Classic Movie Review: The Original 'Halloween' Doesn't Hold Up

Halloween (1978)

Directed by John Carpenter

Written by John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance

Release Date October 25th, 1978

Published October 13th, 2022

Is it possible that horror fans just like the musical score for Halloween 1978 and tolerate the movie that goes with it? I realize that this is a great offense to fans of the Halloween franchise but I just don't get the appeal of John Carpenter's original Halloween. The film is remarkably dull by the standards of the great horror movies I have seen in my now more than 20 years as a film critic. Halloween is outright boring aside from that remarkable score which is incredible and nearly provides the kind of tension and suspense the movie should be generating but isn't. The score of Halloween deserves a better movie to call home.

Halloween 1978 centers on Michael Myers who, as a child, murdered his sister in cold blood on Halloween night. Taken into a mental institution, Michael was locked away until the age of 21 under the treatment of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance). In treating Michael, Dr. Loomis has come to see his patient as the closest thing to pure evil he's ever witnessed. Dr. Loomis has dedicated his career to making sure Michael Myers never gets out of custody. Unfortunately, on the night that Loomis is set to take Michael to an even more secure facility for rest of his natural life, Loomis finds that Michael has escaped.

Driven by an unspecified motivation, Michael returns to Haddonfield, Illinois, his childhood hometown. There he sets his sights on several people he wants to kill. Among the likely victims is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), a teenager with plans to babysit on this Halloween night. Halloween is when Michael killed his sister and it is this night that he hopes to return to killing. Another potential victim that catches Michael's eye is young Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), who happens to be the child that Laurie will be babysitting that night.

It's quite a coincidence that Michael follows first Laurie and then Tommy as he would have no idea that Laurie is Tommy's babysitter but we are supposed to forget about such things. We are also supposed to not care that someone must have taken the time to teach the most dangerous inmate in a mental institution how to drive a car with such care that he can stealthily follow not one but two different, seemingly unrelated children. Halloween fans want us to pretend these inconsistencies don't exist but the movie does little to hide its own flaws.

The other thing we are asked to ignore is how silly Michael Myers looks each time we see him. My favorite is a moment where Michael is stalking Laurie as she walks home from school. Laurie looks over her shoulder and sees Michael's hulking masked figure standing still and staring at her. She turns away and he's gone. Laurie's friend goes to see who might be messing with her friend and when she arrives at the hedgerow that Michael would seem to be hiding behind, he's gone. The clear indication here, aside from unspecified supernatural powers, is that Michael Myers, the cheeky prankster that he is, appeared in front of Laurie and then quickly ran away so as not to be caught.

The mental image of a hulking mental patient in a Halloween mask running to hide from a pair of teenagers is hilarious. But then, ask yourself this, why? Why is Michael toying with Laurie? What does a mental patient get out of hiding in the hedges or hiding in Laurie's backyard or appearing to her outside her school? What does this have to do with anything Michael Myers has planned? I'm told that his lack of motivation is part of what makes Michael Myers so scary but then why is the rest of the franchise so dedicated to giving Michael a motivation?

Halloween fans have hand-waved all of these weird inconsistencies for years. Things like why Michael stole his sister's headstone from her grave only to set it up in a random house where he has elaborately stored several of the bodies of various victims unrelated to his original murder? Nowhere during the original Halloween is it mentioned that Laurie and Michael are secret siblings, that's a retcon from Halloween 2. The fact that we ever found out that Laurie is Michael's sister reveals the cynicism of this franchise continuing beyond the ragingly mediocre original.

The film was successful and marketers, seeing success, capitalized with a sequel. Fans of the aesthetic of Michael Myers, and John Carpenter's first rate score then dedicated themselves to lore building for the franchise to justify their enjoyment of such a nakedly commercial franchise. It's the calculated, capitalistic cynicism that bothers me about Halloween. John Carpenter made one of his most mediocre movies in 1978 and was roped to that movie by its unlikely success and I resent that.

And that's really at the heart of my critique of Halloween. This should not be the movie that John Carpenter is known for as a director. He's far more interesting and far more talented than what he does in Halloween. This film is the least of his work. It feels like a commercial assignment and not something that Carpenter truly cared about. That comes through in the carelessness of the plotting, the lack of cohesion in the character of Michael Myers, and the slack repetition of the same boring violence.

For the best and most ambitious of John Carpenter's films you should watch They Live or The Thing, or a slightly lesser but still quite sound horror movie like The Fog. Carpenter is a talented genre filmmaker who likes to dazzle audiences by creating spectacular, out this world horror spectacle. Halloween is the bare bones of Carpenter, it's almost like a student film version of what Carpenter would go on to create. It has a bare minimum of value in that way but it does not define Carpenter.

Michael Myers is a commercial figure and not an iconic horror image. We've been duped or coaxed into the idea that Myers, and by extension, Halloween 1978, is iconic. Michael Myers is truly the triumph of a marketing team. That's the real staying power of Halloween, it's endurance is based purely on the commercial appeal of the genre, the tropes and the image of Michael Myers. Not to mention the name Halloween which meant from the start that if the movie was even vaguely watchable it was going to be remembered in association with the holiday.

Halloween is all smoke and mirrors, it's a trick. It's the proverbial naked Emperor of the horror genre. We've been fooled. Watch the movie, it's remarkably dull and does not hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. The title and the music score endure because of the holiday, obviously, and the undeniable brilliance of Carpenter's score. That score deserves a far better movie but this is what it got. The score transcends the movie but cannot be rid of it unfortunately.

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