Halloween is as pure and undiluted as its title. In the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a teenage baby sitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to survive a Halloween night of relentless terror, during which a knife-wielding maniac (Tony Moran) goes after the town’s hormonally charged youths.
Director John Carpenter takes this simple situation and orchestrates a superbly mounted symphony of horrors. It’s a movie much scarier for its dark spaces and ominous camera movements than for its explicit bloodletting (which is actually minimal).
Composed by Carpenter himself, the movie’s freaky music sets the tone; and his script is laced with references to other horror pictures, especially Psycho. The baby sitter is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, the real-life daughter of Psycho victim Janet Leigh; and the obsessed policeman played by Donald Pleasence is named Sam Loomis, after John Gavin’s character in Psycho.
In the end, though, Halloween stands on its own as an uncannily frightening experience–it’s one of those movies that had audiences literally jumping out of their seats and shouting at the screen.
Produced on a low budget ($320,000), the picture turned a monster profit, and spawned many sequels, none of which approached the 1978 original it quality or terror. The film which ushered in the modern age of horror stands well above its many sequels and clones because John Carpenter’s taut direction makes it truly scary.
Curtis in her debut role plays a babysitter who must protect herself from the deadly Michael Myers a mental institution escapee who killed his sister on Halloween fifteen years earlier. The highest–grossing independent movie ever made at that time, Halloween is also one of most frightening films ever made.
Character to watch: Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.
Journal your answers to the following questions after you watch the movie.
- How does this particular character’s journey compare with yours?
- Did the character develop certain characteristics during the movie that you have or that you would like to have? If so, what are those characteristics?
- What obstacles did this character face? What was his or her biggest challenge?
- What would you have done differently if you had been in the same position as the character?
- Is this character the type of person you would be friends with? Why or why not?