"I owe my entire career to William Shatner" - John Carpenter.
Now most people don't know that the infamous Michael Myers mask is actually a William Shatner mask spray painted white. Most people just see it as one of the most recognizable masks in cinematic horror and the George Washington of the Mount Rushmore of horror.
The story of Halloween is truly a simple story of a crazy man stalking babysitters on Halloween night. This is a very simple plot and yet it set the bar and started a generation of terror and imitators who tried to come at the king but none seem to equal the original.
Halloween follows a six year old boy named Michael Myers who murders his sister on Halloween and is committed to a mental asylum. Fifteen years later Michael escapes from the asylum to return to his home town to continue killing young women on Halloween night. He finds his targets in three ladies particularly the quiet smart one Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). All the while this is happening Myers doctor Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is tracking him trying to reach him in time to stop him from spilling more innocent blood. The film builds tension until it becomes a showdown between Michael and Laurie to see who will be left standing on Halloween night.
Halloween is a movie that scares the hell out of you and does not have any overly gory moments or horrifying imagery. Most of the terror from this film is taken place in the confines of our minds with the tension that is built by director, actors and the all too famous score.
John Carpenter is an amazing director who really is not only a great horror director but also a great filmmaker as well. Carpenter could be given several silly elements and told to scare us and he would be able to do it without breaking a sweat. The man is great at not only knowing how to scare you with visuals but ratchet up the tension with a score all his own that will be left like a bug in your brain for days and days.
The two lead actors Curtis and Pleasence are both amazing in this and are both at very different times in their careers. Curtis being at the very beginning of her career shows amazing promise of being not only a leading lady but being the first ever final girl to appear in a movie. The term final girl means the final woman to survive a horror movie. Curtis not only makes you care about her in the film but causes you to root for her but also want to protect her as the films leading good girl. Halloween would be the start of a long career for Curtis who among doing several great work including Trading Places, True Lies, and recently the show Scream Queens. That being said Curtis has never forgotten where she started. After doing Halloween Curtis would appear in four more of the series and seemed to enjoying doing it. Unlike a lot of people who made their fame off of their first scary movie Curtis embraces it and manages to show us that she can still make it work nearly forty years later.
Pleasence on the other hand was in some of the peak years of his career a little more then a decade before coming off of the Bond film that would make him a house hold name. Pleasence is doing some great work here by playing the man who has tried for a decade and a half to understand and contain evil and is now tasked with keeping it contained. He gives a few rousing speeches throuhout the film and acts as a sort of narrator to the film.
This film is a bench mark in horror and should be watched by anyone who hasn't seen it.
So we leave the sleepy town of Halloween and we are on the final day leaving the question what is the last film in the series of movies. Well I guess we will have to come up with some THING to discuss. For High Weirdness I'm Benjamin Kolton reminding you "It's Only a Movie." "It's Only a Movie."
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