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John Carpenter's classic film that set the standard for the slasher genre., 2 April 2001

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

The story of the original Halloween takes advantage of the general public's stereotypical fear of mental patients. They are quite often seen as faceless `crazies,' which, more often than not, are assumed to be dangerous to other people.

Halloween is one of the earlier slasher films, and it was a true role model for countless other mediocre films that would later try to reproduce the suspense that it created, but it has never been equaled. There was very little focus on special effects in Halloween (the film is pretty much void of them), instead, the emphasis was placed heavily on suspense.

The threat of Michael Myers, the relentless killer in this film, is even more real because the movie starts off with Michael as an eight-year-old boy, and he murders his older sister with a carving knife. The fact that Michael does not speak a single word in the entire film, or ANY of the Halloween films for that matter, gives the feeling that he is not only relentless, but also completely uncaring, which is one of the ways that his monstrous and menacing character was created.

Laurie Strode, the other main character, is a slightly introverted high school student who doesn't really get out much, and she turns out to be Michael Myers' sister. They have in common the fact that they are both antisocial (Laurie is slightly, and Michael is completely), and Michael has escaped the mental hospital and returned to Haddonfield, IL, his hometown, to kill Laurie, the same way he killed his other sister 15 years earlier.

Dr. Loomis, Michael's psychiatrist, demonstrates the other theme of Halloween, which deals with the equal relentlessness of the law. He is absolutely determined to bring Michael back to captivity, completely convinced that he will kill again despite having spent 15 years in a mental hospital, and not speaking a single word the entire time. Dr. Loomis is determined to go to any lengths possible to capture Michael Myers, and will not rest until he is captured.

The mask that Michael wears in the film is very important to the atmosphere that surrounds him. It adds to the theme about faceless mental patients. The mask not only has a dull, expressionless look to it, but it is also completely colorless, and this makes it even scarier because it gives Michael a very uncaring and monotonous look without actually showing his real face. While it is unnerving to see a killer's face, the terror created by a faceless and emotionless and relentless killer is by far much more frightening. Also, there are several scenes in the beginning of the movie, before he has obtained his mask from a local store, that show Michael from the neck down, or with just his shoulder in the foreground, or one of his hands, etc. The point is that they do not show his face or even his head until he has his mask on.

Another thing that added to the suspense of the movie was the sound. The sound played a huge role in Halloween, because there was almost no gore at all and virtually no special effects whatsoever. The music was relatively simple, yet provided a very suspenseful atmosphere. John Carpenter, the writer and director of Halloween, said about the sound, `There is a point in making a movie where you experience the final result. For me, it's when I see an interlock of the picture with the music. All of a sudden a new voice is added to the raw, naked-without-effects-or-music footage.' This is clearly achieved in this film, because not only is the theme music very effective in creating atmosphere, but it has also become one of the most famous musical scores in a film in cinematic history.

There is a lot of foreshadowing in this film, such as the scene where Laurie is in a car with a friend, whose father happens to be the town sheriff. He tells the girls that someone broke into the hardware store, and he assumed it was kids because all they stole was a Halloween mask and a few knives. Another small point here that sets Halloween apart from other horror movies is that the person who makes a mistake of this magnitude is usually the first to get killed. This is where the dramatic suspense really starts because even though the characters on screen are totally oblivious, we as the audience know that it was Michael that broke into the store.

When Dr. Loomis and a young nurse go to pick Michael up at the mental hospital to take him to a court hearing, they arrive to find the patients wandering around aimlessly in the pouring rain. It's nighttime, so basically all the viewer sees are several white hospital gowns moving around. The viewer does not see any faces at all, and this shows how Michael has lived for 15 years and he is seen as an insane person, just like all the others. However, he is able to steal the car from Loomis and the nurse, which shows that he is a capable enemy. It is also noteworthy that Loomis acknowledged the unusualness of the mental patients wandering around in the rain at night. That is exactly the kind of thing that a lesser horror film would not bother to address.

The pace of the story is also fairly constant. Once Michael gets to Haddonfield and begins to pursue his sister, the suspense is almost non-stop. John Carpenter ingeniously sets up the film so that the audience is never able to relax. The suspense is constant, and when the real scares come, they are that much more effective. This is a true classic horror film, and once you've seen it, all of these cheesy rip-offs (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legends, even Scream, to a certain extent) will never be the same.

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