Halloween - 1978, Directed by John Carpenter

 

Halloween is an Independent American Horror film, set in the 1970’s it was written and directed by John Carpenter (Also directed ‘Assault on precinct 13’ and ‘The Thing’) other than writing the screenplay and directing the picture he also created the very famous and very iconic soundtrack, Carpenter is the creator of the very jumpy and very atmospheric music that scares the audience more than the actual events in the film. The film was released in 1978 and was an independent film which means it was made on a very small budget and was made with only $320,000 and made a whopping $47 million in the box office. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of Slasher Films, inspired by Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’ (1960) although this is the first of the Slasher Horror genre of films it has very little blood and gore it is a classic horror film because of how atmospheric the music is and how jumpy it is.

When the opening sequence begins we see a black background with red title logo’s and writing this shows us straight away that the film is horror and straight away we hear the very iconic and very atmospheric music in the background the titles are red and turn to an yellow and an orange and back to a red this is meant to depict fire and hell, because in the 70’s there were not the capabilities of using editing of fire in the background so they use it as a depiction of hell and Halloween as the iconic jack’o lantern (pumpkins) they are obviously  the symbol of Halloween and are lit by flame and have scary faces this connects to the film and how the whole element of the film is just fear.

As the titles continue down the left hand side of the screen we see a pumpkin appear in the right hand side of the screen as the titles fade in and out we move to a slow forward tracking shot of the pumpkin until we reach an extreme close up of the pumpkins eye and as the candle in the pumpkin goes out we are left with just one name on the screen which says ‘Directed by John Carpenter’ as he is the director his name is the most important so it has to be on the screen alone.

As his name fades a new title in white fades in reading ‘Haddafield Illinois 1963’ a fictitious suburban town in America whilst the title is on the screen we hear a sound bridge of children singing a Halloween song (American tradition) then the film starts and we pan left from behind a tree and we see an almost establishing shot of a white suburban house in 1960’s America. We then see a forward tracking shot/ point of view of someone walking towards the house looking at two people through the glass in the front door. As the person walks closer to the house and he  slowly towards the right of the house and our antagonist views a conversation between a young man and a young woman (most likely teenagers) and the man says “wanna’ go upstairs?” the woman replies “Michael’s here somewhere” he replies “he’s on the driveway” and they proceed to go upstairs as they do out still through the point of view of the antagonist we have a reverse tracking shot to see the front of the house where we see a bedroom light turn off.

When the light is turned off we see a quick forward tracking shot of our antagonist (still Point of View) going into the kitchen via the back door then we see our antagonists hand opening a drawer and reaching a knife out of the drawer and we continue to move into the front room and we see the man walking down the stairs saying “I have to go” and putting his shirt back on this implies that they had sex, with this knowledge after the man leaves the house and we have a forward tracking shot going up the stairs where we see a mask on the floor and a hand reaching out grabbing it and putting it on so we see through the eyes of the mask and we see a bad that isn’t made and suggests even more so that they had sex. This clearly upsets our antagonist, as he walks toward her (forward tracking shot still in first person point of view) we see the girl turn around and scream “Michael” we are not sure if this is because she’s screaming for help from Michael or screaming because it’s Michael but we see through the antagonist’s eyes as he starts to repeatedly stab the girl over and over as she screams, he also seems to be watching himself stab her, almost like he doesn’t want to kill her but he has too.

Once he stabbed her and she is lying dead on the floor half naked from before, we hear the diegetic sounds of heavy breathing and almost gives us the impression that he very much regrets what he did, the camera pans round as he walks down the stairs, it is a straight forward tracking shot making it look like he is just gliding down the stairs like a ghost during Halloween. We walk through the front door and we see two people pull up in a car and get out and run towards the antagonist and shout “Michael” and for the first time we come out of first person to an extreme close up of the man’s hand as he takes the clown mask to reveal a little boy (six years old) holding a knife with an extremely blank emotionless look on his face as the camera pans out with a crane shot, this shows his beginning to becoming a lost soul getting further away from anyone he knows in becoming the physcopathic murderer ‘Michael Myers’.