Director: John Carpenter
Writers: John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring: Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis
Body Count: 5
Review: On a creepy October 31st in 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers murders his older sister with a kitchen knife. He is locked away in the Smith's grove mental institution, where he sits dormant for fifteen years, not saying a word or acting dangerous at all. He fools everyone except Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), the man put in charge of evaluating Myers.
When Halloween, 1978, arrives, Michael escapes. He flees Smith's Grove and drives to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Once there, he proceeds to stalk a young girl (Jamie Lee Curtis--in her film debut) and her friends. Dr. Loomis pursues Michael to Haddonfield, and searches the town frantically, hoping to stop the inhuman Myers before he can kill again.
Not only is Halloween one of the best HORROR movies ever made, but it's also one of the greatest films ever made--period. I can't think of any other film that connects so perfectly well with a holiday. Halloween is to the Halloween holiday as It's A Wonderful Life is to Christmas--but even more so. No matter what time of year it is, when you watch Jamie Lee Curtis walk along those tree-lined suburban streets, with dead leaves rustling at her feet, you FEEL Halloween.
But Halloween is also an important film for a number of other reasons. It's the film the thrust the slasher genre into the spotlight, making it a commercially viable genre and therefor making it possible for every slasher movie made after it. Without Halloween, there never would have been a Nightmare On Elm Street or a Friday the 13th--without Halloween, there never would have been a Scream or an I Know What You Did Last Summer. It's the movie that started it all, and to this day it remains the absolute best slasher movie ever made.
And, in addition to its artistic merit and it's contribution to the slasher genre, Halloween managed to be both a critical and commecial success. The film was made for a measely $15,000, but went on to gross over $80 million--which made it the highest-grossing, most-succesful independently made film in history well into the 1990s. The film also received the "thumbs up" from esteemed film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who almost never bestow such an honor on a slasher film.
Halloween was followed by seven (so far) sequals, none of which have the impact of the original. If you've never seen Halloween, do yourself a favor and rent it IMMEDIATELY.
Read the Halloween screenplay!
