My next Carpenter movie to watch for #Johnuary was Halloween. I’d obviously heard so much about it and had always wanted to watch it but just had never gotten round to it. I’m not a huge horror fan, but am not against it in any way. I just hadn’t gone out of my way to catch up on the seminal horror films from the 80s until now. I watched this on Halloween week, just to heighten the experience.

And here is my random list of notes I made whilst watching the film…

• The first sequence, from the point of view of Michael is great and still works pretty well today. I can only imagine how powerful it was back in the day. Firstly it looks like it was a steadicam shot and I’m not sure how many movies had used the steadicam before. I actually believe it was using the Steadicam’s competitor, the Panaglide. I guess ‘Steadicam’ is a term used a bit like ‘Hoover’ and ‘Xerox’
• I have to say the next bit of the film, with Donald Pleasance and the nurse in the car, is pretty cheesy and poorly made. I wasn’t very hopeful at that point but luckily the movie got a lot better
• This was actually the first Carpenter film I watched for #Johnuary and I spotted in the titles that Carpenter did the music score. I had no idea that he did music for his films and I was extremely impressed. I know the score is pretty simple but it’s still very iconic and extremely appropriate for the movie. It must be great to a filmmaker and be able to have direct control over that extremely powerful aspect of the filmmaking yourself.
• I love that one of the TVs is showing a trailer for the original ‘The Thing from Another World’!
• There is a weird sound effect every time Myers appears. It certainly does make you jump, and it heightens the moment of shock, but it’s just a very strange and jarring noise. I guess this was early days in terms of the use of this trope. Obviously it’s been a major horror trope that has been used over the years but perhaps Carpenter was still fine tuning it, and for me it’s just not quite right
• The couple who rock up to house and get jiggy with it have a really, really cool van. I love it. And the guy just leaves the door wide open!
• I’ve only really ever known Jamie Lee Curtis from films like Trading Places and True Lies etc, so it was great to start to watch her earlier horror work.
• Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t a very good babysitter, leaving the kids in the house alone! I was very impressed with her survival skills though. I’ve never seen a knitting needle and coat hanger used in such imaginative ways
• Just how big are those houses and how wide are those streets?! It must be a very well to do neighbourhood, or there’s just too much goddamn space in America
• One great bit of trivia I learned whilst watching it was that ‘The Shape’ of Michael Myers was played by Nick Castle, the director of Last Starfighter. I went on to learn all about how Castle was a long time collaborator and friend of Carpenter, but it was just interesting to hear this for the first time. It’s also probably pretty well known now that the Michael Myers mask is actually made from an old William Shatner mask from Star Trek. I just find that hilarious. It’s a shame it isn’t a bit more recognisable as I think that would be fascinating to see Shatner terrorising these teenage girls

All images from Blu-Ray.com

All in all, I felt this movie did move pretty slowly in places, but for me it still had a good sense of creep and fear, that I thought a movie this old might lack. It certainly has a very strong style of its own and it started a whole bunch of tropes in the horror genre so it’s probably very seminal in that regard too.

I didn’t get time to watch Halloween 2 for Johnuary but I wasn’t as bothered about it as I know that John Carpenter didn’t direct it. I found it interesting that it starts off right after the first film finishes though. I’ll definitely watch it at some point.

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