Halloween (

1978

) ½

Discussions of when genres begin and end quickly become bogged down in tedious semantics. The slasher, being perhaps the most over-analyzed sub-genre of horror, is especially vulnerable to this sort of trivialities. Hence, you get plenty of opinionated nerds like me, all of whom claim a different film as the progenitor of the sub-genre. There are those who point to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) as the first real slasher, then those that argue that Black Christmas (1974) is the real origin point, and even those pretentious fops who say Psycho (1961) is somehow the original slasher despite adhering to none of the sub-genre's rules (this latter group is usually the sort who are loath to attribute any cinematic innovation to a director not fawned over by the intelligentsia). But perhaps more than any other movie, Halloween is cited as the first true slasher. The reasons for this are varied, part of it is the bias that the first movie in a given genre has to be the best and that all subsequent attempts are just shameless cash-grabs. Here, they are working backwards, since Halloween is one of the best in the genre, it must consequently be the first. Others view the existence of a virgin final girl as an essential component of the slasher, which is something Halloween's credible rivals lack (the final girl of Black Christmas (1974) for example has just had an abortion before the film's events begin to unfold). More important though is the film's commercial success, Black Christmas (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) both made money, but Halloween was a phenomenon. Following its release, every two-bit hack with a camera and a bucket of pig's blood realized that a successful Halloween knock-off was a license to print money. Since so many subsequent slashers were copying Halloween's model, it's unsurprising that the genre would the original so closely. But as I said, this is only so much tedious semantics, whether Halloween is the first true slasher or merely the point at which the genre gained enough mainstream success to inspire legions of derivative copy-cats is immaterial. What matters to us is whether Halloween is any good, and while I am far from the film's biggest admirer, I have to admit yes, it is a very good movie and nearly a great one.

15 Years ago, on Halloween night Michael Myers killed his sister at their home in Haddonfield Illinois, he was six years old. After spending the last decade and a half in an asylum, Myers has just made his escape and has come back home to carve a bloody path through any teenagers he can get his hands on and any authority figures that try to interfere. Most of those authority figures have no idea that Myers is en route to Haddonfield, regarding the warnings of his shrink Dr. Samuel Loomis as only so much nonsense. Loomis is, of course, correct, and it's only a matter of hours before Meyers has returned home, absconded with his sister's gravestone and acquired a creepy, expressionless Halloween mask to disguise his identity.

Myer's targets are a group of teenage girls, two of them Laurie Strode and Annie Brackett, are stuck babysitting while the third girl Lynda van der Klok is just looking for a chance to screw her boyfriend. To this end, Annie paws off her young charge on Laurie, who is stuck entertaining the two kids with the late-night creature feature. At least it's a good selection, the local TV station is showing The Thing from Another World (1951) and Forbidden Planet (1956). It's not long before Myers turns up to slaughter first Annie, and then Lynda and her boyfriend, before setting his sights on Laurie. If you've seen any slashers in the last four decades I bet you can guess just how that will play out.

The strength of Halloween is in its carefully orchestrated minimalism, from the simplistic piano score to the quiet stark shots of shadowy suburban streets. The theme, composed by director John Carpenter in what I assume was an attempt at economy, is a shameless rip-off of its counterpart from The Exorcist (1973). It makes sense, if you're going to steal a theme song it makes more sense to steal from the best. The photography is thus the more impressive aspect of Halloween. Shot in Southern California, the sets do an adequate job of recreating the look and feel of small-town middle America (though some might balk at the relative lack of seasonal foliage, by late October there's hardly a green leaf left on the trees in Illinois). The shadowy nights both inside and outside are genuinely unnerving, as Myers flits through them like a ghostly image. In one memorable shot, Laurie pounds on the locked door of a house, begging to be let in while Meyers slowly walks towards her, getting progressively larger and larger in the background. It is not the actions of a crazed lunatic, as Loomis assures us Myers is, but with some sort of ancient evil, prepared to kill indiscriminately but in no hurry to wet its fangs.

There is, of course, a central absurdity at the heart of Halloween, that reflects its development from screen to film. Before settling on the title Halloween, John Carpenter had every intention of making a “babysitter” themed horror movie. It was a good idea, as it places teenage girls in relative isolation and elevates them from hapless victims into the de-facto protectors of their young charges which is a good way to raise the stakes of any dangerous situation. However, sometime during the pre-production of Halloween, Carpenter decided to combine his original babysitter movie with a Halloween night horror film. Now, Halloween night is another good setting for a horror movie because all the phony scares hanging around provide perfect cover for the genuine monsters. Indeed, it's surprising that no American horror movie had thought to exploit the idea before Halloween came along. Both babysitters horror and Halloween horror are good ideas on their own, but an obvious problem emerges when they are combined: Kids don't have babysitters on Halloween. If they are young enough to need constant adult-supervision they are out trick-or-treating. Such tasks can be delegated to a babysitter, but even the most in-attentive parents usually like to be around for the big holidays. This is the kind of inconsistency that Halloween gets away with, a gap in logic that less influential or finely crafted films would be castigated for. Halloween is the big brother of the slasher sub-genre, bucking the rules that its younger siblings are forced to follow. It hardly seems fair when you look at it from a distance of 40 years when Halloween is not some sudden cultural phenomenon but instead a well-made exemplar of an over-crowded genre.

Those more familiar with slashers after Friday the 13th (1980) will be surprised at Halloween's relative lack of bloody gore. Indeed, there is less actual gore in Halloween than even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) though just like that movie our memories of the film often betray us and imagine far more blood than was actually present. This is, of course, deliberate, the things being done by Myers to his victims are atrocious, cruel, and should be blood-soaked. In one memorable scene, the masked killed pins a victim to a door, like a ghoulish decoration. There is a twisted imagination to the killings on display throughout the film that is more disturbing than any of the actual effects. We are left to fill in the gaps in the film with our own imagining, and usually, the result is something more disturbing than a special effects artist of the time could conjure up.

Likewise, Myers himself is a blank slate that we can easily project any fears we may have onto. He has no personality whatsoever, the killer does not speak once in the entire runtime and his physical actions have more in common with a robot than a flesh-and-blood human being. This blankness is echoed in Myer's mask, a plain white mask with only the outline of human features (in reality it's a captain kirk mask, spray-painted white). Throughout the film, he's not described as any specific monster, but instead called a “boogie-man” a generic term that could apply to any unknown threat. Hell, in case we missed it the credits list the actor playing the adult Myers as “The Shape.” Just like the gore, we are left to fill in Myer's goals and motivations with our imagination. Invariably we will supply our own reasoning for his vicious killing, and this one will be personally more meaningful, and consequently more frightening for us than any the filmmaker could invent.

Case-in-point, some critics exhibit a desperate need to categorize Halloween as some sort of conservative manifesto. Kendall Philips, the author of Projected Fears, is probably the most outlandish interpretation I've yet seen to this effect. For him, Myers represents an ancient, patriarchal order that is returning to slaughter the wicked and restore a long-passed moral order. But why then does he spend most of his time trying to kill Laurie who is not only a relatively conservative good girl but also as the author himself notes a good surrogate mother who protects the children placed in her charge? Shouldn't a monster-patriarch ignore her completely and focus his attention only on those that have committed some real transgressions? Since Myers is a mere shape, upon which we project our fears and anxieties, these readings of Myers as some primordial patriarch come to “Make American Great Again” tell us more about the personal obsessions of the critics than they do about the film itself. Those of limited imaginations will always seek to place a specific reading on what is essentially a modern-day fable, and those with very limited mind indeed will force this wonderfully rich text into a narrow contemporary political allegory.