Michael Myers Terrorizes Jamie Lee Curtis

Horror movies have been popular for many years, with certain ones being considered classics.  There are still many of those movies that I haven't seen, but I have started to see some of them in the last several years.  I had heard of Halloween and Michael Myers for years before I finally watched it a few years ago.  

On Halloween 1963, in the town of Haddonfield Illinois, six year old Michael Myers stabbed his older sister while wearing a Halloween costume.  He ended up spending the next fifteen years in a mental hospital under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis, who believed that his patient should be kept locked up for the rest of his life.  Michael managed to escape the hospital and Dr. Loomis believed he was going to return to Haddonfield.

Laurie Strode was a teenager in Haddonfield who noticed a strange man throughout the day on Halloween.  That night she was going to be babysitting for Tommy Doyle.  Laurie's friend Annie was babysitting Lindsay Wallace across the street.  Another friend, Lynda, was supposed to go to the Wallace house with her boyfriend Bob.  Tommy spotted a man who he called the bogeyman watching the house a few times, but Laurie dismissed his concerns.  Annie decided to leave Lindsay with Laurie so she could go pick up her boyfriend Paul.  It wasn't long before Laurie discovered that she was in danger.

Halloween had a very straightforward plot that was really rather simple.  That didn't keep it from being an entertaining movie, though some people may feel that things were too simple.  I felt like there was enough going on to keep things interesting and entertaining.  A little bit of time was taken to set up the situation before focusing in on Laurie and what she was going through.  Even with the set up, there weren't explanations for certain things which did help to make things more interesting.

It was known from the beginning that Michael Myers was the bad guy in Halloween.  Despite that, I still felt that there was a decent amount of mystery throughout the movie.  It wasn't surprising that he went back to Haddonfield, so that aspect of the movie was a bit predictable.  There really wasn't a lot of mystery with what was going on since the audience knew who Michael was and what he was doing, though there were some questions left unanswered about exactly why he was doing those things.  I did think that there was a decent amount of suspense throughout the movie which helped to keep things interesting.  There were times when I was surprised by what happened.

For a slasher horror movie, Halloween wasn't that violent or gory.  Since I had only seen the movie on television before, I had thought that the R rated version would be more violent and bloody than it ended up being.  Characters were attacked and killed with the killings being shown without those scenes being too graphic.  There were a lot of shadows during the scenes, which helped to obscure what was going on.  Characters were shown being stabbed, but those shots weren't graphic and there was no where near the amount of blood that I had thought there would be.  The success of the movie led to many imitators, most of which were much more violent.  From what I know, the various Halloween sequels also got more violent.  

Halloween was scary without resorting to a lot of gory images like many of the newer so called horror movies seem to do.  For the record, I haven't seen many of those newer movies because watching people be subjected to various forms of torture is just not something I want to watch.  I also don't consider that sort of thing to be entertaining.  That stuff is just disgusting.  The music for the movie was very creepy and added to the spooky, scary atmosphere of the movie.  The music started with the opening credits when really nothing was being shown at that moment and it still freaked me out.  While watching the movie, every time the music would start up, it would make me a bit jumpy about what might be happening next.

Most of the victims in Halloween were young women who had just had sex or were thinking about having sex in the near future.  There were two male victims, one of which just seemed to be a random person that Michael encountered while making his way to Haddonfield.  The other one had just had sex.  The survivor hadn't had sex and was made out to be a chaste person.  This seemed to start the trend of only virgins surviving in slasher movies while any teenagers who had sex would quickly be killed off.  There was one short sex scene that didn't show much and the only nudity was a few brief glimpses of bare breasts.  

Many of the slasher type of horror movies have featured characters that weren't the brightest crayons in the box and Halloween really wasn't any different.  A few of the characters seemed to suffer from terminal stupidity, which is probably why they ended up dead.  Laurie was smarter than many of the other characters, but even she did a few things that weren't that bright.  I even had a minor issue with the short scene that showed Michael's parents discovering him outside after he killed his sister.  They found their six year old son coming out of the house carrying a bloody knife and they just stood there staring at him and didn't seem to react at all.  It just didn't seem right that parents wouldn't freak out in that situation.

Michael was briefly shown as a child and then most of the movie took place once he was 21.  He was only referred to by name a few times and he was actually listed in the credits as The Shape.  He returned to his hometown and started killing again.  There weren't any explanations for why he killed which I thought made him scarier.  Nick Castle performed as The Shape for the majority of the movie.  There was one very brief scene when Tony Moran played the character.  That worked since Michael was shown wearing a mask all the time.
                    
Laurie was the teenager who Michael seemed to be determined to kill for some reason.  She was resourceful and managed to deal fairly well with what was going on.  This was the first movie for Jamie Lee Curtis and I thought she handled the part well.  She went on to appear in other horror movies after the success of this movie.  Annie and Lynda were two of Laurie's friends.  They both irritated me with the way they were acting.  They were both air heads in my opinion.  Nancy Loomis and P.J. Soles were fine in the parts.  Bob turned up briefly as Lynda's boyfriend, so he didn't have much to do.  Paul, Annie's boyfriend, was only heard on the phone.

Sam Loomis was the psychiatrist that had been treating Michael for fifteen years.  Loomis felt that Michael needed to be kept locked up for the rest of his life.  Loomis was certain that he knew where Michael was going and he was determined to try to stop him.  Donald Pleasence was good in the part.  Some other characters were briefly shown who didn't have that much to do.  

Main Cast

Brian Andrews - Tommy Doyle
Nick Castle - The Shape
Jamie Lee Curtis - Laurie Strode
John Michael Graham - Bob
Nancy Loomis - Annie
Donald Pleasence - Dr. Sam Loomis
Kyle Richards - Lindsay Wallace
P.J. Soles - Lynda
Will Sandin - Michael Myers age 6
Nancy Stephens - Marion Chambers

John Carpenter - Director

DVD Information

Halloween has been released a few different times on DVD.  From what I have read, the different DVD versions have different extras.  At least one of the DVD versions also has additional footage that was filmed and added to make the runtime longer once Halloween was first shown on television.  I think I remember seeing at least one of those scenes when I saw the movie on television originally.  The DVD that I have doesn't have the extra scenes.  My copy has both the widescreen and full screen versions of the movie, the original theatrical trailers, television spots, radio spots, still and poster gallery, talent bios, behind the scenes still gallery, and a featurette about the movie.

Halloween Unmasked 2000 shared information about the making of the movie, like how the mask that Michael wore was developed by modifying another mask.  It was also said that a clown mask was considered as well.  Somehow I think that would have been odd, though it would have connected back to the first time Michael killed someone.  John Carpenter, Debra Hill, and Jamie Lee Curtis as well as a few other people connected with the making of the movie talked about different aspects of it, like how it was filmed in just over twenty days with a relatively small budget.  I thought the featurette was very interesting and I enjoyed learning more about the movie.

Halloween has been considered a classic horror movie for years.  I think it has held up well and is still worth seeing, especially for people who enjoy the slasher type of horror movies.  The movie was remade in 2007.  I haven't seen that version, but just going on how other horror movies are now, I'm guessing the new version was much gorier.

This review is part of CaptainD's 2008 Good Movie Write Off.