Year after year, sequel after inferior sequel, esteem for John Carpenter’s original 1978 Halloween only grows, for bloody (or in the case of this film, famously bloodless) good reason. The Halloween franchise is currently among the most popular horror series in the world, and it all starts here. In fact, it’s easy to argue the modern age of horror starts here. The most famous slasher has been ripped off more times than anyone could track, and Carpenter’s less-is-more, endlessly stylish approach is year zero to so many filmmakers starting out.
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In 2023, there are those who might say Halloween isn’t as terrifying as more modern films that follow a louder, more frenetic aesthetic. Also, many viewers have only watched Halloween on a phone, a tablet or a TV. It was meant to be experienced on the big screen late at night—and on crackling film, if you ever find the opportunity. Late master of horror Wes Craven has said the true fans go to scary movies to stretch our minds, to have an experience where something is lifted and we leave on a high, exhilarated. Horror can be a kind of mental boot camp. Halloween fits all of that, like no other film. These are the most frightening moments in Carpenter’s ingenious all-time genre landmark.
10 The Shape stalks Laurie and her friends
Before Halloween, the idea of a malevolent force in an ordinary American town hadn’t been done to death, in fact it was novel. After a violent opening, the picture pivots and establishes a trio of likable teenage girls spearheaded by bookworm Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first film role, that launched her to stardom).
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Along streets of Hollywood and Pasadena that pass for fictional Haddonfield, Illinois thanks to some hand-painted leaves from the props department, The Shape (Nick Castle) silently stalks his prey. Along with then-boyfriend Carpenter, late producer Debra Hill co-wrote the girls’ dialogue for added realism and ordinariness to contrast the looming threat.
9 Opening titles
Carpenter has made it clear in interviews that he feels he was more influenced by Howard Hawks than anyone in making Halloween, but the influence of Alfred Hitchcock is stamped all over the picture, perhaps nowhere more than the iconic opening titles, a tone-setter reminiscent of Hitchcock’s collaborations with composer Bernard Hermann.
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Halloween was made for a tiny budget, and Carpenter had to score the film himself. It’s one of the best soundtracks of all time, the immortal piano theme an earworm. The 5/4 time signature is uncommon, and it gives us a suggestion of Michael Myers’ nutty state of mind and obliviousness to order, whether we notice it or not. The title sequence is ominous and artistic, just like every other inch of Halloween.
8 Backseat driver
With about a full half hour of screen time since the previous death (Halloween has a whopping body count of five—yeah, five, with only four kills on-screen), there’s a lot of tension built up before Annie (Nancy Loomis) gets murdered in brutal if not graphic fashion.
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The pacing is expert. There are several scenes of Annie trying to pass a babysitting gig over to Laurie, so Annie can have some sex. It’s funny, and throws us off guard occasionally, even as we know Michael’s circling in. Once she’s about to start her car, we noticed it’s suddenly unlocked, the glass suddenly fogged. We barely have time to process this before Michael has her in a death grip.
7 Tracking shot/ The death of Judith Myers
Image via Compass International Pictures
The innovation of the Panaglide camera, and Carpenter’s inspiration from the opening shot of Orson Welles’ thriller Touch of Evil, paved the way for a long, dynamic one-take (or seemingly one-take) intro that’s now arguably more famous than that one.
The big reveal? Judith’s brutal killer is her little brother, a six-year-old with a glazed-over, detached expression. Shocking stuff, especially in ’78.
6 End titles. Where is Michael?
Even more effective at sending shivers down the spine than the iconic opening is the note-perfect, ambiguous conclusion. At first, it looks like Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has shot his former patient to death… but alas, you can’t kill the boogeyman.
Michael is once again out of sight, we hear his heavy breathing over familiar settings from the film, and the iconic theme tune queues up again. There’s never been a better ending to a scary movie. He’s still out there. But where?
5 Michael escapes from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium
A decade and a half after Judith gets sliced and diced, we meet 21-year-old (or 23, going by a flub in the credits) Michael’s concerned doctor, and the fan-favorite chain-smoking nurse who thinks Loomis too harsh with his patient.
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Michael escapes, tries to kill Marion (Nancy Stephens), and probably alters her opinion about Loomis’ steely demeanor. With lighting that borders on expressionistic, this sequence is beautifully executed. A shot-for-shot, only way less attractive and suspenseful, homage in 2021’s Halloween Killswas just plain cheap and dumb. Much like the rest of that film, the series’ new low.
4 Bob-kabob
Halloween specializes in slower, quieter scares that feel like a cold hand on the back of the neck, that make us squirm rather than leap, but its select jump scares are expert. The best sees teen loverboy Bob (John Michael Graham) get cornered in a kitchen.
Poor utterly unsuspecting Bob’s pinning against a wall with a single butcher knife defies actual physics, but what a visual. Michael’s signature head-tilt is the icing on the cake, just the right amount of personality for a soulless killing machine. This is a film of details and artful accents that becomes more than the sum of its parts.
3 Climax: the chase, the closet, the corpse rises for one last scare
As beloved horror expert James A. Janisse noted in his “Kill Count” review of Halloween, part of the unsung genius of Carpenter’s film is the layout he reveals to us gradually. By the film’s finale, set mostly in two houses that face each other on the same suburban street, we have a pretty concrete idea of where Laurie can hide and escape from the relentless Shape. And where she can’t.
The extended finale of Halloween sees a teen girl square off against unspeakable evil, mostly in close quarters. It’s really scary, yeah. It’s also really fun, best shared with a packed enthusiastic theater full of film fans.
2 “Can’t I get your ghost, Bob?”
Many horror fans cite the image of Michael in a makeshift ghost costume, with newly deceased Bob’s glasses over the eye holes, as their favorite image from this landmark film. This is perhaps the film’s tensest scene. We all know that’s not Bob; Lynda (P.J. Soles) doesn’t. Once she turns her back, her fate is sealed.
This is suspense filmmaking at its most effective and stripped-down, a fatal misunderstanding. Halloween was a yell-at-the-screen movie before such a thing was really established.
1 Laurie finds the bodies. Michael appears.
The payoff. After a careful setup that puts the craft of most genre pictures to shame, Laurie realizes something is, incontrovertibly, going on across the street. She’s right. Michael has killed her best friends, splayed them out like sick ornaments. A terrorized Laurie cowers near a doorway, and we hear Michael breathing as the score intensifies. But where is he?
In the great-looking movie’s most famous and most frightening visual, Michael’s pale, expressionless white mask materializes in the background. In a move that wasn’t exactly improvised but was hardly long-planned, young cinematographer Dean Cundey made this happen with skillful timing of exposure and manipulation of light. Cundey would go on to become one of the most sought after DPs in the industry following his work on one of the most artistically adroit, terrifying genre pictures in history.
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