Halloween has been described as the Gone with the Wind of horror movies, but I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate description. It’s more like the Star Wars of the horror genre. It’s the original blockbuster that’s been endlessly copied, imitated and sequelized, but has never come close to being equaled. What is it about Halloween that makes it so enduring? The fact that sequels have been able to piggyback on its legacy for nearly three decades is proof positive of its power. I could trot out some old bullshit about the subtext of the original film and how it’s a reflection of the values and social and economic climate of the late ‘70s.

But I won’t.

If, like me, you’re a huge fan of the films, you’ve read it all before. Instead of treading well-worn ground, I’m going to share some of my favorite memories associated with the series. In doing so, perhaps I’ll stumble on just what makes Halloween (and to a lesser extent, it’s sequels) so special. If not, at the very least it will be any enjoyable stroll down memory lane for me. If I do this right, it will be for you as well.

Halloween
I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil!” – Dr. Sam Loomis

I hated Halloween the first time I saw it. Well, okay, that’s not entirely accurate, since I didn’t see the whole thing, only the last 30 minutes or so, and this was hacked to shit and panned and scanned on commercial TV. Add to that the fact that I was 8 and probably too stupid to realize just what I was watching.

I saw the entire film a few years later on satellite. As a young horror fan barred from watching R-rated movies on the premium stations such as HBO, it was a ritual each month when the new satellite guide came in for me to scan the movie listings and plan out a watching/taping schedule. Furiously searching each month, usually to no avail, for horror films airing on commercial stations, desperate to fill the gaps in my viewing. This ritual eventually led to me getting my own satellite guide each month since it was usually marked up, dog eared and highlighted to the point of illegibility after the first week or so. The ritual didn’t last very long as the restrictions on what I could view were lifted when I was 11 or 12, but it remains, to this day, one of my fondest memories.

A Los Angeles station had a Sunday afternoon, back-to-back, showing of Halloween (the TV cut, no less) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (more on that Myers-less sequel later). I taped them both, though I was unable to watch part III while it was broadcast (I forget the exact reason, but I’m sure it had something to do with sitting inside watching TV on a beautiful fall day when there was a front yard that was still in need of raking). My reaction was much different this time. I enjoyed it. Not “loved it”, mind you, but I certainly had a newfound appreciation for it. I liked the characters, and even at that young age, I could appreciate Carpenter’s style and measured pacing, and unlike many other films I saw around the same time, it drew me back for repeated viewings.

However, it didn’t scare me. Halloween wouldn’t end up scaring me until I was in high school.

When I hit high school, I had this habit of cutting class. A lot. On one such afternoon sojourn at the mall, I spotted Anchor Bay’s Widescreen videotape. In a clamshell case for the outrageously low price of $9.99, it was no-brainer. I watched it later that night, and let me tell you, the piss was roundly scared out of me. Seeing it for the first time in its proper aspect ratio was literally like watching an entirely different movie, one where shadows lurked in every inch of the frame. It was unsettling and exhilarating, and I loved every second of it.

At the heart of Carpenter’s masterpiece are two things usually missing from genre films: technical artistry and convincing characters. Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode is the heart that drives the movie. While most films claim to be escapism, Halloween actually is, and the strength of the Laurie character is key to that. I’ll admit that some of the supporting characters aren’t always 100% convincingly written or acted, but because of the strong lead character and a mood and atmosphere that are so utterly believable, the verisimilitude works.

The film is deceptively simple, yet it draws you in completely. It’s no wonder that it became the template for so many low budget knockoffs, yet none of them have recaptured the feel of Halloween. On the surface, it seems so simple. I always try and give horror films (especially slasher films) the benefit of the doubt when it comes to writing and characterizations, but when I watch Halloween, it seems like it should be so easy to get it right because Halloween succeeds so smashingly.

If we’re scared of Michael Myers, it’s due in large part to the presence of Donald Pleasence. As Doctor Sam Loomis (a Psycho reference; one of the film’s many in-jokes), Pleasence gives us a reason to be afraid. Up until mid way through the film, Myers is simply an escaped lunatic, after Loomis’s speech in the Myers house (a speech I’ve lovingly dubbed the “black eyes speech”) he’s an unstoppable force of evil. Loomis suspects there’s little that either he or sheriff Bracket could actually do to stop Myers (his knowing look at the end of the film only affirms his suspicions), but goddamn it, he’s going to try. Every great monster needs a foil and, as Van Helsing to Michael Myers’s Dracula, Dr. Loomis has become a luminary of the genre.

Halloween is, of course, now staple viewing in my house come October, but my appreciation isn’t limited to the autumn months. Whenever I want to be scared, amazed, delighted or put through the emotional wringer, I pop Halloween in. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. Like most great films, it seems to beg for communal viewing; Halloween seems scarier when you watch it with someone who has never seen it before. Incidentally, it’s also an excellent litmus test for friends; a person who is unable to appreciate Halloween is probably not a person I need in my life.

There’s an intangible quality to Halloween that I think is key to its longevity. There’s no one element that makes it work as well as it does, and in many ways the film defies criticism and deconstruction. Halloween is a great film that transcends its time and genre; it’s made with consummate skill, and ultimately, is utterly effective. 

It’s pure cinema, pure and simple.

Halloween II
“An hour ago I stood up and fired six shots into him and he just got up and walked away. I am talking about the real possibility that he is STILL OUT THERE!” – Dr. Sam Loomis

I saw Halloween II the same year that I saw the original a week or two later on a Denver station that aired the “Rosenthal Cut”(which is, sadly, no longer in my possession). Airing alternate cuts seems to have gone out of vogue, and this version seems to have up and disappeared; I haven’t seen it aired since, and none of the deleted footage is on any legitimate DVD release so far. Oh well. The TV cut censors the nudity in the hot tub scene, so you take the bad with the good.

Now, I’ve heard two stories about the alternate footage and the Rosenthal cut; they vary in several key respects, but they both agree on one thing: at some point after director Rick Rosenthal delivered his cut, and before it’s theatrical release, John Carpenter went back and did reshoots. The first explanation goes that Carpenter saw Rosenthal’s director’s cut and it was such a mess that he went back and did reshoots to beef up the gore in the kill scenes. He figured that, while they wouldn’t make the film any better, the new, gorier scenes might give Halloween II a better chance at the box office, faring against the gory Halloween clones like The Burning or Friday the 13th Part II (also released in 1981). The second version of the story asserts that Carpenter was, in fact, jealous of how good Rosenthal’s director’s cut was (some go so far to claim that it was, in fact, better than Carpenter’s original film), and Carpenter added the inserts to sabotage Rosenthal’s film. I tend to believe the first explanation of Carpenter’s reshoots.

Setting aside the kill scenes altogether, Halloween II simply isn’t very good. Superficially, it has a lot in common with the original; the hand held POV shots are there, and the decision to continue right where the original left off was probably the best choice for a first sequel. Dean Cundey once again serves as DOP so the film looks polished. There was, however, an elegant simplicity to the original that’s missing here. Rosenthal apes Carpenter’s style whenever he can, but uses the Michael POV shot far too much, drawing attention away from Laurie (who has significantly less screen time in Part II). That reversal of the technique of the original is, more than anything else, what is wrong with Halloween II. Carpenter’s film is told mainly from the perspective of Laurie and her friends, in which the shape lurks in the background or pops up in the foreground. Halloween II is largely shot from the shape’s point of view, effectively making Michael Myers, and not Laurie, the main character. However, Michael is a cipher. He has no personality, and as a result, neither does Halloween II. In fact, with its endless POV shots, it bears more in common with Friday the 13th (itself a Halloween derivative) than with the original. Halloween II is a failure for the simple fact that it doesn’t know whom it’s supposed to be about. It completely misses the point of the original.   

Halloween II is certainly better than most Halloween knockoffs, but it doesn’t come close to its predecessor. In my opinion, it isn’t even the best of the Halloween sequels. The connection between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers that Carpenter cooked up doesn’t fly. Michael used to be a mindless, unreasoning killing machine; adding some kind of logic makes him less scary. It’s like saying you can reason with him; In one scene, Laurie tries to, and Myers hesitates killing her long enough to get both his eyes shot out. It doesn’t help that playing counter to the humanization of Michael is Dr. Loomis, even more wild-eyed and crazy than in the original. At the end of the first film, he got his confirmation about Michael’s true nature. The attempt to humanize him is a drastic reversal of tone that doesn’t work. There are far too many random people killed for no other reason than to up the body count. If Carpenter’s position is that Myers is stalking his sister and her friends, then he undercuts it by adding these senseless deaths. Moreover, the score by Carpenter and Alan Howarth is over produced and far too bombastic to contribute to the suspense. Halloween II doesn’t succeed as anything more than a polished retread of the original. 

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