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10
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9 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
Halloween
night, 1963. Michael Myers, a disturbed little
boy, murders his sister after catching her flagrante
delecto... A judge declares the boy legally
insane and he's locked away in a mental institution.
Fifteen years later, Michael escapes and returns
to his home town of Haddonfield, Illinois. There
he targets a group of young girls as prospective
victims, and it's up to his psychiatrist, the
intrepid Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence), to stop
him before it's too late.
John
Carpenter's Halloween
is a masterpiece of simplicity — a simple story
beautifully, but unpretentiously, rendered by
a gifted young filmmaker at the height of his
powers. A fan of the stylized, convoluted gialli
of Italian maestro Dario Argento, Carpenter
delivered an Americanized version of the giallo
as a lean, mean scare machine that avoids the
maze-like plotting of its models. The film's
success solidified its makers as a force to
be reckoned with and helped to kick off a cycle
of slasher films. There's no question that a
gradually declining series of sequels and imitations
have hurt Halloween's
reputation over the years, but revisiting it
reveals some surprises: firstly, unlike the
majority of the films that came along after
it, it's a tremendously subtle film.
There's hardly any blood to speak of. Violence
erupts quickly and is over just as fast. What
little sex there is is handled in a chaste manner,
with only a few fleeting images of above-the-waist
female nudity. Like Hooper's Texas
Chain Saw Massacre (1974) it's a
film whose violent reputation rests more on
the imitations than followed.
Halloween
is also very much a product of filmmakers in
love with the medium. In-jokes abound (Pleasence's
Dr. Loomis is named after John Gavin's character
in 1960's Psycho,
while imperiled heroine Jamie Lee Curtis is
the daughter of Psycho
star Janet Leigh) but unlike later obnoxious
efforts like Scream
(1996), it never wallows in its own cleverness.
Nonetheless, despite its obvious qualities,
Halloween has remained
a lightning rod for controversy with accusations
of Puritanism lingering to this day. While it's
true that the highschoolers who fall victim
to Michael's blade are sexually active, it would
be a mistake to assume that Carpenter (anything
but conservative in his real life) is passing
some kind of perverse judgment on them. As the
director has stated many times, the horny teens
perish simply because they are too preoccupied
to notice that there is a killer around. In
contrast, virginal Laurie Strode (Curtis) is
a loner who is used to watching things from
a distance — that she survives is due to the
fact that she is alert and ahead of the situation,
unlike her friends. Halloween
does not condemn its teenage victims, either.
On the contrary, Carpenter spends a lot of time
establishing the three major female characters
are sympathetic and realistically depicted.
Unlike many slasher films, one is actually encouraged
to feel sorry for the victims — one senses a
life has been taken and feels sorry for that
act. Questions of intent to one side, one can
hardly argue with Halloween's
strengths as a film. Carpenter is one of the
few current filmmakers who insists on shooting
all his films in 2.35 Panavision, and his expert
use of the frame recalls the best of Sergio
Leone. Anybody who has ever seen Halloween
(or any of his films, really) only on TV in
Pan and Scan has effectively not seen the film.
Shots which incorporate Michael into the frame
become cropped and seem to take on the point
of view of the killer, thus lending credence
to the "filmmaker as judge and executioner"
argument. One can see in the properly formatted
widescreen edition that such arguments do not
apply.
Carpenter is also a rarity in that he usually
composes the music for his films, and his soundtrack
for Halloween has
passed into the annals of screen history as
one of the finest of its kind. Though heavily
influenced by Goblin's work on Deep
Red and Suspiria,
a fact the director acknowledges, his simple
and haunting themes add an extra layer of suspense
to the film. Unlike many of its ilk, Halloween
is also a very well acted film. Donald Pleasence
is superb as the obsessed Dr. Loomis — Carpenter
first offered the role to Christopher Lee and
then to Peter Cushing, and while I'm sure either
would have done well by the role (though Cushing's
ill health would have prevented him from appearing
in many of the sequels), Pleasence fits the
part like a glove. The veteran actor confessed
to Carpenter (whom he later referred to as the
best director he ever worked with; high praise
indeed from a man who worked with Roman Polanski,
John Sturges, George Stevens and Woody Allen,
to name but a few) that he accepted the role
only because his daughter Angela loved Carpenter's
Assault on
Precinct 13 (1975), so one should be grateful
to Ms. Pleasence for encouraging her father
to take on what would become an iconic role.
Jamie Lee Curtis, then a virtual unknown, is
also superb as Laurie, covering a wide range
of emotions and convincingly spending the final
act in a state of heightened hysteria. Carpenter
favorites Nancy Loomis (The
Fog) and Charles Cyphers (Escape
from New York) are also fine in their
roles, and who can forget cute P.J. Soles as
the bubble-headed Annie? ("Totally!")
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| Halloween
has had a long and varied history on DVD, rivaling
such re-re-re-released titles as Sam Raimi's Evil
Dead trilogy. The edition under review here is not
the controversial "color-corrected" 25th
Anniversary release, but the previous THX-mastered
edition from 1999. There's little question that
this version better replicates the visual scheme
of the film as we all know and love it, and until
Carpenter and director of photography Dean Cundy
make clear their feelings towards the 25th Anniversary
edition one may assume it to be the definitive presentation.
Perfectly framed at 2.35:1, one also has the option
of watching it fullframe —
and I advise people to try it that way just to appreciate
how well composed this film really is. The print
utilized is in terrific shape, with strong, vivid
colors and moody shadows (note how even when the
film is set in the day, Carpenter makes use of shadows
from trees and the like to suggest menace). Anchor
Bay's disc also makes use of a newly created 5.1
mix supervised by Carpenter associate Alan Howarth
(no relation); it's an effective track and one has
the option of watching it with the original mono
mix which is in superb condition. Extras include
theatrical trailers, TV spots, talent bios for Carpenter,
Pleasence and Curtis, a poster and still gallery
and a documentary on the film titled Halloween
Unmasked 2000. This 26-minute featurette covers
a lot of ground and incorporates comments from Carpenter
and others, but it definitely pales in comparison
to the feature-length documentary AB assembled for
the 25th Anniversary DVD.
12/03/03 |
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