Halloween: 31 Days of Horror
Happy Halloween! Hope you enjoyed our 31 Days of Horror!
The few note melody. The Michael Myers mask. The kitchen knife. Halloween isn’t just a holiday for some horror junkies: it’s the perfect slasher picture, crafted by John Carpenter and frequent collaborator Debra Hill. A few features into his career, Carpenter followed up on the cult classic Assault on Precinct 13 with a passion project that would go on to help redefine horror forever. Yes, there have been influential slasher pictures before and after Halloween, but this film really upped the vulnerability of the victims, as if you could feel every ounce of hurt on screen. You weren’t a distant observer. You were the victim. Halloween might feel a little by-the-numbers now, but that’s because Carpenter and Hill decided what those numbers were.
Instead of having a specific murderer or monster, Michael Myers was a blank mask: a William Shatner mask painted white. The eyeless, blank stare that Myers delivered — on top of a tabula rasa face, where any one could be super imposed onto — is iconic due to this creative design. There’s no feeling of any sort. Who wants to be killed, first off, and by someone that shows absolutely no response in return? It’s as if your life meant nothing: not even to a murderer that thrives on slaying. Even knowing what face lies underneath doesn’t rectify the damage already done. For every great villain, however, there has to be a hero worth championing, and that would be Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Psycho scream queen Janet Leigh) as Laurie Strode: a symbol of uncertainty (a teen figuring it all out), nurturer (a babysitter), and an everyday person, shoved in the middle of a nightmare. This is her coming-of-age tale, as she ruthlessly faces Myers head-on. It might seem obvious, given the aftermath of the Halloween franchise and lore (especially with the recent sequels), but still seeing Strode rise to the occasion is a triumph of the horror genre.
The pairing of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers is a horror match made in hell.
The idea that a psychopath could be following you at any moment is discomforting enough. To have Halloween take place in the very neighbourhood of anyone that is watching is something else. Usually, horror takes you elsewhere. Halloween made your own homes a torture chamber. Not only that, but the use of the titular holiday is rather smart: Halloween is usually associated with monsters, spirits, or creations (outside of dressing up as wholesome things or iconic characters and recognizable caricatures) that haunt, not real people that go on killing sprees. Putting a real feeling face on a day that already divides communities was rather ghastly, but Carpenter and Hill did it anyway. With a slim budget — allowing Carpenter and Hill to essentially have all hands on deck with this classic — Halloween had to make its weaknesses its strengths. It does just that, establishing a chilling void driven by the barest essentials (even musically, with Carpenter’s eerie score). To me, Halloween almost feels like the horror Rocky: a cinematic labour of love made with any means necessary, that developed into an unstoppable franchise that became its own entity entirely. You can’t discredit the oomph that the original Halloween carries: it’s as solid as the slasher genre can be.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.