He's Not Just Carving Pumpkins
Nothing goes better with the Bogeyman than Halloween, a festivity that traces its roots to a pagan holiday and features people dressed in costumes trying to scare the hell out of each other. Okay, not all the costumes are scary but, in a perfect world, they would be.
Given this backdrop, its not surprising that a figure of fear would arise to be inextricably linked with the holiday. That figure is Michael Myers, the soulless killing machine who leaves his bloody boot prints through director John Carpenter's 1978 thriller, Halloween.
Carpenter not only directed the film but co-wrote it with ex-wife Debra Hill, and composed the soundtrack.
The film opens in Haddonfield, Ill., with 16-year-old Judith Myers (Sandy Johnson)
Michael Myers winds up institutionalized at the Illinois State Mental Hospital under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Loomis tries to help the boy but eventually concludes that Myers is a dangerous psychopath who should remain permanently locked up. Then, one night, 15 years after committing his crime, a now-adult Myers (Tony Moran) escapes from his padded cell. Loomis believes Myers is headed for Haddonfield and up to deadly business.
Loomis drives to Haddonfield, where he warns local lawman Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), "Death has come to your little town, sheriff." Which, of course, turns out to be true.
The perspectives Carpenter uses gives Halloween much of its cinematic impact. His use of slow-motion pans and ominous camera angles give the typical suburban town of Haddonfield a sense of looming dread. Then, as the story progresses, Carpenter thrusts the viewer into the midst of the terror. As critic Roger Ebert observed, “Halloween is a visceral experience--we aren't seeing the movie, we're having it happen to us."
While inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Halloween is a much different movie. True, both films feature psychotic killers and, oddly enough, both have characters named Sam Loomis, but, beyond these similarities, they differ in widely in tone, setting, plot and approach.
For one thing, the murderer in Psycho doesn't’t really go out looking for victims. They come to him. Michael Myers is a stalker. The threat of danger surfacing unexpectedly while visiting some distant place is much different than the threat of danger right now walking across your lawn to the front door of your home.
Also, the killer in Psycho obviously suffered from childhood abuse and is, in a sense, a victim himself. In Halloween, it’s not really clear what caused Myers to snap so savagely(though it comes after witnessing his older sister and her boyfriend being intimate). Lacking a traumatic incident to blame for Myers' behavior, we accept the verdict of Loomis that Myers is “purely and simply evil” and, thus, undeserving of our sympathy. This difference is reinforced when the killers in the two films react to the carnage they have caused. Psycho's Norman Bates is horrified. Michael Myers looks on with passive curiosity.
Finally, Bates ultimately suffers a complete breakdown as a result of his experiences. He is, though violent and deeply disturbed, very human. Michael Myers appears to completely lack humanity and, in the end, even mortality. Myers also wear a mask, which further depersonalizes him.
Incidentally, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace fashioned the now-famous mask from a commercially made Halloween mask of Star Trek commander Capt. James Kirk, which Wallace bought for $1.98. Wallace enlarged the eye holes and sprayed the mask with pale blue paint.
The Butcher Comes To the 'Burbs
Before the carnage in Haddonfield begins, we see Michael Myers sizing up the community and meet some of the folks who will eventually die at his hands on Halloween night. This is important because it humanizes those in peril and adds to the urgency of their plights.
We also meet Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), a high-school student and babysitter who will face-off against Myers. Strode is an unlikely heroine. In the tradition of some 18th-century Gothic fiction, she is awkward, nervous and shy, yet, when lives are on the line, she musters the courage and stamina to survive and protect her young charges from unspeakable evil. Curtis is also the daughter of Janet Leigh, who played the embezzling beauty Marion Crane who dies in Psycho's famous shower scene.
Strode's fate proves to be better than Crane's was. Strode escapes with a slight wound. Still, the experience has no doubt traumatized her and she must live with the loss of her slaughtered friends. Not to mention the knowledge that she could still join them.
As with other slasher flicks that followed in its wake, Halloween singles out for punishment teens who are sexually active. Yet in no other way does the film condemn teenage promiscuity. Maybe this just reflects the mixed signals about sexuality sent out by society as a whole. Or maybe the sex is just added to make the film more interesting. It may be worth noting, however, that the heroine of Halloween is a virgin.
One might wonder where the adults are while all this slashing is going on. Shouldn't they be protecting the kids? While the adults in Halloween are amiable and concerned, they also are largely helpless to save anyone from the deadly stalker. Until the very end, when Loomis rescues Strode from Michael Meyers' clutches, it’s largely left to the teens to save themselves, if they can.
While setting the thematic blueprint for countless horror flicks of the 1980s and '90s, Halloween contains far less gore than its imitators. Some argue that Halloween and its more graphic slice-and-dice cousins are inherently misogynistic and encourage sadism. Others believe these movies tap into a primal fear of swift and merciless death at the hands of a stranger, and deliver an adrenaline jolt that awakens us to the frailty and impermanence of life. Either way, there's no denying that Halloween succeeds in its primary goal of being truly frightening.
To say that audiences embraced Halloween is an understatement. The film was wildly successful by any economic measure. It reportedly cost $325,000 to make and grossed more than $80 million, giving it one of the highest percentage returns in movie history. To save production costs, Halloween features several actors wearing their own clothes. The entire wardrobe of Jamie Lee Curtis cost $100 at J.C. Penney. The actors were paid little, with the exception of Donald Pleasence, the best-known actor on the shoot, who received $20,000. Curtis earned just $8,000, though the role launched her acting career. Carpenter received a paltry $10,000 to direct, co-write and score Halloween. However, he also received 10 percent of the profits.
The house used as Michael Myers' home in the film still stands in South Pasadena, California. Located at 1000 Mission Street, it most recently housed a chiropractor's office.
In 2006, the Library of Congress selected Halloween for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, an honor reserved for motion pictures that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
