Synopsis:
Haddonfield, Illinois, October 31st, 1963. Someone prowls around a house, and
watches through a window as a teenage girl and her boyfriend neck on a couch before going
upstairs. The watcher enters the house, taking a knife from a kitchen drawer. The
boyfriend leaves. The watcher goes upstairs, donning a discarded clown mask, and stabs the
girl to death before leaving the house again. The girl’s parents arrive, and the
killer is revealed to be a six-year-old boy…. Fifteen years later, Dr Sam Loomis
(Donald Pleasence) tries to prepare a nurse, Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), for her new
duties at a mental hospital, disgusting her by referring to a patient as "it"
and frankly stating his intention of doing everything he can to keep that patient
institutionalised. As the two draw near the hospital on a rainy night, they see white-clad
inmates roaming the grounds. A panicking Loomis orders Marion to drive to the main gates,
where he leaves the car. Someone in a white gown then leaps onto the car, attacking Marion
through the windows. She struggles free and runs, and her attacker drives away. Loomis
cries out in horror that, "The evil is gone!" In Haddonfield, school-bound
teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is asked by her real estate agent father to drop
off a key at "the Myers place", so that a potential client can inspect the
property. On her way, Laurie meets up with young Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), and tells
him she will be babysitting him that night, Halloween. Tommy is horrified when Laurie
reveals that she is going to the Myers house, claiming that it is haunted. Laurie scoffs
at this, walking boldly up to the derelict house and leaving the key under the mat. She is
unaware that she is being watched from inside the house…. At school, Tommy is
tormented by bullies, who put the idea of "the Boogeyman" into his head. As he
heads home, the boy is followed by a figure in overalls…. Meanwhile, in pursuit of
the escapee, Loomis finds hospital garb near an abandoned truck. He does not see the dead
body of the truck driver, which lies nearby…. Laurie meets up with her friends Annie
(Nancy Loomis) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). Annie complains that her boyfriend has been
grounded, and that they will not be able to spend Halloween together. Laurie notices a car
that she earlier saw outside the school; it seems to be following them. Lynda enters her
house, and as Laurie and Annie walk on, Laurie sees someone watching them from near some
bushes ahead. Annie immediately investigates, but there is no-one there. Later, from her
bedroom window, Laurie again sees this silent, watching figure. Loomis arrives in
Haddonfield and goes to the local cemetery, where murder victim Judith Myers was buried
fifteen years earlier. Her headstone is missing. Loomis murmurs, "He came home."
Laurie and Annie head out for their babysitting assignments. On the way, they meet
Annie’s sheriff father (Charles Cyphers), who tells them that the local hardware
store has been broken into, and a mask, rope and knives stolen. As the girls drive off, Dr
Loomis corners the sheriff, trying to convince him of the danger that has come to his
town. Although sceptical, the sheriff agrees to go with Loomis to the Myers place where,
Loomis insists, "he" will come. Meanwhile, Laurie arrives at the Doyles’
house. A silent, motionless figure watches her from across the street….
Comments: With the
single possible exception of the Italian cannibal film – and there are so few of
those by comparison – no movie genre has been greeted with such universal loathing
and hostility as the slasher film. To an extent, this reaction is understandable. Slasher
films are, almost by definition, mean-spirited. Few of them make any pretence at being
"fright films"; they don’t want to scare their audience, merely gross it
out. Their raison d’être is their gore effects; and if these are interspersed
with numerous displays of bare breasts, well, so much the better. The irony in all of this
is that today’s slasher film would probably not exist but for Halloween –
a film hailed by mainstream and horror audiences alike as "a classic", and one
which, it is very noticeable, people go out of their way to avoid describing as
"a slasher film". What is most intriguing about this situation is that there is
actually less distance between Halloween and its monstrous progeny than you might
think. In fact, it had been some time since I’d last seen this film, and I’d
watched an unusual (for me) number of true slashers in the interim; and I was frankly
startled at just how clearly the bare bones of your average slasher plot show through the
polished surface of John Carpenter’s mini-masterpiece. As is the case with the other
"influential" films I’ve been examining recently, Halloween
wasn’t the first of its type, although it did come mighty close. The Canadian
thriller Black Christmas preceded Halloween by four years, but didn’t
catch on with horror fans the way the later film did; and so it was Halloween that
ultimately laid down "the rules" for the flood of imitations that were to
follow. Given that most of these "rules" are precisely the reason why slasher
films are treated with such opprobrium, it is worthwhile stopping to consider (i) just
what those rules are; and (ii) what it was about Halloween that made it
possible for the film to dodge the hail of bullets that, almost without exception, greeted
the release of its many, many imitators.
If we’re going to talk about the slasher
film rules, we may as well start with the big one: have sex and you will die. This
convention, as much as anything else, encapsulates the slasher film; and it is Halloween
that is largely to blame for it (in Black Christmas, the heroine is pregnant when
the film opens!), even though it does not take the idea to the extremes that many of its
descendants do. (The Friday The 13th franchise is perhaps most
guilty in this respect, not in killing only its sexually active characters, but in
saving for them its most gruesome deaths. Remember the arrow from under the bed in the
original? The mid-coital impaling in Part 2? The machete bisection in Part 3?)
Most of the moral outrage against slashers stems from this recurring theme, along with the
fact that the murders themselves too frequently feature the protracted stalking of
semi-clad or naked girls. So intent are many commentators upon condemning this practice
that it never seems to occur to them to consider just how peculiar a practice it is. Why
would films aimed primarily at a young audience so consistently be built around a message
that, let’s face it, no young person would really want to hear? The very
repetition of the theme is the strongest indication, I believe, that it is not
generally intended as some kind of moralistic warning. On the contrary. Slashers films
exist to show blood and boobs, and what better way of doing so than by juxtaposing a sex
scene with a murder? That said, there are some films – too many, in fact
– that use this juxtapositioning not merely exploitatively, but punitively. I’m
often asked why I come down like a ton of bricks on this film, and let that
film off the hook, and all I can answer is that I feel a difference between them.
Some films seem to me to be harmless in their intent ("Okay, we’ve had boobs
– now bring on the blood!"); while others give off an intense and frightening
vibe of, "Take that, you bitch!" The former I am prepared to let pass
with a sigh and a shrug; the latter I will continue to land on, as hard as I possibly can.
Halloween created the
template for much of what was to follow by having its main character, its "Final
Girl", a virgin by implication if not by declaration, and by making all of its
victims not just sexually active, but apparently incapable of thinking of anything but
sex. John Carpenter and Debra Hill claim that the film’s "sex = death"
message was unintentional, and up to a point, I believe them; although Carpenter
hasn’t exactly helped his case with asinine statements like, "The one girl who
is most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing the guy with a long knife. She’s the one
that’s killed him. Not because she’s a virgin, but because all that repressed
sexual energy starts coming out." (Wow, and there was me thinking that Laurie stabbed
Michael because he was trying to kill her!! Shows what I know, huh? [*rolls
eyes*]) The problem is that, unintentionally or not, Halloween does project
just such a message, due to a combination of factors that would also get handed down to
future generations of slashers. The first is that we are never allowed inside the head of
Michael Myers; and because of this, the emphasis is shifted from the killer to his victims
and their so-called "transgressions". In the opening scene, Michael sees his
sister kissing, then going upstairs with her boyfriend. After he leaves (this may, by the
bye, constitute the quickest "quickie" in screen history, taking the same amount
of time as it does for Michael to walk to the kitchen and pick up a knife!), the boy goes
upstairs. He sees the rumpled bed sheets. He sees his sister almost naked. He kills her.
Later, Michael spies on Annie as she strips off her stained clothing in the kitchen, and
kills her as she sets off to collect her boyfriend. (This incident is rather interesting: we
know that Annie’s purpose is S-E-X, but Michael does not. Yet it still
plays as if Annie were being punished for her intended "sin".) Finally, Michael
watches as Lynda and Bob have sex, then kills them both – Lynda after she flashes her
breasts at him (she thinks she’s flashing Bob, of course). We are never given
any reason for any of this, beyond Dr Loomis’s insistence that Michael is
"evil" (and it is hard to imagine just how a six-year-old could have developed
such an intense sexual psychosis). By rights, all this should mean that it is
"evil" to kill people because of their sexual activity; and yet it never plays
like that. The unmistakable inference is that Michael’s victims "asked for
it".
The fact of the matter is, however, this
inference comes about almost entirely as a result of poor writing. None of the minor
characters in Halloween are particularly well developed, and this includes Annie
and Lynda. While they are better written and more realistic than most of the
teenagers in the slasher films that followed (talk about being damned with faint praise!),
nevertheless the two of them think about, talk about and shape their behaviour around
nothing but having sex. (This also applies to Lynda’s boyfriend, Bob, but he barely
qualifies as a "character".) Now, I know that some of you – perhaps most of
you – will be out there protesting, "But that’s how teenagers are!"
The problem I have with that is that I remember very clearly when my friends and I were
seventeen, and we managed to think about, and occupy ourselves with, a great many things
besides sex. Consequently, when I see sex-obsessed characters like Annie and Lynda in a
film, it strikes me not as realism, but as lazy writing. These two, like Judith Myers,
exist only to get nekkid, have sex, and die. The lack of any shading in their
characterisations makes it very difficult to take the protestations of Halloween’s
screenwriters at face value.
Where Carpenter and Hill redeem themselves
– and where Halloween distances itself from the vast majority of its imitators
– is in the character of Laurie Strode. In Laurie, we have one of, perhaps the
most thoughtfully and believably written teenager in the whole horror genre. In later
years, mere virginity was enough to qualify a slasher film character as "Final
Girl": as long as she didn’t have sex, she could be as annoying, obnoxious and
boring as she liked. If Halloween dictated that its Final Girl should be a virgin,
it also made Laurie a great deal much more than that. First and foremost – Laurie is
intelligent (she gloomily claims that she’s "too smart" to attract boys).
She works hard at school, worries about her homework, and is trustworthy and reliable as a
babysitter. She is, in a word, responsible; and wonder of wonders! – none of
this is presented as a strike against her. On the contrary, it is these very qualities
that ensure her ultimate survival, not that pesky virginity. And what of that? The
script makes it clear that it’s only circumstantial. Laurie does think about
boys; she does think about sex. But – she’s a little bit shy, and a
little bit awkward, and a little bit of a loner. She envies her friends’ free and
easy behaviour, but is unable to bring herself to imitate it. (One of the main reasons, I
believe, for the enduring popularity of Halloween is that young viewers identify
very strongly with Laurie. While a lot of film-makers try to have us believe that
teenagers like Laurie are unusual, I think that the reverse is true; and that over the
years a great many kids have seen an awful lot of themselves reflected in Laurie Strode.)
In fact, Laurie is that great slasher film rarity: a nice person. This is
highlighted during the babysitting scenes, where it becomes clear that she takes these
jobs not just for the money, but because she genuinely enjoys her charges’ company,
and likes making them happy. (Annie, of course, takes a babysitting assignment only
because she has nothing better to do, i.e. sex, and fulfills her duties by depositing her
charge in front of the television. The moment her boyfriend is "un-grounded",
she abandons the girl to Laurie’s care.) And this dovetails into another facet of Halloween
that separates it from the pack: that when the danger strikes, Laurie’s first thought
is always for the kids; she fights back as much to defend them as to defend
herself. This, too, is a reflection of Laurie’s sense of responsibility; and to be
honest, I’ve always felt that what Carpenter and Hill were aiming at in Halloween
was a contrast between Laurie’s responsibility, which results in her survival, and
her friends’ irresponsibility, which results in their deaths. However, because that
irresponsibility is defined almost entirely in sexual terms, the true moral of the film
(if it can be said to have one) is perverted. The other thing that distinguishes Laurie is
that she is observant. While most Final Girls are unaware of danger until they start
stumbling over their friends’ bodies, Laurie is conscious of lurking danger right
from the outset. She notices the car, and the silent watcher who seems to be following
her. On a subconscious level at least, she is armed for conflict from the beginning. (It
has always jarred on me that Laurie dismisses out of hand Tommy’s repeated claims
that, "The Boogeyman’s out there!" After her experiences of the day, Laurie
should have believed, not, of course, that a monster was nearby, but that someone
was. It would have been more believable had she taken Tommy’s fears seriously, while
concealing from him that she did.)
The "killer’s POV" shot
certainly did not originate with Halloween, but the film puts it to remarkable use;
and this technique quickly became a slasher film standard. (Most critics have, I feel,
overread this convention, interpreting it as a deliberate attempt to make the viewer
identify with the killer, rather than seeing it for what it actually is, at least most of
the time – a simple way of concealing the killer’s identity.) The opening scene
of Halloween is justly famous, as the camera prowls around a house, enters it,
climbs the stairs, records a murder, and retreats – only then revealing the
killer’s identity. This extraordinary tracking shot has now been copied more times
than anyone could possibly count, and yet it retains all of its power. Indeed, much of Halloween’s
success, and its enduring popularity, must be credited to one of the wisest technical
decisions in the annals of the horror film: the hiring of Dean Cundey and his Panavision
equipment. (I would imagine that this is where the production blew most of its tiny
budget.) Cundey’s contribution to the film really cannot be overestimated. His eerie,
gliding camerawork, his use of shadow and his lighting effects, combined with John
Carpenter’s endlessly inventive deployment of the corners of the frame, make this a
film of intense visual appeal. Halloween is also distinguished by some simply
indelible images. While most people seem to cite "dead" Michael sitting up
behind Laurie as their most vivid memory, for me, the shot of the film is the slow
emergence of Michael's white mask from out of the darkness beside Laurie, as she sits
sobbing after the discovery of her friends’ bodies. Running this a very close second,
however, is the bizarre tableau of Annie’s body on the bed, a gravestone at her head,
illuminated by jack o’ lanterns. There is a surreal quality about this image that
seems more European than American; and indeed, Carpenter has referred to Halloween
as his "Argento film". While this may be an apt description of the film’s
look, it could not be more inaccurate as a description of either its body count or, in
particular, its bloodshed. If the fact that the makers of Halloween invested a
great deal of thought and care into their creation puts a gap between it and its
descendants, the film’s attitude towards its murders turns that gap into a yawning
abyss. Nothing illustrates the difference between Halloween and a true slasher
better than the fact that in the course of the film, you barely see a drop of blood
spilled – even when, by rights, you certainly should (Bob’s murder, most
specifically). There could hardly be any stronger proof that this was intended purely as a
horror film, a "fright film", and not as an exercise in the gross-out.
Tragically, the majority of those who chose to cash in on Halloween’s success
had neither the talent nor the inclination to follow Carpenter’s subtle lead; and two
decades of escalatingly graphic gore effects followed – most of them embedded in
films of numbing stupidity and crassness. The true pity of this, I think, is that many
young genre fans believe that this is what "horror" is – and will
tell you, if you ask, that Halloween is boring – poor unimaginative little
dweebs….
Carpenter’s creation of Michael Myers,
"the Shape", evil incarnate, call him what you will, has also had far-reaching,
if not particularly profound, effects upon the horror genre. While most copyists have
adopted the "unstoppable killer" purely as an easy set-up for a sequel – or
worse, for a "it isn’t over" kicker ending - it is clear that Carpenter
intended Michael to be something more. There is a tone-setting moment fairly early in the
film, in which Laurie responds to a question from her teacher by defining two different
views of "fate": one in which it is a religious force, the other in which it is
a force of nature. It is not difficult to interpret this scene as a foreshadowing of the
conflict to come, with Michael representing the irresistible force, Laurie the immovable
object. In this respect, I’ve always suspected that the emphasis on Laurie’s
virginity was not actually intended merely as a sexual reference, but more as an indicator
of "purity" in the mythic or fairy-tale sense; as a balance to Michael’s
"evil". If so, this is one more casualty of the poor delineation of the
supporting cast: thrown into relief as it is by the slaughter of all the sexually active
characters, it becomes almost impossible to think of Laurie’s virginity in anything but
crudely sexual terms. Nevertheless, it is possible to read Michael’s seeming
inability to kill Laurie as a result of her being under some kind of supernatural
protection. Michael himself, of course, survives a knitting needle to the throat, a knife
in the chest, six shots and a fall from a second-story balcony. The film closes with a
montage of images – the places Michael has been; the places where, perhaps, he still is.
"It was the Boogeyman," sobs Laurie helplessly, and Michael’s
pursuer and would-be nemesis agrees, "As a matter of fact, it was." "Every
small town has something like this happen," comments the graveyard attendant to Dr
Loomis of Judith Myers’ murder, and this may be the key to Michael. It is worth
remembering that Michael is always masked when he commits his misdeeds; that Laurie
inadvertently saves her own life by tearing off his mask. Perhaps, then, Michael
represents the potential for tragedy that can lurk beneath any community; and which
may ultimately be all the more violent for being too long repressed or ignored.
The pursuit of Laurie Strode by Michael Myers
is terrifying in its randomness. That Laurie being in the wrong place at the wrong time
– her delivery of the key to "the Myers place" – is enough to make her
the target of a psychopath is a touch that now resonates all the more strongly for
society’s increased awareness of serial killers and their ways. (Of course, the Halloween
sequels made the incredibly wrong-headed decision to provide us with an
"explanation" for Michael’s targeting of Laurie; but for the moment,
we’re all going to pretend that never happened, okay?) It is intriguing that
Michael’s stalking of his potential victims includes the young Tommy Doyle –
although he never seems to have any real intention of harming the boy. It is possible that
Michael actually empathises with Tommy; certainly, his presence near the bullying scene is
suggestive. The film gives us several indications that while Michael’s body has
grown, his mind has remained that of a child. One is his abortive "joke",
appearing before Lynda draped in a sheet and wearing Bob’s glasses, then standing
without moving as if unable to think of what to do next. Another – and this is one of
the film’s truly great moments – comes as Michael stands before Bob’s
dangling body, his head tilting his way and then that as he contemplates his handiwork.
The other act that might possibly be interpreted as a joke on Michael’s part is his
gathering together of his victim’s bodies, and his luring Laurie into their presence.
Of course, in the future, this "Final Girl finds friends’ bodies" scene
would become a defining slasher film motif; being used there, as here, to signal the
beginning of "end game". Perhaps the single most frightening scene in Halloween
comes when Laurie, having smashed her way out of the Wallace house, pounds on the
Doyles’ front door, shrieking for Tommy to let her in, with Michael closing in on her
from across the street. (At any rate, this scene impressed the makers of I Know What
You Did Last Summer so much that they reproduced it wholesale in their own film.) The
gruelling showdown between Final Girl and Killer is one of Halloween’s most
obvious cinematic legacies – right down to the Final Girl’s refusal to finish
off the Killer when she has the chance! Today, of course, it is impossible to react to
Laurie’s relinquishing of the knife – which she does not once, but twice!
– with anything but anguished cries and hair-clutching; but then, poor Laurie
didn’t have two decades of copy-cat films to teach her better, did she? (If
there’s anyone out there who saw this film in 1978, and remembers how they reacted to
Michael’s resurrections and Laurie’s knife-droppings, I’d really like to
hear from them!)
Halloween is an elegant and
chilling little horror film. While much of its power can be attributed to its direction
and its cinematography, due credit must also be given to John Carpenter’s score
which, while fairly simply and repetitive, is also surprisingly effective, adding tension
to even those scenes in which not much appears to be happening. (Actually, what
Carpenter’s score reminds me of most is the use of "Tubular Bells" in The
Exorcist: minimalist, but disturbing.) However, with all of its virtues, the film does
have some very obvious flaws. Its pacing is rather uneven, with things dragging noticeably
before Michael really gets down to business. In addition, some side-effects of the low
budget, more specifically of the short shooting schedule, show a little too clearly. While
the shots of Haddonfield’s broad, tree-lined streets are richly atmospheric, there is
some very poor matching of blue skies and grey skies, rain-damp streets and dry ones. And,
oh yes, "Haddonfield": pity about all the California license plates – and
the fact that the temperature seems rather warm, and the trees a little too green and
flourishing, for Illinois in late October. Still, these are minor details compared to some
of the contrivances of the story. That even John Carpenter was uncomfortably aware of
these is evident in the throwaway exchange about Michael’s ability to drive a car:
"He was doing a very good job last night!" pronounces Dr Loomis, and the subject
is dropped. Personally, the one thing about Halloween I have always found
impossible to swallow is not Michael’s automotive skills, but Laurie’s utter
refusal to switch a light on when she enters the Wallace house – I mean, even if you did
think it was your friends playing a practical joke, wouldn’t you turn on as many
lights as possible in that situation? (And the power is on; that’s
demonstrated for us elsewhere.) The other obvious plot device is the near total absence of
any adults in the story – something else that would be slavishly imitated by Halloween’s
descendants. Indeed, the fact that two of the film’s young characters are seen
to have parents is, in this context, fairly remarkable. However, only Annie’s father,
Sheriff Brackett, gets anything resembling significant screentime. (He also gets the
film’s most poignant moment, responding to Dr Loomis’s explanation of the
situation with a bitter, "If you are right, damn you for letting him
go!" – a line spoken in ignorance of the fact that his daughter has already
become one of Michael’s victims.) Almost every other adult in Haddonfield seems to
have decided to have a night out. I don’t know – do American parents really
choose Halloween, of all nights, to go out en masse and leave their kids with
teenaged babysitters? It seems rather unlikely. And as for the adults that do stay
home--- Could anyone actually mistake Laurie’s hysterical screams for help for a
practical joke? Even on Halloween? I dunno – they must breed ‘em mighty
sceptical in Illinois….
But let’s face it, Halloween
isn’t a work of art, just an admirably effective horror film. I’m sure the
endless thousands of people who flocked to see it weren’t looking for high art, but
rather, to get the bejeezus scared out of them; and that, they probably got. Halloween
was Jamie Lee Curtis’s film debut, of course, and she’s disarmingly good as
Laurie. (There’s a hint of awkwardness about her performance, but it fits so well
with her character that you hardly notice it’s unintentional.) If it’s too much
to say the film made Curtis "a star", it at least set her on her way – on
the charmingly unlikely career path that saw her evolve from the horror genre’s
reigning "Scream Queen" into a surprisingly skillful comedienne. Donald
Pleasence is unforgettable as Dr Loomis; in a sense, it’s a great shame that he
didn’t abandon the Halloween franchise here, as it is unjust that in many
people’s minds, he is more associated with the inferior sequels than with the
epoch-making original. Pleasence’s breathless, fluttery delivery of his rich and
fruity dialogue is indelible – making us aware of the danger that threatens
Haddonfield while simultaneously suggesting that the good doctor himself has a few
kangaroos loose in the top paddock (not surprising, of course, considering he’s spent
fifteen years in close contact with "evil incarnate"). The rest of the cast is
solid, but certainly not particularly memorable. In fact, two of the better performances
come from the two youngest actors, Brian Andrews as Tommy and Kyle Richards as Lindsey.
(For the record, my identification figure in Halloween is the young Lindsey
Wallace. Anyone who has to be in actual physical danger before she can be dragged away
from a double-bill of The Thing and Forbidden Planet is okay by me.) Mention
should also be made of Nick Castle’s silent, body-language performance as The Shape
itself, which is genuinely unsettling.
So how did Halloween, a good and
successful, even tasteful, little horror film, end up spawning so many crude, ugly,
outright bad imitations? The answer is double-barrelled. Firstly, and most
significantly, Halloween made an absolute fortune. In fact, for over two decades,
it was the most profitable independent film of all time, a title it only recently
relinquished to The Blair Witch Project. Secondly – Halloween is quite
a simple film. It stands out from the crowd because of the commitment and technical skill
that went into making it; but if you strip those things away, really, it could hardly be
simpler. If the lure of the dollar drew many aspiring film-makers to the slasher film, the
fact that such a project seemed to require very little thought – or effort, or
talent – was probably the final determining factor. Although productions such as The
Toolbox Murders and Terror Train (also starring Curtis) followed Halloween,
it was the release of Friday The 13th that opened the floodgates.
Substituting the film’s only virtue (or almost so: somewhat ironically, the makers of
Friday The 13th do seem to have taken away one positive lesson
from Halloween, one that has sunk in with few other of its copyists: the power of
music. Harry Manfredini’s electronic score is even simpler than John
Carpenter’s, but unnerving all the same), Tom Savini’s gore effects, for John
Carpenter’s carefully staged scare scenes, Sean Cunningham’s exercise in
cynicism was nevertheless enormously successful – and sent the horror genre as a
whole into a dispiriting downward spiral. And if this is depressing, even more so is the
subsequent fate of Halloween itself. What is truly startling when watching the film
these days is how patently its open ending was not intended to set up a sequel, but
rather, merely to leave the audience with the uncomfortable feeling that "the
evil" was still out there. Unfortunately, when it became apparent that everyone else
in the horror field was cashing in on Halloween far more than they had, the
film’s production team was unable to resist the temptation of bringing back their
creation. Despite being made by essentially the same people, Halloween II is a pale
shadow of the original, with gore scenes (and gratuitous nudity) in the place of genuine
scares, and only Dean Cundey’s cinematography holding the project together. It is
doubtful whether we’ve ever had a more graphic illustration of the difference between
a film fueled by enthusiasm, and one driven purely by economics.
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Director: John Carpenter