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Film Description
A superb exercise in Hitchcockian suspense, Carpenter's original stalk 'n' slash movie spawned a host of inferior sequels and imitators. The director's prowling camera makes inspired use of the possibilities of space within the frame, where the shifting volumes of darkness and light reveal the presence of a sinister something. The simplicity of the plot - a masked psychopath starts decimating suburban teenagers observed in the sexual act - becomes a witty cinematic game of expectations confounded and shocks perpetrated, all made more menacing by Carpenter's own brilliantly sinister music score.
The Night HE Came Home!
On a school trip to a mental asylum, the legend goes that a young John Carpenter stared into the eyes of a child killer and in his own word... more >
The Night HE Came Home!
On a school trip to a mental asylum, the legend goes that a young John Carpenter stared into the eyes of a child killer and in his own words “into the eyes of the devil himself”.
Whether this actually happened, or whether Carpenter is layering on the mythology with a butcher’s knife, we’ll probably never know. However, you can imagine how the vision of repressed rage could inspire the disturbing and terrifying reveal that comes at the very beginning of Halloween.
After an audacious POV journey through a suburban house, a teenage girl is savagely stabbed to death and, as the killer rushes to escape, the camera turns to expose a child in a clown’s costume, standing on the steps of his house, emotionless, a bloodied kitchen knife in his grasp.
15 years later Michael Myers returns to the house where he murdered his sister and begins stalking a fresh batch of teenagers. What follows is a genre-defining masterclass in horror and suspense.
The tension is carefully drawn out through the day to the sound of Carpenter’s superbly minimalist score. The camera crouches behind hedgerows and white picket fences. Children skip from house to house trick or treating, avoiding the spooky house at the end of the street and, as night falls, the tempo and dread mounts.
The nubile cast are picked off one by one in the increasingly gruesome fashion that was to become the norm, and Jamie Lee Curtis’ virginal heroine is cornered in her house, fighting for her life to the sounds of violent synthesiser bursts, forced into futile attempts to maim and mutilate her relentless attacker.
Carpenter turned safe suburban America into a nightmare and, 25 years on, the film is still the best of its kind. With a bountiful array of extras the special edition hosts a witty and insightful commentary from Carpenter and his cast, revealing to those who wish to know, Captain Kirk’s most terrifying performance.
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