Review #84: Halloween (1978)

This review was originally written in October 2020.

October Movie Review #1: Halloween (1976)

Alright, I'm starting October 2020 off with a classic: Halloween, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance!

I've seen this movie once before, a few years ago. I don't think I paid a lot of attention to it because there were a lot of parts I didn't remember (though I've seen the remake so it felt like I did at times). I'll start off with the good: This movie is a solid horror film and certainly is worthy of having been such a foundational progenitor of the slasher subgenre. The characters are likable enough, the setting is as believable as it gets, and this entry is lacking so many of the annoying tropes that pop up in virtually every modern horror film. Although I don't remember having a particularly positive impression of Halloween from the last time I watched it, this time around I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am definitely looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here (as I haven't seen any others in the series except the remake, Season of the Witch, and the 2017 sequel).

I wasn't 100% pleased with the film, though. One thing I couldn't help but notice is that this movie seemed like the epitome of "Tell, Don't Show". Dr. Loomis' entire role in this movie (save for the final scene) consists of talking about how Michael Myers (or, as he is credited, The Shape) is "pure evil" and how he "has black eyes, like the devil's eyes". We're TOLD so much about Myers, and then for the first two-thirds of the movie he doesn't actually DO anything, except just kind of show up in the background every other scene. I get that it's trying to set up a spooky atmosphere (and having Myers show up in the background does a good job of that), but I see no connection whatsoever between Loomis' impression of Myers and what we actually see him do on-screen. Compare this to Jason Voorhees, for example- Jason has basically the same amount of screen presence in each of his films, yet nobody ever credits him with being "pure evil", nor does he need it. If the series were trying to establish some sort of supernatural element to Michael Myers (which, hey, maybe they do later, I don't know) then that would be one thing, but on this watch it just felt like they didn't think the killer was scary enough so they inserted a character whose only role was to talk him up for the whole film to make him seem scarier.

And on that note, another negative is that Dr. Loomis seemed incredibly pointless (like I said, all he really did was predict doom and gloom for most of the film), and his plan- if he even had one- was laughable at best. Myers escapes, so he tracks him down to Haddonfield and... stands outside his childhood home? That's it? He stood outside the house, sort of hidden behind a bush, and for the majority of the timeline of the film he's just standing there, watching the house. What exactly was he expecting? For Myers to just walk up to the house? That would only work if Myers came to the house from one specific direction (because otherwise he'd be coming up behind Loomis...) and it seems like it would have been a much better plan to wait INSIDE the house. Also- it took him the entire night to realize that the car Myers stole (the one Loomis himself was riding in to visit the asylum) was PARKED LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE. Again, what was Loomis' plan? Stand next to a bush waiting for Myers to just walk right up in the open, but only from the left side of the house, and all the while Loomis didn't even look at his surroundings? The only thing of any consequence that he did in the entire film is shooting Michael at the end, but considering how that turned out I kind of wish he was cut out of the film entirely (and Laurie just kicked Myers out the window or something on her own). But then the spooky villain would seem a lot less spooky without someone telling us how spooky we're supposed to think he is.

This movie was also very, very slow, by modern standards. That's a good thing and a bad thing, as the tension does slowly ramp up (and being one of the creators of the Slasher subgenre, I'm not saying I would have preferred it to have been faster right out of the gate) but combined with several scenes of "Hey, you should be scared of this guy, he's sooooooo evilllllll" it was very obvious to me that it took about an hour of runtime before the action actually started.

One more thing- considering how the modern perception of Slasher Rules dictate that "If you have sex or do drugs, you're going to get killed" for some reason, it was definitely strange to see Jamie Lee Curtis smoking a joint in this film. It just drives home how these "rules" were something fans came up with later, and weren't actually "rules" at the time.

Anyway, like I said, I still thoroughly enjoyed this film, and I'm glad I gave it a second watch after not particularly liking it several years ago. Here's to hoping the sequel is just as good!

Overall Score: 7/10 Aviator-Wearing Ghosts

Favorite Kill: When Myers lifted and pinned the guy to the pantry door with a knife