To call John Carpenter's 1978 feature Halloween "influential" would be akin to saying "the sky is blue." Although many would argue that Bob Clark's Black Christmas from four years earlier was the true impetus for the slasher explosion, Carpenter's film succeeds and surpasses for a host of reasons.
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Halloween, the story of a masked, unstoppable killer returning to wreak havoc in his hometown fifteen years after murdering his sister, strikes a nerve chiefly because of its setting. Never mind the sorority house in Black Christmas; the backwoods farmhouse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; or even Friday the 13th's Camp Crystal Lake: Halloween is a gripping stalker tale set in your own backyard and mine.
Haddonfield, Illinois, a fictitious locale created for the movie, is a largely unremarkable place, save for the horrific occurence in 1963, when six-year-old Michael Myers brutally murdered his teenaged sister Judith with a butcher knife.
The rotten kid has been detained in Smith's Grove Sanitarium ever since, until one rainy, October night eighteen years later, he escapes and returns to his Haddonfield, bent on finishing the job.
The characters of the tale are fairly standard. Jamie Lee Curtis, in a star-making feature debut, plays Laurie Strode, a plain-Jane high school senior who doesn't date (though she'd like to) and who uses her babysitting duties as an excuse for not more actively pursuing leisure. Her two best friends Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles) constantly chastise Laurie for her spinster-like ways.
But with Michael Myers (Nick Castle) back in town, Laurie is suddenly seeing menacing images when she's in class, or walking down the sidewalk this Halloween. Fortunately, also in town is Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance), who will become the key protagonist for practically the entire franchise. Loomis has been Myers' case-worker since 1963, and he is diligent in his efforts to track down and stop Myers before he can engage in any more mayhem.
To look at the original Halloween as a singular film and ignore the sequels (much as many purists prefer to do), it unfolds in a wonderfully subtle manner. Carpenter not only directed but also composed and performed the irrefutably haunting piano-based musical score. Despite the fact that five follow-up tales were filmed (I don't count the incongruous Halloween 3 here), Carpenter's original exists very well on its own. It's a complete story, from startling start to frightening finish. Halloween's final moments, in which the villain is seemingly vanquished but nonetheless seems to live on, gave a lot of viewers nightmares in 1978. I know, because I was one of them.
However, the smart money in Hollywood decided that another tale needed to be told. And the following tales, while never comparing to the original, were at worst acceptable. Again, many purists will disagree and maintain that the Halloween sequels were unnecessary follow-ups that demeaned Carpenter's original masterpiece. Perhaps they have a point, at least on one level. Nonetheless, the following installments could occasionally be so damned much fun, starting with Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2 from 1981.
