Educating Louisa – Part Three: Halloween
When the Fellows and Associates team hired Louisa, it was on the basis that she was an intelligent, cultured and interesting individual – qualities that she exuded during her interview. Unfortunately, what they didn’t know is that Louisa’s ‘films viewed’ portfolio was disappointingly unrefined. Pete Fellows has therefore taken on the role of teacher of all things cinema, and will assign a different ‘must see’ film each month for Louisa to watch and review, for both her own education and your reading pleasure.
Halloween – Terrifyingly Terrible
I love a horror, I love a ‘classic’ horror even more, and the thought of scaring myself senseless for no apparent reason other than for the sake of it is something that appeals to me. Therein lies the fundamental problem with Halloween – it’s just not-that-scary. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the only time there was a notable change in my heart rate was around an hour in (I fell asleep).
The first half hour was brilliantly atmospheric, and I hoped it would carve the way for the rest of the film. Director John Carpenter does a thrilling job of building just the right amount of suspense, with a notably Hitchcockian approach. The imagery very much played to my love of the Halloween season and had (in my opinion) the perfect recipe for success. Poorly carved pumpkins, a spooky looking house and a creepy child were all at hand to fuel my optimism. My hopes, however, were slashed.
The opening sequence is set some 15 or so years prior, when we witness a small boy (Michael Myers) dressed as a not so jolly clown get a little knife happy, to the absolute misfortune of his older sister. The whole thing is shot from Michael’s visual perspective, making the scene fantastically unnerving. Unfortunately, more unnerving still is the child’s unfathomable stature, as his eye line seems to match that of a 6 foot tall man. Tut tut Mr Continuity. The distracting mistakes didn’t end there. For example, there seems to have been a fake blood/ketchup drought in the late 1970’s. More than once I found myself asking, ‘do these people hold the key to curing haemophilia?’ If you are stabbed repeatedly with a 10 inch butcher’s knife you would bleed, right? Apparently not…
The remainder of the film sees the adult incarnation of Michael escape from a psychiatric prison and return to the town where he first caused chaos, in order to terrorise a fresh set of victims – a group of babysitting teenagers, including star Jamie Lee Curtis who plays (rather irritatingly) lead character Laurie. The next hour or so is poorly predictable.
The final sequence just about managed to wake me from my slumber. The concluding chase scene between Michael and survivor Laurie was undoubtedly entertaining, but not entirely for the right reasons. First, she runs upstairs (big mistake) then hides in the closet (huge mistake). Then, after Michael resurrects after being stabbed the first time, she proceeds to stab him again, throws the knife on the floor next to him, and turns her back! I get it. It is a classic blunder. I guess it deserves credit for inspiring the ‘oh no, I fell over and he’s going to catch me so instead of getting up I’m going to sit here and scream’ slasher genre. I just wish it hadn’t.
It’s simple; whether or not I enjoy a horror film boils down to one single question – was I scared? On this occasion, the answer conclusively is ‘no’. Granted, the boundaries between a ‘scary’ horror and a slasher movie are somewhat blurred, and I guess Halloween falls more closely into the latter description. Nevertheless, I at least expected a few good jumps.
Credit where credit is due, the film score is eerie and apt, and does a wonderful job of masking the (in parts) monotonous acting and dull story line. In the case of Halloween, take away the music, take away the festive themed imagery, take away the clever lighting and what you are left with is a heavily breathing lunatic in a boiler suit chasing around a group of tiresome teenagers (with whom I had no sympathy whatsoever). I admit that to a 1978 audience, Halloween may well have been a revelation. I can appreciate the ‘retro’ value of the film, and enjoyed it at parts for that reason alone. But overall, no matter how hard I tried I found it hard to buy into the Halloween hype.
Happy Halloween. Bah Humbug.
Having successfully viewed and slated archetypal horror ‘Halloween’, Pete is determined to find a classic film that Louisa will appreciate. In light of this, next month she will be reviewing conventional rom com ‘When Harry Met Sally’. Here’s hoping.