October 25th, 1978: The horror genre, half a decade removed from the smashing success of The Exorcist, had begun a quick and sharp slide back into niche circles of film buffs and horny teenagers. In the midst of this, a young John Carpenter released what would become his first commercial success, as well as the film that would define his legacy. It was simply titled Halloween, and in only 91 minutes, it changed the landscape of American horror cinema forever.
It began with an idea, a simple and brutal concept referred to by producer Moustapha Akkad as The Babysitter Murders. On a wild gamble, Akkad and his associates relinquished the project to up-and-coming filmmaker John Carpenter, working alongside his regular collaborator Debra Hill. The pair were given little to work with: a concept, a budget of just over 300,000 dollars, and a production schedule slotted for the sunny month of May in Pasadena, hardly ideal for a film set on Halloween night.
These conditions make the final product even more astonishing in its enduring perfection. The atmosphere captured by Carpenter has become intrinsic to the holiday itself; the blankets of fallen leaves, the soft autumn light, the glowing jack-o-lanterns on every doorstep, and of course Michael Myers, whose iconography has thoroughly permeated pop culture.
Death has many names in this film, Michael Myers being the most recognizable but arguably the least impactful of them. Nick Castle is credited only as “The Shape.” Only the mad Dr. Loomis refers to Michael by name; the rest refer to him simply as the Boogeyman. One thing is made increasingly clear as the night’s horrifying events progress: the thing stalking Laurie Strode and her unfortunate friends is not a man. He is death itself: random, uncaring, omnipresent.
Why is this film so uniquely haunting? What the sequels got wrong, fun as they are, was in placing the importance on Myers the man. The fear he carries is not physical, and can manifest itself only briefly. The horror we experience comes from our compulsion to look at the monster in search of a man; when we look, we see nothing where there should be something. Loomis recalls Michael’s intense stare, behind which lives only blank instinct. He stares not at the wall of his cell but through it, anticipating the night of his eventual return to Haddonfield. He is a walking capsule of the void, alive in the shadows, lurking in the light. The terrifying ending underscores this theme: with its body destroyed, The Shape dissolves back into the streets and homes of Haddonfield, breathing, watching, waiting.
The sequels also abandon Carpenter’s obsession with the gaze. In this film, there is always someone watching. Sometimes it is Michael; other times, it is us. In the most harrowing moments, it is both simultaneously. Carpenter forces us to confront not just the evil which resides in our homes and our backyards, but also the evil within ourselves. It can use us as an access point to reality, or force us to follow its gaze, which we are often more than willing to do. There is a perversity and a satisfaction to looking, and Carpenter capitalizes on both; we condemn Michael’s cold gaze even as we adopt it ourselves.
This film’s staying power in the lexicon of horror, as well as its massive influence on the genre in decades to come, are indicative of Carpenter’s masterful understanding of fear. Evil and death are universally understood concepts that manifest in intense anxiety. Carpenter evokes that anxiety flawlessly in a relatively simple story that strikes at our hearts and minds. Even now, nearly half a century later, Halloween serves as a grim reminder of death’s promise, waiting for us even in the most mundane places. It isn’t hard to spot, if you’re willing to look.
Shaking, alive only by chance, Laurie exclaims: “It was the Boogeyman!” A defeated Dr. Loomis can only reply with what he has known all along:
“As a matter of fact, it was.”
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