Halloween, Forty Years On
Originally published in the Strathclyde Telegraph, October 2018. Print edition.
Halloween was my mother’s first and last horror movie. She would’ve been sixteen when it came out, but its mention still warrants shudders. “Terrifying,” she tells me. “Why would you want to see that?”
This is where my mother and I differ: one of us (moi) can appreciate a good scare. It’s somewhat surprising then that before this week I’d never seen the original Halloween, John Carpenter’s 1978 horror staple. With a whole lot of built-up excitement, I entered the cinema expecting to be enchanted, transported to that both gritty and innocent seventies horror universe. What the film ultimately left me with, though, was just a lot to be desired.
Halloween is the tale of Michael Myers (Nick Castle and Tony Moran), bogeyman incarnate, who escapes from an asylum, steals a nurse’s car, and books it to his home town of Haddonfield, Illinois. As you’ve probably already guessed, he isn’t there to hug grandparents or get drunk with old friends in the school car-park. He’s there to kill. The victims? A group of girls next door, stalked by Meyers in their comfy middle- class suburb. The girl who separates herself from the rest is Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), the well-mannered book worm and possibly cine- ma’s most famous babysitter. Without seeing the film, we can already guess how it’s going to play out, all screaming and knives and maybe a teen sex scene or two. In 1978, though, this wasn’t common script.
So what’s aged well, and what hasn’t?
The cinematography by Dean Cundey is first- class, especially impressive in consideration of the film’s famously low-budget. The soft, floating panoramic shots are good enough to eat. We see a suburb decorated with autumn leaves, a world portrayed with realism but never at the expense of appearing stark or cold; cinematically, this world is very much alive. Light- ing is treated with the utmost care, creating plenty of scenarios for Myers to emerge from the darkness as a terrifying, murderous ghost.
If the technical quality doesn’t age the film, the misogyny does; sexist attitudes are a tedious presence throughout. Annie and Lynda — both characterised by their hot bodies and voracious sexual appetites — are the Girls Who Died Because They Like SexTM, a concept which has since become cemented within the horror genre. The ‘Madonna’ to Annie and Lynda’s ‘Whore’ is Laurie. “Guys think I’m too smart”, Laurie sighs as she grips an impressive amount of textbooks to her chest. It’s no surprise, then, that Laurie is the last one standing after the villain has killed everyone else. Her pragmatism and “good girl” ethos are what give her the power to survive when no one else can.
I’m sure that these paradigms of horror didn’t feel as tired in 1978. I don’t want to cut the film too much slack, though. Slashers such as Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973) pre-dated Hallow- een in its conceptualisation of the “final girl” convention. Likewise, Carrie (1976) featured female power in a far more nuanced — arguably feminist — light. Halloween may have set the standard for the suburban teen-slasher, but even as a fan of these films, I do have to question whether or not this is something to be proud of. Watching Halloween in a packed cinema in 2018, several scenes inspired laughter — there’s a part when Annie, after procuring the world’s smallest stain on her sweater, strips down and confusingly gets stuck in a window after locking herself in the laundry room, panty-clad ass in the air. And while we can all laugh at the absurd- ity of the male-gaze in these scenes, we can’t just chalk this up to cinema of yore. Is modern day horror any better? It may be subtler with its objectification, yes; but the impact of Carpenter’s prurient gaze is still something modern cinema contends with today.
Halloween lives on through modern day slashers and kids trick-or-treating in a Michael Meyers mask, but it also lurks more subtly in other genres with its hypnotising and clever cinema- tography. Its cultural impact almost defies com- parison, but how does this holiday classic translate forty years later to a horror-fan watching it for the first time? Well — maybe I should have listened to my mother.
It’s John Carpenter: Master of Horror season at the Glasgow Film Theatre, perfect for anyone who wants to experience Carpenter’s cult clas- sics on the big screen. Anyone aged between 15 and 25 can get a free card from GFT that entitles them to £5.50 tickets to any standard screening.
