John Carpenter, you ole rascal! You give us a new genre of horror tropes that still influence us today. Well done!
We start off in 1963. Halloween night in some small town. Some literal fuckeries going on. But apparently little Mikey doesn’t like a whoore for a big sister. Little 6 year old evil asshole goes full Stabby McStabberson. Yeah. Not good. Skip forward to 1978, Dr. Loomis is going to make sure that soulless bastard doesn’t get released from the sanitarium because he knows the evil void of a person he is after studying him for the last 15 years. Unfortunately for Loomis, Michael Myers has got other plans. And wouldn’t you know it, Halloween just happens to be here once again. And unfortunately for Laurie and her other high school girl friends, they seem to be caught up in a madman’s return home.
This really is a classic horror movie, inspiring a whole new genre of faceless boogeymen that wreak havoc on the young, innocent(ish) and potentially partially naked deviants. Plenty of jump scares and tension abound. Carpenter’s unique and recognizable score is used well liberally throughout. Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut as Laurie, Donald Pleasence does a good nervous doctor. Shot for relatively little money, the movie ended up grossing a fucking shit-ton of cash, making it one of the most profitable independent films ever made, and spawning like 80 sequels, remakes, parodies and maybe even a breakfast cereal. Or video game? I dunno, it gets a little fuzzy after awhile. Is it the best movie in the world? Not through today’s lens. But back then this really did catch people’s attention and even now is a nice tense little silent killer story that isn’t based on cancer.
