Hey let’s start with Halloween(1978), one of the most influential horror films of the past eternity. Breaking news: It’s still awesome. And yes, it sickens me that I feel compelled to put the year after the title so as it differentiate it from the unabashed disaster that was Rob Zombie’s remake. Did you know Michael Myer’s used to be a vaguely feminine pudgy kid who rebels by saying “Fuck you!” to authority figures? And that his home life was a cliché terrible white trash bonanza? And that he’s a silly looking giant? And that all of the Myers’ character mystique can be easily ruined by these revelations?
Ugh. Sorry, we’re talking about the original, not my fan boy rage at the new one. I don’t need to recap friggin Halloween for you, right? Right. So let’s just hit on some bullet points for now.
– That mask. I’ve heard every pretentious explanation of why it’s scary from the old standard of “You can project your fears onto it! It’s a blank canvas!” to “Wait, is that Shatner?!” and they all make a fair point. I’m going to go with it just being terribly unsettling.
– Donald Pleasance as Dr. Sam Loomis. Everything Loomis says is either ominous or epic to a degree that no other man could pull off such psychotic dialogue without looking like an idiot. But Pleasance does. The film features the first time that he tries to reason with Michael, a trend that would continue for several sequels despite Michael obviously not giving a shit about reason at this point. A wonderful unhinged performance. “I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, 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 what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… *evil*”. I need a beer and justification for me saying this quote in every day life. Just once. That’s all I want.
– John Carpenter is good at directing movies. I have no explanation for what happened to his career after this. I have no idea why things like Princes of Darkness, Christine and The Fog exist. He did have The Thing remake and that rocks socks, but everything else has been either boring or horrendously bad. I don’t get it, he’s like a Hitchock/Argento hybrid in this film and not 5 years later, he was trying to convince me that cars that drive themselves are terrifying. Dude, put on the fucking parking break already.
– Jamie Lee Curtis is not attractive in any decade.
– Not to sodomize a wounded horse here, but the brilliance of the original film is that there is no motivation given or even attempted to be found. Michael is simply a living, breathing instrument of destruction. He’s not mad at Daddy, he’s not trying to axe a little sister and he’s not part of a Druidic cult. He’s just killing people and he won’t stop. And that’s it.
Still an all time classic and so far beyond what we’re getting at this time that I am almost reduced to pathetic tears. Live long Michael. Live long. Just not in God awful remakes.
