Scariest Movie #4: John Carpenter’s “Halloween”
Halloween (1978, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, PJ Soles)
The Night HE Came Home!
Quick Plot: 15 years after murdering his sister and her boyfriend, Michael Myers escapes Smith’s Grove Sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield to terrorize a group of babysitters on Halloween.
Scariest Scene: Just as Laurie Strode thinks she has finally killed the bogeyman, the audience sees him slowly sit straight up, in the background. The haunting score and use of lighting on that mask, makes for the most suspenseful end-sequences in horror movie history.
Final Say: Halloween erroneously gets lumped into the “slasher” genre. There is virtually no blood in the film, with nearly all of the scares coming from Carpenter’s use of suspense and impending terror, rather than gore.
Fun Fact: Nearly everyone knows, by now, that the Michael Myers mask was based on an old William Shatner mask. But did you know that the actor who played Michael Myers underneath the mask (Nick Castle), went on to direct such movies as The Last Starfighter and The Boy Who Could Fly?
As scientists in many a 1950s movie were determined to remind us, when we entered the Atomic Age, we created the potential for unknown horror. The world had already gotten a taste of some of that horror with the dropping of the A-bombs on Japan in 1945, and anxiety was rampant about what fresh atrocities this new technology may unleash. Filmmakers had no trouble imagining new terror, and soon producers unleashed a horde of atomically mutated, reawakened and often gigantic insects, reptiles and other critters across movie screens. While many of the resulting films were duds, some of them, like the following, had an explosive impact:
Ghosts might have the power to creep us out more than any other type of horror movie creation — they are often unseen, they are all around, and they can make us feel out of control and unnerved even in the supposed comfort and sanctuary of our own home. The following films expertly play on the range of fears that ghosts bring — from that quiet, disembodied sobbing voice you hear coming from down the dark hall, to a paranormal fireworks display of poltergeist activity, and everything in between:
