Halloween (1978)

The escapee of a psychiatric hospital comes back to a small town, Haddonfield where fifteen years ago, he was in prey to a deadly madness. The doctor Loomis (Donald Pleasance) thinks that he will come back to this town to commit grisly murders. His thoughts will be confirmed when Laurie’s friends (Jamie Lee Curtis) are murdered, and she might also be one of his victims.

“Halloween” (1978) which put Jamie Lee Curtis on the map (but she would do better with Charles Crichton’s so British “a Fish called Wanda”, 1988) heralded a genre or sub-genre which has been thriving on the North American continent for nearly thirty years now: the teenage slasher movie. The majority of these films are modeled in the same mold: a group of teenagers wrestling with an invincible, sanguinary serial killer who slashes them one after the other.

This genre will be tapped again and again and will give masterworks like Wes Craven’s terrifying, terrific “Scream” (1996) but also turkeys by the dozen: the likes of “Friday the 13th” (only the very first one is good) and saucy spoofs: the “Scary Movie” saga.

John Carpenter isn’t a mastermind of the horror/fantasy film even of the B movie. In general, his camera work, some of his technical abilities are plagued by weak screenplays and irritable features pertaining to him. “Halloween” is his most palatable effort, though. The thrifty scheme according to which he builds a latent tension to make the audience wound up and queasy is perhaps easy, simplistic (long traveling’s and camera movements to delay the murders) but rather efficient although not mind-boggling.

I blamed Carpenter for the limited potential of his scenarios, it’s a bit evident in “Halloween”: different steps of the story interlock often in a predictable way and some well-worn tricks aren’t very welcome (Laurie’s little brother who claims having seen the bogey man (the monster in reality) outside. The latter looks out of the window and… you guessed it). That said, Carpenter’s expertise to make fear last makes forget the drawbacks of the scenario.

Maybe the ones who will discover the film today will be disappointed. Since Carpenter’s break-through film, the crowds have seen so many similar stories to this one. That said, it is better to watch it and skip its lousy sequels.