Halloween Marathon: Halloween (1978)

Finally, the main feature of my whole marathon began this weekend! On Sunday, my boyfriend and I sat down and popped in the first Halloween.  I’ve never seen this before, just the Rob Zombie remake.  I liked that one quite a bit and decided that this year, I’d do a marathon to catch up with all this Michael Myers and maybe next year, I’ll go for the Friday the 13th series ;).  Lets check it out!

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Tony Moran, P.J. Soles, Nancy Kyes, Charles Cypher, Kyle Richards

Michael Myers murdered his sister on Halloween when he was a young boy and afterwards was institutionalized at a mental hospital.  After many years, he manages to escape as a grown man on Halloween and heads back to Haddonsfield.  Once there, he starts stalking a young girl, Laurie and her friends on Halloween.  At night, when she babysits, he lurks around the neighborhood and starts killing anyone that is in his way as he gets closer to her. At the same time, his doctor, Dr. Loomis chases after him and tries to track him down and stop him before he goes out of control.

Halloween is pretty much a classic at this point.  Everyone knows enough about it that I probably didn’t even need to give a synopsis. But hey, maybe you’re like me and extremely late to the party 😉 I know I’m late with lots of these. Regardless, I did initiate with the remake so I was slightly more familiar with the story, however this one does pace itself in a different way and portray a bit different also.  I found its pace a bit slow but one that works well because before I knew it, by the final few scares, I was yelling at the characters.  As predictable as some scenes were, they also had the background music and would make it more intense.

Michael Myers is definitely a creepy villain.  We don’t know what he looks like and the mask is bone-chilling and scary.  Especially since its white, in the dark spaces, sometimes thats all we see.  Then he lurks in the shadows and many times, its hard to know where he will pop out or exactly when, how he will attack.  He defines the unknown factor as there are so many mysteries that make us wonder why he’s hunting down Laurie, even why he would kill his own sister when he was just a boy. Questions and unknown and scary masks, especially kids in clown costumes, all very scary stuff in my book.

Do I really need to recommend this? Just go see it if you haven’t and if you have, well, I’m sure you’d love to see it again, especially for Halloween 😉

How many of you actually watch Halloween on Halloween day? Whats your go-to Halloween movie?