I’ve made a few references to
the original Halloween being one of the greatest horror films ever made. This
is mainly because it is.
I’m not a big fan of the
entire series – I’ve seen 4 and 5 twice, 6 maybe once, and never seen 8. As
such, today’s entry will be about the films I’ve seen the most – the loose
“trilogy” of the original Halloween, Halloween II and H20.
I don’t know when I first saw
Halloween, but I know when I picked up a video copy – it was not too long after
seeing Scream in the cinema. The video was second-hand, had a very grainy
picture and was in completely the wrong aspect ratio. Didn’t care, loved it.
You can't write a piece about the Halloween films without mentioning how good John Carpenter's score is. John Carpenter's score is amazingly good.
The characterisation is so
strong, you really feel like you know Laurie, Annie and Lynda (Totally). The
cast is kept to an absolute minimum – there are only three main teen
characters, and less than twenty speaking characters in total – giving a
greater focus on them all. On the whole, it’s Laurie’s movie, and while Jamie
Lee Curtis gives a great performance she’s not the ultimate final girl she’s
often painted as. That said, it’s unfair to judge her by those that came after,
and the great final girls of slasherdom all build on her example. While we’re
busting misconceptions, let’s put pure innocent Laurie to one side too – she’s
less sexually active than her friends because she has trouble attracting men,
but she has her eye on a guy so the thoughts are definitely there. Also, while
she coughs on the joint she doesn’t seem surprised at the offer or unwilling to
accept it.
If we’re talking about great
performances, we have to talk about Donald Pleasence. Bluntly, some of the
dialogue he’s got to recite here would floor lesser actors, but he manages to
make it sound glorious. His delivery of lines like “Death has come to your
little town, Sheriff.” make Dr Loomis one of my favourite characters in horror.
He is the template for what is referred to in Behind the Mask: The Rise of
Leslie Vernon as the Ahab*, and is absolutely the inspiration for Robert
Englund’s performance in that film.
*(Excluding the actual Captain
Ahab from Moby Dick, obviously.)
Then there’s Michael – or,
more correctly, The Shape. I like him best as he is here –patient, curious and
a little playful. While he has a lot in common with the boy from Crystal Lake,
Michael’s style of pursuit is completely different to Jason’s. Jason will
follow you and catch you. Michael has no need to follow you, he knows he’ll
catch you soon enough – he’ll even let you go if he thinks it’ll lull you into
a false sense of security. He’ll even taunt you a little – remember his daytime
appearances in front of Laurie? That extends into the playfulness too – can you
imagine Jason with a sheet over his head?
Moving on to Halloween II, and
while Rick Rosenthal is a more than competent director, it’s still clear we’re
in lesser hands here. Carpenter the writer is also not firing on all cylinders
– Loomis’ dialogue is not as sharp here as in the original, for instance, and
there are moments where it shows in Pleasence’s performance (though overall he’s
still brilliant). Despite this, and a few other minor concerns, it’s still the
best of all the sequels.
The death of Ben Tramer seems
a little overdone, and also brings to mind the question of what kind of mask
Michael is supposed to be wearing. In the real world, it’s a Shatner mask
painted white with enlarged eye holes – but the presence of another person in
the same mask shows that’s not what it was in the movie reality, so what was
it? I’m going with the idea that it was a bad batch of Shatner masks made with
the wrong coloured plastic, packaged up as generic “Scary Face” masks and sold
out as cheap peg-filler to convenience stores instead of being thrown out.
On the other hand, there are
some brilliant murder set pieces, with Michael managing to kill off most of the
introduced hospital staff – though, given how empty the place is (like a lot of
movie hospitals), they’re probably overstaffed anyway. The swift silent death
behind glass of Budd the ambulance driver and the subsequent drowning of Nurse
Karen is particularly good (though one wonders why the water didn’t do the same
to Michael’s hand as it did to her face). I’m also impressed by the death of
Nurse Jill, partly because Michael manages to lift up an entire adult woman on
a small scalpel, but mostly by the way her clogs pop off as she pops her clogs.
The revelation of Laurie as
Michael’s younger sister undermines a lot of the power of the first film – the
idea of a killer who fixates on a group of girls at random and hunts down the
one that got away simply because she got
away is a lot stronger than the idea of him hunting her because of an
unmentioned family connection. It also raises the question of where Laurie was
on the opening Halloween night, and why, if she was put up for adoption for her
protection, she ended up being adopted by parents only a few streets away who
actually deal with the sale of her old family home – surely, if the authorities
want to keep her safe, she’d be sent far away?
In the end, it’s just a good
slasher movie. Not a step up from the original like Friday the 13th
Part II was from the first, nor as big a step down as something like Freddy’s
Revenge or even Michael’s next three big screen outings. I don’t really rate
them, or the Jamie/Thorn storyline(s), so I’m going to skip ahead to H20.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (terrible
title) was directed by Steve Miner, the man behind the aforementioned Friday
the 13th Part II. I first saw this one in a sneak preview screening
at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, and loved it. My enjoyment has faded a
little since then, but I still think it’s pretty good.
Curtis’ performance as Keri
Tate/Laurie Strode convinces, her full medicine cabinet and her alcoholism a
believable outgrowth of the traumatic events of the first two films. Pleasence’s
absence is clearly felt, though I’m still not sure whether it would have been
better to bring in someone else as in a similar role to replace him – possibly
his daughter Angela as a daughter, Samantha Loomis? The opening pan around Nurse
Chambers’ office would have worked so much better if they’d actually used
Pleasence’s dialogue from the first film instead of giving it to another actor
to read.
An early movie appearance by
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (then probably best known for 3d Rock from the Sun) shows
his screen presence – I’d have like to see him and Josh Hartnett swap roles.
There’s nothing wrong with Hartnett ‘s performance as such, but he smirks where
Gordon-Levitt would’ve smiled. The importance of Curtis’ character to the plot means
that the adult characters are given something approaching equal screentime with
the teens, with good performances from both Adam Arkin and LL Cool J.
Whilst not quite up to
Carpenter levels, the spooky stalking appearances of Michael Myers are effective.
Like the original, the bodycount is low but the death scenes work well, with
the kitchen sequence a particular standout – they get some good use from the
dumbwaiter, and Michael’s knife is almost comically oversized. The lifting up
of Arkin’s character on the enormous knife is a little closer to believable
than the similar moment with the scalpel from Halloween II.
Then there’s the end sequence.
Laurie and Michael’s chase through the school is possibly the best part of the
film, though Laurie’s theft of the coroner’s van certainly comes close. By the
way, Laurie has looked into those eyes many times, and had there been anyone
else in the mask they would’ve tried to take it off rather than just feeling to
see that it was still on. That was Michael in that mask. He’s dead.
Except, he’s not, of course –
after all, you can’t kill the boogeyman.
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