Halloween (1978) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

Still the gold standard. Put together with the skill, design, and refinement of great furniture, a triumph of fluent minimalism that does an extraordinary amount with very little. Like Michael Myers himself, the film is gleefully vicious, but not sadistic. A teasing black humour is woven into the very structure of the film; observe with special care how cleverly Carpenter keeps from revealing his murderer is a child at the start, and how he tempts droolers in the audience with PJ Soles’ tits but does not show them until she’s being strangled. The film possesses a distinctive quality borrowed from the ’50s monster flicks it pays tribute to, in the way it contrasts the easy suburban evening, seeming enevloping in its friendliness even (or especially) with the walpurgis-lite mood of Halloween, with real danger; in that way it most clearly evokes the original The Blob and I Married A Monster From Outer Space, where teens inhabit the night fearlessly as their space, the time they can sneak out, make out, have their own lives unsupervised. And it’s tapping into that real element and the atmosphere of mild paranoia that attends such escapades that makes such films work, and specifically made Halloween such a perfect model and crucial success. Yes, it did pinch, and to a certain extent de-intellectualize, work by Bava and Argento, but it replaced this with a network of references and ideas of its own. Another take on the film I become more sure of is that it’s a celebration of geek power, rather than puritanical morality. Laurie might not be getting laid, but that just means she’s not so distracted that she doesn’t pick up on the warning signs that combust around her. Nerds rule. The End.