Halloween

About Halloween

Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film set in the fictional suburban midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois, USA on Halloween. The original draft of the screenplay was titled The Babysitter Murders. John Carpenter directed the film, which stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle, Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace sharing the role of Michael Myers (listed in the credits as "The Shape"). The central theme of the film is Myers' escape from a psychiatric hospital and his subsequent murder of a number of teenagers, whilst Dr. Loomis' attempts to track and stop him. Halloween is widely regarded as a classic among horror films, and as one of the most influential horror films of its era. In 2006 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

(source www.wikipedia.co.uk)

In the opening credit all you see is a pumpkin on one side of the screen and the credits on the other, your eyes strangely focus on the writting but you keep looking back at the pumpkin wondering if you imagined it or whether it actually is getting closer to the screen because of how slow the camera zooms into the pumkin making you think that someone is approaching you very slowly.

The movie begins with a cold Halloween night in 1963 with Michael Myers, a six year old Haddonfield resident picks up a kitchen knife and starts walking up the stairs however the camera's view it changes to a humans eyes to make the audience see everything the killer sees, as he walk's up the stairs an uneasy sounds is played every step he takes the tone gets higher and stronger signalling that he is getting closer and closer. As he gets into his sisters room we see her naked infront of the mirror from a long shot, she thinks that his litle brother is joking but she realises that he is not when he gets closer to her and stabbs her continously. Coming home from a night out michaels parents find him outside the house with the same knife he killed his sister with from that point the camera starts to zoom out into a crane shot.

The opening sequence of 'Halloween' is very unique because it allows us to have a point of view shot of the young Michael Myers when we see him standing outside their home spying on his sister and his sisters boyfriend, before entering into the house and seeing her boyfriend leave and at that same point goes into the kitchen and picks up a knife and slowly makes his way to the stairs on his way upstairs he picks up an mask that had been left behind by his sisters boyfriend, he puts on the mask hiding his face with it before moving on through the house to stab his sister continously with the knife. I think that this scence has been worked to almost perfection because the sound effects really go with the film creating tension in the audience.

John Carpenter's 'Halloween' is one of everyone's favourite horror films of all time, and while there have been countless copies of the film since its 1978 release, in my opinion, 'Halloween' remains to be the best of them all. This film saw the emergence of the teen slasher genre, conventions of which would go on to be used in latter years and do in fact continue to be used right to this day.