Common Sense Note
Parents should know that, while the blood and gore are left to your imagination in this horror classic, there are numerous stabbings and slayings. And most (though not all) of the victims seem to be sexually active teenagers.
Families can talk about what makes the movie so scary, especially since it doesn't fall back on using gore-makeup effects or fancy, swooping digital camera angles. Parents might point out that director Carpenter pays tribute to the science-fiction classic The Thing (1951), which took a similar straightforward approach to a homicidal space monster (and somehow avoided sex-minded teenagers and curse words in the process).
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
If critics could send a Terminator robot back in time to destroy a movie at the film-processing lab, all because of the countless trashy ripoffs and imitations it would inspire, HALLOWEEN would probably be the main target.
Made for just under a half a million bucks by then-largely unknown director John Carpenter, the simply plotted shocker was a worldwide hit that inspired a plague of trashy lookalikes for years afterward (especially the entire Friday the 13th series), in which undifferentiated maniacs slashed into sex- and prank-crazed teenagers.
But many critics hail the original Halloween as a masterpiece, and it earned Carpenter a reputation as the new Alfred Hitchcock (maybe Orson Welles is more accurate, since Carpenter has never been quite able to make as big a hit again).
Halloween may be saddled with some unneccesary R-rated elements, but it still provides frightening moments with more taste and subtlety (you rarely ever see any blood -- you just think you do) than its imitators. Like Hitchcock, Carpenter has an innate sense of exactly where to put the camera, how to light a scene, and what to have going on in the frame to make you shudder and jump. His use of careful silences and the sudden bursts of his now-famous pulsating electronic musical score are especially unnerving and effective.
The minimalist plot begins on Halloween in the small town of Haddonfield, Ill., in 1963, with a sequence (made to appear like one long, continuous shot) shown from the point-of-view of a marauder, Michael Myers, who stalks and kills his own sister after she has sex with her boyfriend. When Carpenter's camera cuts away, we get the chilling revelation that Michael is just a little boy.
Or maybe not. After the opening scene, the plot picks up again 15 years later, when Michael's psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) finds that the now-adult murderer, long catatonic, has escaped from the asylum on the anniversary of the murder. Dr. Loomis (whose obsession with Michael is like Ahab and Moby Dick) declares that Michael is heading to Haddonfield to kill again.
He's right, and viewers soon see Michael -- only a vaguely glimpsed figure for most of the movie -- lurking around the suburban streets adjacent to the long-vacated Myers house. Apparently just because one of them jeered at him from the sidewalk, Michael fixates on three high school girls who are looking forward to hot dates and a horror-movie marathon on trick-or-treat night -- all except for bookish Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has to babysit. While Loomis leads a skeptical sheriff around town in search of Michael, the killer gets to the schoolmates, one by one, until he's left with just Laurie, who's like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, terrified but resourceful enough to fight back. (Of course, she's not caught unawares in bed with a boyfriend, either.)
Why Michael is so murderous is a mystery (the crummy sequels eventually decided that Laurie was another of Michael's sisters). But Carpenter uses this uncertainty as a strength rather than a weakness; Dr. Loomis repeatedly says that the enigmatic villain isn't remotely human, just pure evil, moving robotically and hiding his/its human face behind a blank-looking mask (which, as every horror fan knows, was a slightly doctored, store-bought Captain Kirk face). When we finally glimpse Michael under the mask, he's ordinary looking; to the little children being babysat, he's no mystery -- he's the boogeyman.
The inevitable follow-ups were just pale imitations of the Michael-stalking-and-killing-kids formula, with the strange exception of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, a movie that plastered the Halloween brand name on a stand-alone plot about a high-tech sorcerer peddling booby-trapped Halloween masks.
Even though the most virtuous teenager survives in Halloween (a notable exception for the genre), parents might think the film's level of profligate sex and violence is too much for younger kids. For their benefit, seemingly, Carpenter includes on the DVD a TV clip of a safer scary movie -- science-fiction classic The Thing (1951), which took a similarly straightforward approach to a vampiric, homicidal space monster on the loose and somehow avoided sex-minded teenagers and swearing in the process.
For a truly timeless horror classic, try Psycho. For an infinitely more family-friendly Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle, try the Freaky Friday remake co-starring Lindsay Lohan.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentA teen girl is shown clad only in panties after sex. Another underage couple is shown in bed together. |
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ViolenceThough the blood flow is left to the viewer's imagination, there are stabbings and strangulation, including one victim left hanging on a door (pinned by the knife). Another character is stuck in the eye with a wire hanger, and another falls down the stairs. One shooting. One of Myers' victims is the family dog. |
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LanguageSome PG-13-level swear words -- surprisingly it's nothing serious. |
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Social BehaviorWithout Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie -- a realistically smart, brave teen who tries to protect the kids she babysits -- the film's cast would be a pretty unsympathetic bunch of shallow, hormonal teens (who disdain books and education) and nasty adults. |
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CommercialismPlugs for other movies admired by filmmaker John Carpenter, in clips from The Thing and Forbidden Planet. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoHigh schoolers smoke and drink beer. |
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