Cherished Cinema

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Hello all.

It is sort of strange how the first two posts were films I had never seen before, and the following two are films that I have seen before. I could not tell you how old I was the last time I saw this film. If I had a guess I would say around eight or nine. I switched this film with another because a) tomorrow is Halloween so it is only fitting and b) I have yet to sit down and watch the fourth film on the original list. I feel as if just about everyone has seen this film so a warning should not be necessary.

This film’s opening is excellent. The camera provides a first person view of a house, as he/she searches the house and eventually finds the woman. As we suspected, the camera’s view is an actual character. This is confirmed through the woman’s recognition of the character (as she screams “Michael!”). The viewer is kept in this point of view until the parents pull up and the camera pulls back off of Michael to reveal he is only a child and that this is clearly Halloween. You are probably asking yourself, “What is so ‘excellent’ about this?” Sure, it’s a common feature (or gimmick depending on how you look at it) of horror films throughout the 70s and 80s, but in this film, it skillfully sets the tone and is genuinely haunting. This is also the last time the viewer gets this point of view, from here on out, even in scenes where Michael is the main focus, the viewer gets a third person viewpoint from a view from behind his shoulder.

I absolutely love the two different plotlines. The primary one focusing on Michael’s pursuit of Laurie and the secondary being that of the doctor’s pursuit of Michael. Michael’s pursuit of Laurie is fantastic. The scenes where he haunts the neighborhood girls, which is accompanied with the film’s wonderful score, are the most memorable scenes in the film for me. They are exceptionally well done and absolutely crucial to the film’s climax. The film also has a couple of unforgettable lines, the first being Laurie saying over the phone “I’ll kill you if this is a joke,” as her friend is being brutally strangled and murdered on the other line. The last falls into the wisdom of children, after Michael had been shot several times and subsequently fallen out of a window, a child says, “You can’t kill the boogeyman.” And of course, the kid is right as the viewer is then shown that Michael’s body is no longer there.

Overall, this is an excellent film. I am curious to see how people who are big into horror feel about at. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed revisiting it.

Thank you for reading!