"It's Halloween. Everyone's entitled to one good scare."
Arguably the greatest slasher movie of all-time and certainly one of the most influential, John Carpenter's "Halloween" remains the crowning jewel of its director's filmography decades after its release. Genius in its simplicity, the movie follows teenage Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) as she goes about her day in preparation for a night of babysitting on Halloween, unaware -- except for a few fleeting glimpses -- that she and her friends are being stalked by escaped mental patient Michael Myers (Nick Castle), who has returned to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, fifteen years after he murdered his sister, to kill again. As the body count begins to rise, Michael's ageing psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) teams up with Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) to track and stop a man he considers to be the embodiment of evil.
I've watched "Halloween" dozens of times over the years and it still holds up magnificently, revealing new details about itself and demonstrating the directorial talent of John Carpenter with each new viewing. It may have not been the first movie in the slasher mould (1974's "Black Christmas" is but one of the movies that did it first) but it is such a perfect execution of the concept that it triggered an explosion of similar movies throughout the subsequent decade and remains the first film most people think about when the genre is brought up. Virtually every scene is a classic, from the opening sequence in which a young Michael Myers brutally stabs his sister to death, to the climactic scene where Dr. Loomis finds and shoots Michael, only for him to disappear into the night, ready to kill again. As for this first incarnation of Michael Myers: he looms large over the movie even with limited screen time, a hidden, omnipresent force that's somehow more imposing than later slasher icons who would essentially steamroll casts of cardboard characters. His body count in "Halloween" is low, yet he's as threatening here as he is in any of the sequels.
If you wanted to nitpick, I guess you could say that "Halloween" falls short in the character department. Jamie Lee Curtis may have found a career-defining role in the part of Laurie Strode, but her Laurie is more of a template for slasher movie protagonists than a fully-formed character (frankly, I prefer Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie in Rob Zombie's "Halloween" and "Halloween II"). Laurie's friends Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Annie (Nancy Loomis), meanwhile, are charming presences but fodder for Myers nonetheless. And while Donald Pleasence would become synonymous with the role of Dr. Loomis, his best work in this franchise would come in the likes of "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers" and "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers", although writer-director Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill do give him some of the series' most iconic lines here. These "flaws" are beside the point, however. "Halloween" is primarily about Michael Myers, the obscure evil he represents, and his looming presence over the proceedings. And on that point, "Halloween" is note-perfect.
This is an all-time classic horror movie. If you haven't watched it yet then what are you even doing with your life? Go watch it. It still holds up beautifully. It's still perfect to me.
THE HALLOWEEN FRANCHISE
Halloween II (1981)
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