John Carpenter one of cinemas true Masters of Horror came to prominence with his second movie Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976, but it would be his next cinematic release Halloween two years later that will forever be associated as being the key movie from his early career. And for good reason, as Halloween is also one of the key movies in the Slasher-Horror sub genre, and a film which would spawn a fascination with Slasher flicks as we moved into the eighties, a decade in which we would see many many copycat movies.
It’s mark and influence on Horror is virtually unprecedented with John Carpenter’s stylish and visionary movie crafted after an early script was floating around Hollywood tentatively titled ‘The Babysitter Murders’. Producer Irwin Yablans would present the idea to Carpenter who then adapted with partner Debra Hill, developing the idea into the iconic Halloween story we know today, while also taking more than a little influence from director Bob Clark’s earlier proto-Slasher Black Christmas (1974).
Halloween is one of the most successful ever independent films, created on a budget in the region of just $300,000 and going on to gross in excess of $65 million. It has created a legacy of money making sequels (of varying quality!) one of the most recognisable music scores (created by John Carpenter himself), and one of the iconic movie villains in killer Michael Myers. Here we take a nostalgic deep dive into the classic orignal movie and the first twenty years of it’s incredible legacy :
John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)
Opening with Carpenter’s legendary eerie piano score, Halloween was a masterpiece in slow building macabre tension. From the opening scene it would stylistically lay the blueprint for many traits of the slasher genre, where we watch a young Michael murder his sister with a knife and watch from his POV as he silently moves through the house before bringing his weapon down on her bare chest.
The movie introduces us early to this simple concept of a silent unadulterated stalking killer that would form the basis for the whole series of movies. After murdering his sister Michael is incarcerated in an asylum under the watch of psycho-therapist Dr Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance). Fifteen years later Michael (Nick Castle) escapes and returns to his now derelict family home in the town of Haddenfield Illonois, where on Halloween afternoon he begins stalking teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
The movie slow-burns it’s way through to the evening as Laurie becomes very aware of being watched by this strange and imposing masked figure, before Michael eventually unleashes hell by going on a murderous rampage of Laurie’s friends before targeting her as she babysits the young Tommy Doyle. Meanwhile Dr Loomis also comes to Haddenfield in pursuit of his escaped patient, following his trail of destruction as he discovers Michael has killed a mechanic, desecrated his mothers grave and returned to his childhood home.
The magic in Halloween is that Carpenter manages to create a thoroughly eerie tension with little need for gratuitous blood or guts. The action of Michael’s kills is subtly presented perfectly matching the tone of the film, with the cinematography instead focusing on deep chiascuro lighting and shadowing, and using Carpenter’s ever present ominous score along with the sound of Michael’s heavy breathing to help create the tension.
Perfect little narrative choices are made such as Michael seemingly taking pride in his murders, as shown by him stopping to admire his handwork after impaling one victim to a wall in one of the films most memorable kill scenes. As well as him arranging his bodies into some kind of sick and twisted work of art by placing them on display like trophies for the added horror of Laurie to find.
The character of Dr Loomis provides all of the exposition we need in order to help establish Michael as pure evil incarnate, and in Laurie Strode we are provided with one of cinemas best known final girls, while introducing the ultimate scream queen in Jamie Lee Curtis, who Carpenter admits he cast in the hope that the star power of her famous actor parents Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot) and Janet Leigh (Psycho) would help sell his picture!
Halloween II (1981)
Carpenter himself considered the story of Halloween as a complete one and done movie and had little intention in returning to the tale, leaving the story on a perfectly ambiguous note after the body of Michael disappears after being shot by Dr Loomis and seemingly falling to his death. But following the success of the film the studio had other ideas and Carpenter was convinced to return in a producers role, and along with Debra Hill he would write the script for Halloween II.
The film was placed in the hands of director Rick Rosenthal (Bad Boys) and picks right up from Halloween’s final scene as the film recaps the moment Michael strangles Laurie before Dr Loomis arrives in time to save her by unloading his revolver, shooting Michael six times before sending him crashing through the first floor window. It’s at this point that we are introduced to the supernatural element of the character, as it appears he is impervious to being killed.
The movie continues from Michaels POV and we hear his heavy breathing as he retreats walking wounded into the house of an elderly couple, where he helps himself to a kitchen knife before leaving them be. His escape from the sanitarium and the discovery of his murders have now hit the news and within minutes of the film Michael has killed again, and we see blood spray as he slits the throat of his young female victim.
Already we’ve seen a more gratuitous bloodshot than in the whole of Halloween, and Halloween II continues in this fashion significantly upping the ante with the graphic gore shown. This is a reflection of the times as in 1981 the slasher movement that Halloween had inspired was in now full flow, but movies such as Friday The 13th (1980) and Maniac (1980) had dispensed with the slow building tension shown with the film they were influenced by instead relying on shock, gore and the odd flash of female flesh to satisfy the appetite of the new Eighties Slasher audience.
Laurie has been taken into hospital where she is delirious from the shock of what has happened to her, and it is here that Michael also heads to inflict a further bloodbath … and this time one of epic proportions! The hospital setting allows for all manner of inventive kills with plenty of victims readily available to provide cannon fodder for Michael. One kill in particular stands out as Michael drowns a nurse by submerging her head in a spa of scalding water, which allows for some neat practical effects and body horror as we see the skin burned from her face.
Michael takes out a number of hospital staff in inventive and gruesome ways but his ultimate pursuit is that of Laurie, and he finally tracks her down in the final act as she runs from him through the corridors of the almost deserted night-time hospital, encountering his morbid arrangement of dead bodies on the way. In a twist we discover that Laurie is the blood sister of Michael Myers, who was just a baby when Michael was incarcerated and adopted soon after when their parents died.
The motive of Michael returning to kill a family member continues throughout the series, and the overall theme of family is an important one in the franchise. In the final scenes Michael has Laurie cornered but she has Loomis’s gun and shoots him in the face. Blood pours from the eye sockets in his mask but again this isn’t enough to kill him and he begins blindly swinging his knife. Loomis creates a gas leak before igniting a flame and burns Michael to the ground in what a reluctantly returning Carpenter had surely written as being the very final scene of his monstrous creation.
Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982)
Having well and truly had his arm twisted into writing Halloween II, Carpenter felt the story was finally complete with the antagonist killed off with absolutely no planned return. But money talks and the popularity of the two films meant there was a strong appetite for further life in the franchise, and the owners of a now successful series of movies were keen to continue … although where they took it next would prove to be a very contentious decision!
Carpenter and Debra Hill felt that the series needed a new direction but could have legs as an anthology series, and their idea was to produce a new Halloween themed standalone movie each year or two. Season Of The Witch was written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Fright Night Pt. 2 / It) with John Carpenter once again providing the score, and it was a huge departure from the first two movies as it moved away from the slasher genre to create a tale based around a Sci-Fi / Horror concept, with an element of witchcraft.
But horror fans at the time got the wrong end of the stick and were somewhat led by the films marketing which alluded to the return of their murdering anti-hero, and they were expecting to see another Michael Myers movie. There was a backlash as they discovered that Season Of The Witch was going to provide nothing of the sort, and as word of mouth spread the film failed dismally at the box office and was a financial failure.
However as with many of the movies Carpenter was involved with in the Eighties, Season of the Witch has rightly found itself somewhat of a cult status in modern times, as a quintessential embodiment of an early Eighties B-Movie inspired genre flick. In a quite frankly bonkers narrative the movie stars Tom Atkins (The Fog) as Dr Daniel Challis, who following the murder of a hospital patient unwittingly becomes embroiled in a sinister and mysterious conspiracy to hypnotise and mass murder the children of America.
Season of the Witch is a fine early eighties Horror-flick, which with its theme of murdering human-esq robots took influence from the likes of Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1973) amongst others. But it falls victim to its association with the previous two Halloween movies and would have unquestionably fared better as a complete stand alone film that did not bare the iconic title. However hindsight is a wonderful thing and as it stands it’s place in the franchise was secured, and Season of the Witch will forever remain as the intriguing and underrated ugly duckling of the series.
Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (1988)
Following the backlash for the series daring to produce a movie that did not feature the iconic antagonist, demand for a return of the masked killer was clearly there and six years later Michael Myers was back! Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers picks up ten years after the events of the first two movies with a scene of exposition as a security guard in an asylum relays the events from 1978. He explains how Michael had murdered a total of sixteen people that fateful Halloween night in an attempt to kill his sister, before almost being burned alive. Michael is being transported in a comatose state from a facility back to the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, but in typical fashion he rises from his sedation, kills the ambulance crew and escapes.
The film then introduces Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), a troubled adopted child who has a complicated relationship with her older foster-sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell). We learn that 11 months prior Jamie had lost her parents in a car accident, one of which being her mother Laurie Strode. The film quickly establishes a psychic connection between Michael (George P. Wilbur) and Jamie, and we see a vision of the killer appear in her bedroom as he again represents the Boogeyman while the movie builds a nice aura of suspense. We see glimpses of him in the shadows as Jamie wanders around in the dark before the movie delivers a nice jump scare as his hand shoots out from under her bed grabbing her ankle.
Once again Donald Pleasance returns as Dr Samuel Loomis, who as ever remains hot on the trail of his once again escaped patient. Early on in the narrative Loomis and Michael come face to face in a gas station where the killer has chained up another victim as one of his demented works of art. Loomis pleads with him not to return to Haddenfield and shoots his gun, but he misses and Michael disappears helping himself to a truck as Carpenter’s legendary score kicks in.
At school Jamie is bullied and taunted by a particularly mean spirited group of school children, before Rachel takes her to find a Halloween costume where she is drawn to the same clown outfit that Michael wore as a child the night he murdered his sister. As she tries on the costume she has another premonition of her ‘Nightmare Man’. Michael begins stalking his niece along with Rachel and her friends and a nod back to Halloween II where he sabotaged the hospital, he systematically takes out Haddonfield’s electricity as he prepares for his evening assault, plunging the town into darkness and causing the townsfolk to band together in a mob mentality.
The Return of Michael Myers provides plenty of gore and the film is jam packed with a number of inventive kill sequences and gruesome body discoveries. Dr Loomis satisfyingly runs around the towm spouting his usual ‘evil’ exposition dialogue as he tries to explain to local Police and anyone who will listen the danger they are all in. And really this is a highly enjoyable Halloween romp which perfectly pays homage to Carpenter’s original movie, while also providing a heavy Eighties update.
The climax is highly memorable with plenty of suspense as to where Michael is going to pop up next as he slashes and strangles his way towards a showdown with Jamie and Rachel. This inevitably ends with Loomis helping the pair to escape the crazed killer who just keeps coming time and time again no matter where they run to. The bond between Jamie and Michael is shown again in his ‘death’ scene as she holds his hand after he is rammed by a truck, but again he inexplicably rises before being pumped full of bullets in a court martial style execution, by a marauding mob of cops and vengeful townsfolk.
Halloween 4 then delivers a massive curveball with a devilish twist which had been hinted at throughout the film. In the final scene Rachel’s mother is running Jamie a bath and in homage to the very opening scene of the series, we see a POV shot of a masked figure picking up a pair of scissors and walking into the bathroom before we hear a blood curdling scream. Jamie them appears at the top of the stairs in her clown costume holding the scissors dripping with blood, while Dr Loomis screams at her in disbelief. The camera pans to her face and fades to black as the audience is left to contemplate the transfer of evil we have just witnessed.
Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers (1989)
Halloween 4 was a success and plans were fast-tracked to capitalise on the renewed interest in the franchise by steaming straight into production for a direct sequel in Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers. The film revisits the ending of the previous film in which Jamie (Danielle Harris) holds the hand of Michael before he is shot and falls into an open mine shaft. But we now see him crawl to the safety of a river and watch him float away where he stumbles across an elderly vagrants shack, before collapsing while attempting to strangle the old man.
The movie then jumps forward a year to the following Hallows Eve where Jamie is in a childrens psychiatric hospital, and on a typically dark and stormy night she has a nightmare as she revisits the stabbing of her adoptive mother. She again seems to have a telepathic connection with Michael who we are shown has a symbol tattooed on his wrist and is still in the shack of the vagrant. However Michael now comes to and kills the man who has presumably nursed him back to health, while Jamie falls into a siezure while scribbling ‘He’s coming for me’ on a chalk board.
Jamie is now a mute and is visited by Rachel (Ellie Cornell) and her friend Tina (Wendy Foxworth). When Rachel heads home Michael is in her garden and Jamie connects telepathically with him as he stalks Rachel’s house. Michael hides in her house and takes his time watching her for a while before eventually attacking her with a pair of scissors. Tina comes to Rachel’s house and searches for her while Michael watches for a while before heading to Jamie’s hospital where she sees him skulking in the garden.
In what appears to be a random scene the movie shows us a shot of a mysterious man dressed in black arriving in Haddonfield by coach. He has the same tattoo on his wrist as Michael, and visits the old Myers house where he observes Dr Loomis looking for clues to Michael’s whereabouts. Michael begins stalking Tina and her friends memorably killing her boyfriend by slamming a pitchfork in his head,
Tina attends a Halloween party on a farm and Michael arrives and continues stalking, where he watches as a couple break away to have sex in a barn where he gruesomely takes the couple out. Tina find the bodies of her friends before Michael drives at her in a car as Jamie appears. Michael chases them down stabbing Tina before hunting Jamie through the woods where she runs into Loomis.
He calls out to the killer and beckons Michael back to the Myers house where he says he’ll be waiting for him with Jamie. Loomis has set an ambush for Michael as the house is full of cops, but he inevitably starts taking them out one by one. Loomis tries to appeal to Michael delivering his usual exposition, but he discovers you can’t reason with evil and gets slashed across the chest and strangled, leaving Michael free to chase down Jamie. She escapes to the attic where she discovers Michael has artistically arranged his kills, bathed in candlelight.
Jamie also tries to reason with him and Michael takes off his mask to show his face, but then turns on her. Loomis having survived his assault arrives and leads Michael into a trap as chains fall from the ceiling on top of him. Michael of course survives and is arrested, taken to jail where he will be transported to a maximum security prison. But the mysterious Man in Black arrives and shoots up the place, breaking Michael free as Jamie watches on.
Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers (1995)
There was a six year wait for fans to find out what happened after Michael was sprung from jail by the mysterious Man in Black, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers opens with an epilogue explaining that Michael & Jamie have not been seen since they disappeared on that Halloween night. We then see a baby being born in what looks to be part of some kind of satanic ritual. The baby is Jamie’s who is now a young adult (J.C Brandy) and it is clear she is being held captive. She manages to flee from her captors with her child, and Michael is sent following in pursuit.
The film introduces us to Kara Strode (Marrianne Hagan) and her six year old son Danny, who is visited by a vision of the Man in Black who brandishes a knife and asks the young boy to kill for him. Her neighbour is Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd) the eight year old boy Laurie Strode was babysitting in Carpenter’s original film. Dr Loomis is now a retired man living out his twilight years in what would be Donald Pleasance’s final role and he listens to a local radio show where Jamie calls in panicked, proclaiming that Michael is coming for her. Michael does indeed soon find and murder Jamie in devastating fashion.
Kara and her son are part of Laurie’s adoptive Strode household where they live with her brother, mother and abusive father. Tommy Doyle finds Jamie’s baby who she had hidden from Michael before her murder and takes him to a hospital where he meets Dr Loomis. They talk and agree that Michael is going to return to Haddenfield this Halloween, and right on cue we see him stalking the Strode household. Loomis makes the connection and visits the Strodes to warn them that Michael is coming after them, but after he leaves the killing of the family begins.
Kara’s son Danny has visions of both Michael & the Man in Black and draws pictures of them murdering his family. While Tommy is portrayed as an obsessed conspiracy theorist who seems to have linked the prescence of Michael with an ancient druid cult, and the symbol we have seen tattooed on both Michael and the Man in Black is the mark of Thorn, a rune which represents a demon that spreads death. According to an ancient Celtic legend one child from each tribe was to chosen to be inflicted with the curse of Thorn, and to offer the blood sacrifice of its next of kin, in order that this would spare the rest of the tribe from disease and famine.
There is a strong theme of witchcraft in this movie which in a way links it nicely with the tone prevalent in Season of the Witch. But it offers a bizarre reasoning behind the motivation of Michael baring little resemblance to Carpenter’s original story. The movie also stands out for its individual and quirky style which is a noticeable departure from its predecessors. The kill count mounts up as Michael leaves a trail of devestation in his pursuit of Jamie’s baby, while Danny is continued to be shown as being telepathically groomed by the Man in Black to become the next ‘Michael’.
The narrative eventually brings together Kara, Danny, Michael, Loomis and the Man in Black who along with other cult members drug the protagonists and take Jamie’s baby. It turns out that the Man in Black is Dr Wynn head of the Smith’s Grove Asylum, and this is where the climax of the movie is set. This provides a bizarre finalè as Michael chases the protagonists around the hospital, before eventually being taken out by Tommy who stabs him with tranquillisers and relentlessly beats him with metal piping. But in the final scene the camera pans down to his mask … and once again his body is gone!
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
The ‘Cult of Thorn’ trilogy was at an end and it was felt by Dimension Films that their money spinner needed to head in a fresh direction. Horror had moved through a new era in the second half of the Nineties with movies such as Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) leading the way with a modern Slasher-style, which seemed to very much influence Halloween: H20. The movie takes the decision to completely disregard the storyline of the previous trilogy and instead was able to convince Jamie Lee Curtis (who of course had gone on to have a huge career away from horror) to return and play Laurie Strode once again, this time 20 years after the fateful Halloween night portrayed in the first two films.
Popular young stars such as Josh Hartnett (The Faculty) who plays Laurie’s son John, and musician come actor LL Cool (Deep Blue Sea) were brought in to provide a fashionable supporting cast. H20 opens with the building sense of dread as a lady returns home from work to discover her house has been broken in to, and we know instantly that Michael (Chris Durand) is there somewhere hiding in the shadows. He cuts her throat and as detectives attend the next day we find out she was the nurse of the deceased Dr Loomis, and it is his old house that she lives in.
Laurie is now a headteacher living in California in the grounds of a prestigious school under a new identity, and she has regular nightmares about her encounter with Michael. She is a single mother living with her 17 year old son and due to her PTSD she is terrified of Michael returning. It is October 31st and Michael is making his way to Laurie having found her identity and address after ransacking Loomis’s study in the opening sequence. Laurie see’s visions of Michael throughout her day and it is clear she can’t let go of what happened and is always looking over her shoulder.
The movie drops a number of red herring jump scares as it meanders through the early narrative of the opening act, before Michael arrives in town and starts to once again stalk Laurie. We do see a more forgiving Michael in the early stages of H20 as he spares the lives of a mother and daughter whose vehicle he steals en-route to California from Illinois, and he also sneaks into the school past LL Cool J’s security guard,p seemingly sparing him also. This is a different Michael to what we’ve experienced before, but the film clearly lays down the feeling that this is only the calm before the impending storm.
Michael then returns to type and begins a fresh night of carnage by cutting the phone lines to the school and taking out the power in a dormitory as he kills two of John’s friends, once again artistically displaying their bodies to be found. John and his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams) are ambushed by Michael but are able to fight him off and escape back to to Laurie’s house, where she finally comes face to face with him once more through the glass in her door.
Cue all hell breaking loose as Michael enters the property killing Laurie’s boyfriend Will (Adam Arkin) before Laurie is able to escape. After driving John and Molly to safety Laurie grabs a fire axe and heads back to face her brother, where they play cat and mouse through the building before Laurie stabs Michael multiple times and he once again falls from a window. Seemingly Michael is killed and he is zipped up in a body bag, however Laurie is not convinced and steals the coroners ambulance with Michael’s body inside.
The bag starts to move and Michael sits up, before Laurie slams on the breaks sending him through the windscreen. She then plows the ambulance into him crashing into woodland and pinning him against a tree. As Laurie approaches Michael reaches out his hand and she delicately touches his fingers … before viciously chopping off his head! A final scene you would think that provides an absolute definitive end to Michael’s life, finishing off the franchise after bringing it full circle after 20 years … right !? KZ
Words By – Mark Bates
kult-zilla.com 
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