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!")