Scheduled Halloween film for weekend viewing.

JOHN CARPENTER'S HALLOWEEN
For weekend viewing.

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THIS FILM WAS one of the first slasher films, a genre that is usually traced to Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film, Psycho (1960). The influence of Psycho can be seen in the use of the camera in Halloween, especially in the point of view (subjective) shots at the beginning of the film and, later, when Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) walks to Annie's house, both sequences apparently influenced by the opening dolly shot in Psycho and the intercut tracking shots of Norman Bates' home, as Lila (Vera Miles) walks towards it near the end of the film. The influence of an earlier Hitchcock film, Rear Window (1954), is also apparent in the seeing eye motif.
    But Halloween displays its own bold originality, especially in the use of scale (mostly isolated long shots, sometimes long shots following close-ups), a constantly moving camera usually (even when not entirely subjective) from the point of view of the killer, an audacious use of brightly lit shots of a suburban setting, and an hypnotically repetitive, but tuneful, score (composed by the director) that (like the characters in the film) belies the horror the camera sees.
     Effective use is made of the holiday theme, since the pumpkin appears regularly in the film, from the beginning credits, to the lovemaking of the teenage couple in bed, and in the sequence when Laurie walks towards Annie's house. In all cases, the pumpkin at once safely symbolizes horror while also reflecting (in its carved eyes) the true horror behind Michael's empty eyes.
    Slasher films, unlike the traditional horror film, reflects the increasing pessmism of an American society that no longer believes that all social ills can be cured by democratic values, social welfare, or universal education. Evil can no longer be socially defined, controlled, contained, medicated, or defeated, but is a pervasive fact of American life, threatening its most sanitized streets, as in the brightly lit suburban setting of Halloween.

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