalking sequences, central to the movie’s aesthetic, evoked those in his student film, “Captain Voyeur,” which a hand-held camera was used. The Steadicam allowed the same effect with a fluidness impossible only a few years before. The first two films a Steadicam was used in were both released in 1976 (“Bound to Glory” and “Marathon Man”) and the full potential of this new technology was not realized until Stanley Kubrick’s obsessive use of it in 1980 (“The Shining”). It was a pretty gosh-darn expensive technology when this film was made (Director Sam Rami made a point of talking about how he couldn’t afford one when he made “Evil Dead” (1981)) but somehow Carpenter not only got his hands on the tech, but a Cameraman skilled in it specifically, Dean Cundey (whom Carpenter would work with again on later projects). One of the many reasons the Slasher was collectively so poor was the sloppy attempts to mimic Carpenter's camera with inappropriate equipment, they both lacked his skill and set for themselves an impossible task.

 

Back when this film came out, I remember people praising the hand-held camera work, but it wasn’t, just no one could imagine such a low-budget film would have such shiny new toy. Carpenter’s many imitators tried to achieve the same effects hand-held and inevitably failed (few were as skilled as Carpenter’s college chum Willens, so how is it possible this woman got no career?). Just like Carpenter’s one-and-only Oscar is forgotten, the fact that he was ahead of Stanley Kubrick in capturing the potential of this transformative technology is equally forgotten.

 

Carpenter’s handling of his casts has often been praised. He apparently found that perfect sweet-spot where he could allow his actors interpretive freedom, but still communicated exactly what he needed scene-by-scene. He’d set the end zone, but the actors decided how to run. Curtis, when her career had advanced enough that she could escape the ghetto of Horror, gushed at how “spoiled” she felt under Carpenter’s direction. Reading interviews from her and others, Carpenter’s relationship with his actors seems reminiscent of that of Director Billy Wilders’.

 

So how does one Direct his cast minimally and still get exactly what he thinks the scene needs? For this film, Carpenter created a "fear meter." Because the film’s scenes were shot out-of-sequence (a consequence of an absurdly tight shooting-schedule with a lot of scenes in different locations) and Carpenter never wanted Curtis to be confused about how scared Laurie was at any specific moment, he’d say, "Here's about a 7, here's about a 6, and the scene we're going to shoot tonight is about a 9 ½.” Curtis had different facial expressions and scream volumes for each level on the meter.

 

Carpenter's direction for Castle was even more minimal; when Castle asked what Michael’s motivation was for a particular scene, Carpenter replied that his motivation was to walk from one set marker to another and "not act." In another scene, he directed Castle to examine his latest Victim as if it "were a butterfly collection."

 

Back in the old days, when this film was released, movies stayed in theaters longer than five minutes. This allowed, rarely, but importantly, for a second chance marketing, word-of-mouth. This was core to "Halloween’s" success, because it was initially under-marketed and early reviews were mixed to hostile, but even worse, mostly non-existent (Critic Ebert gave it a glowing review, but it was not published till the next year). When the film shocked everyone by its success. It grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States and $23 million internationally for a total of $70 million worldwide, becoming one of the most profitable independent films ever made.

 

Over time “Halloween” would gain critical respect because of the obvious quality of its Filmmaking, but recognition of that wasn’t completely lacking in even the very early, hostile, reviews. I found a similar strain in the sparse, contemporary, reviews of Carpenter’s first two films. Critics seemed to recognize how talented the young Director was, but considered the Genres (low-budget SF, urban Actioner, and Horror) limited and childish and wanted him to grow up and made real movies.

 

Compare this to the career of Director Bob Clark, the other father of the Slasher. He did “grow up and make real movies” after “Black Christmas” which was his third and final Horror film. A decent percentage of what followed was legitimately excellent, “Murder by Decree” (1979), “Tribute” (1980), and there was at least one universally acclaimed Masterpiece, “A Christmas Story” (1983), but having been fully accepted into the grown-up industry of big-studio productions, he also got trapped in the (well-paying) grind of “director-for-hire” and produced many things that were in their own way trashier than his Horror (examples: “Porky’s” (1981) and “Baby Geniuses” (1999)).

 

Also, the hostile reviews were not exactly lacking in legitimate points. In fact, everything that “Halloween” deserves to be condemned for was aptly summed up by Carpenter himself, though he was laughing when he said this:

 

"True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you."

 

I found Pauline Kael’s scathing review to be perversely complimentary, "Carpenter doesn't seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions…Maybe when a horror film is stripped of everything but dumb scariness—when it isn't ashamed to revive the stalest device of the genre (the escaped lunatic)—it satisfies part of the audience in a more basic, childish way than sophisticated horror pictures do."

 

So yes, trash can be touched by genius, but most Critics were not ready for that in 1978. But the success of this film may have forced the critical establishment to open their eyes and hearts was another one of “Halloween’s” achievements. Only four years later, “Evil Dead” would arrive, its script was even thinner, its characterization and acting non-existent, it gory extreme like we had never seen before, and the sexualizing of the violence against women was indescribably OTT. But it was also exploding with inventive technique and wildly entertaining, announcing the arrival of a fierce new talent, Sam Rami. By 1981, the critics had learned and even Maslin gave "Evil Dead" a positive review.

 

“Halloween” became the first really important US Horror Film franchise since the days of the Universal Monsters (the Monsters started to appear in 1923, the franchising began after 1931, and did not peter off until mid-1950s). Given how narrow the material was, and the audience’s obvious expectation that each sequel being a Slasher, it is not surprising that the franchise was mostly contemptable.

 

“Halloween II” (1981, so made when the Slasher craze was already out-of-control) introduced the Occult themes more explicitly, and revealed that Laurie was in fact Michael’s sister, though she did not know this. The Occult themes would eventually take on a Conspiratorial aspect in later films, but never really amount to much of anything. (Note: to pad the running time for the TV premier of the first film, new footage was shot for the original film during the sequel’s production, so depending on which version of “Halloween” you watch, maybe these themes are already introduced in the “original.”).

 

The biggest problem with this film and virtually all that followed, was they needed to be mostly about silent Michael wandering around and stabbing people more than anything else, so the second films new Hospital setting doesn’t really transform the story. It is notable that Laurie is a less interesting character because she was already sedated by Doctors when Michael came for her. After this film Curtis left the series.

 

Carpenter chose not to direct this one and seems to have written the screenplay under protest; he described the writing as “mainly dealt with a lot of beer, sitting in front of a typewriter saying 'What the fuck am I doing? I don't know.'” He handed the Directing reigns over to Rick Rosenthal, who was barely more than a film student, and though his craftmanship was able enough, but not enough to fill this empty bucket.

 

With “Halloween III: The Season of the Witch” (1981), Carpenter had a legitimately interesting idea that should’ve worked, but didn’t. Carpenter hoped the franchise wouldn’t become an endless string of Slashers, so not direct sequels of each other (no Michael, no Laurie, no Doctor Samuel), but thematic sequels. He hired one of his idols, Scriptwriter Nigel Kneale of “Quatermass” fame (first TV miniseries 1953), to write the script, which was witty and weird, concerning a Halloween Mask-Maker who worships the Old Gods and is plotting to Destroy the World (Dan O'Herlihy was wonderful in the role).

 

The problem was that Wallace, Carpenter’s very able Art-Director on the first film, was given the Directing reigns and wasn’t very good.

 

Kneale demanded his name be taken of the credits because of the changes Wallace made in the script and would be saying bad things about the adoring Carpenter for the rest of his life. I may be the only person on the continental USA that actually enjoyed this film.

 

So, with “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers” (1988) the franchise returned to Slasher-dom. From this point on, Carpenter’s involvement, even though credited as a Producer, was nominal-to-non-existent. I lost any interest in the franchise at this point, encountering the next five films only while channel surfing on TV and watching only the 1989 & 1995 outings from beginning to end, and really not even those two, they were background noise while I did housework. Regarding the large chunks of all I actually did pay attention to, there's a familiar phrase that is apt here, “The less said about them the better,” except I must linger on two things:

 

Pleasance stayed with the series until “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meters” (1995), and he was really fine Actor, he did lend some class to the proceedings, but couldn’t alter the fact that any Slasher sequel is beating a dead horse (actually, the whole sub-Genre was already beating a dead horse by 1980) and by the 1995 film, it was long past the time to call the ASPCA for the abuse. Pleasance died during the post-production of that one, so his anchoring presence was gone forever. Though abominably bad, the franchise was still profitable, the Producers felt they needed to waste more of our time, but also needed for a new hook.

 

Somehow, someone, talked Cutis in to returning despite her career transcending low-budget Horror long before. She starred in the next two films, “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” and “Halloween: Resurrection” (1998 and 2002, respectively) and a potentially interesting element was introduced, that Laurie, our “final girl” is now an adult who struggles with her old traumas (this was apparently lifted from “Scream” (1996), a film that affectionately mocked the “Halloween” series). But that is not nearly as well explored as it should’ve been, because a Slasher, is ultimately just a Slasher, and what the movies were really about is about silent Michael wandering around and stabbing people more than anything else.

 

Finally, even the financers knew they were eating their own tails. Did they give up?

 

HELL NO!

 

Next, they rebooted the franchise with two films directed by Rob Zombie, remakes of “Halloween” and “Halloween II” (released in 2007 & 2009, respectively). Zombie is an exceptionally frustrating Director as he’s clear and skilled and inventive craftsman, but all of his films, though mostly well-made, are shockingly bad. He seems to smugly hate anything that anyone else would consider good cinema and chooses to grotesquely self-indulge the lowest forms of nihilism.

 

Here, these film’s fail for different reasons than in most of Zombie’s cinema. Here the problem is the same as in all Slasher sequels fail, (do I have to say it a third time?) what the movie is really about is about silent Michael wandering around and stabbing people more than anything. But Zombie, who Screenwriter, included long flashbacks exploring the characters of ten-year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) and his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie, the Director’s wife) in some depth, as we are shown the abusive household and Micheal's early days in the sanitarium. These flashbacks are more interesting than the main story of both films. Had Zombie made one prequel, instead of two by-the-book remakes, this could’ve been his masterpiece.

 

Zombie's efforts didn't prove to be fan-favorites, but the franchise still wasn't over.

 

The next film, “Halloween” (2018), much to my surprise, actually won me over. As a direct sequel to the first film, ignoring everything that happened during the interceding thirty years, dropping the sub-plots of Occultism and Laurie being Michael’s secret sister. It brings Curtis back as Laurie and explores the consequentialism of her trauma in greater depth than the 1998 & 2002 films. 

 

In the years in-between the first film and this one, Laurie built a family, ruined it with her paranoid obsessions, and now lives as a crazy hermit in the woods. She occasionally journeys into Haddonfield to try, and fail, to reconnect with her estranged daughter (Judy Greer).

 

Michael (Castle returns to the role) escapes from the sanitorium, and his face is deftly obscured through camera tricks until he finally finds a mask to cover it. His victims are wholly random for most of the film, but fate is drawing him back to Laurie. This was a deft move, because though Laurie is convinced of his return, but doesn’t yet know he’s escaped. This choice gave the film three different threads unfolding largely independently but would inevitably collide. Michael provided the required body count (it is a Slasher after all), and in between the kills, the relationship between mother and daughter, and the daughter’s relationship with her teenage friends, is explored.

 

Directed with real distinction by David Gordon Green, this is first film in the series since the original that had really stand-out Cinematography and lighting, by Michael Simmonds. The lighting especially struck me, it played across the expressionless rubber mask in a way that hinted it might reveal who Michael really is, but of course it never does.

 

And it is still didn't end.

 

Because this was the biggest-selling Slasher ever ($225.5 million), more so than the original (note: the original’s $70 million is not inflation adjusted in this paragraph), there were two more films made and the last, "Halloween Ends" (2022) was promised to definitively put the series to bed. Though pleased with the 2018 film, it was not enough to restore my faith in the franchise, and I didn't watch either one. The were both poorly reviewed.

 

Trailer:

Halloween (1978) Trailer - YouTube