"Fear in the first"
An in-depth analysis of
John Carpenter's
HALLOWEEN (1978)
Text © by Rob Ager 2008
(A video version of this article can be purchased as part of the Rob Ager Films - Vol 2 dvd set, available on ebay)
Contents
INTRODUCTION
THE MYTHICAL HUNTER
SLOWLY BUT SURELY
THE ABNORMAL FIEND
HOCUS POCUS
HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE
FEAR IN THE FIRST
LIMITATION VS CREATIVITY
In this analysis of the classic John Carpenter horror movie, Halloween, I shall define the thematic and psychological devices that I believe make the film so effective. This is not to say that my observations completely match up with Carpenter’s directorial intentions. Some of them may have been accidental or unconscious choices, although I suspect that most of them were deliberate.
As with the majority of my other film reviews, we’ll begin with the most obvious and easy to identify themes. We’ll then gradually progress into the more complex subliminal factors that set the film way above its competitors.
At the most simplistic level Halloween can be described as a no-nonsense psycho-slasher flick. It taps into a very basic human anxiety – our fear of being hunted by an unstoppable predator. This fear stems right back to our primitive ancestors and has evolved in parallel with civilization itself. The fear of wild beasts in the darkness gave way to the fear of evil spirits and supernatural monsters, which in turn has given way to the fear of night time stalkers and serial killers. Basically, the fear of being hunted has always been with us and it constantly adapts to whatever level of scientific and social knowledge we have achieved.
Most of us are totally convinced that stalkers and serial killers are a real phenomena. We read about them in newspapers and true crime books and hear about them on tv, but how many of us ever really experience these horrors? It’s important to remember that witches, vampires, werewolves and evil spirits were once spoon fed to the masses through more primitive media, such as religious texts and especially through art. How many religious followers were scared out of their wits by intricate paintings of horned demons cannibalizing and burning doomed souls for all eternity in the bowels of the Earth? In their day these myths were as convincing as today’s serial murder stories.
The old paintings of horrors in the darkness have given way to the psycho-slasher film and it’s various off shoots - Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Duel, Henry: portrait of a serial killer, Fatal Attraction and Hitchcock’s Psycho are great examples. Silence of the Lambs set a new standard of well researched and convincing realism, which has pretty much been the benchmark of comparison ever since. But regardless of all the scientific and social studies on serial murder and sex crime, even Silence of the Lambs is essentially just tapping into the same irrational terrors of old. The aura of academia is a magician script writer’s trick to bypass our comparatively well-educated sensibilities and induce a cornered rabbit state of paralyzed fear.
Halloween, on the other hand, bypasses these conventions by not striving for absolute realism. It openly acknowledges that, for the vast majority of us, the fear of the predator is at its core imaginary and is therefore irrational. For most of us there is no monster under the bed, no evil spirit in the wind and no psychopath lurking in the alleyway.
Michael Myers is ironically made more terrifying because he embodies the classic imaginary attributes of the mythical predator in the darkness. He combines the irrational figure of the bogeyman, that children see in dark cupboards and doorways, with the imaginary psycho-stalker figure, that women seen in dark alleys and around street corners.
The story also cleverly places at the centre of the action a teenager who is unfashionably intelligent and mature. Annie: “You never go out”, Laurie: “Guys think I’m too smart”. She talks of forgetting her chemistry book, but notice that she is already carrying more books than her friends. We might laugh at her moronic friends walking blindly to their deaths, but by making an intelligent character Myers main target the film sneaks its way around our own sense of self-assured safety.
This same paradigm is also played on by the Psychiatrist character, Dr Loomis. As an audience, we should be able to count on him for a scientifically plausible evaluation of Myers character, but despite his training and experience he views Myers in the same way that children view the bogeyman – pure evil.
By embracing the irrational qualities of the unseen predator, Halloween gets away with depicting a handful of very unconvincing death scenes. Characters die almost instantly from knife wounds and strangulations that in reality would be drawn out much longer.
Myers himself is both the bogeyman and the classic stalker. Like the bogeyman he makes himself more visible to children, such as when the boy runs into him outside the school grounds or when little Tommy sees him carrying Annie’s body from the garage into the house. Tommy knew he was coming throughout the story, despite Laurie’s reassurances, and the only other person who believed him was another child, Lindsay.
Tommy was also taunted by other children at school about the bogeyman and when those same children are seen daring each other to approach the “haunted” Myers house, they are scared off by Donald Pleasance’s “bogeyman” voice in the bushes. The reputation of the house as being haunted, shows that these bogeyman fears have seeped into the minds of adults children across the neighbourhood. Sheriff: “Every kid in Hattonfield thinks this place is haunted”, Dr Loomis: “they may be right”.
Although we, as audience, are given some vague back story of whom Michael Myers is, to the suburban females he is literally the unexpected predator in the dark. His potential presence is often symbolized by surprise phone calls – a standard stalker cliché. One of these calls even occurs immediately after little Tommy asks Laurie “What’s the bogeyman?”
After her series of traumatic encounters with Myers, Laurie repeats the same question to Doctor Loomis. His reply casts the bogeyman metaphor in stone: “As a matter of fact … it was.”
The superstitious element is presented in the form of the Halloween holiday context of the story, a night when people dress up as mythical monsters and spook each other. In several scenes Laurie watches trick or treater’s stalking the neighbourhood. After the first one, in which she has already been creeped out by seeing Myers hide behind a bush, she tells herself: “Well kiddo, I thought you outgrew superstition”.
The film is also scored like a child’s fairy tale – a collection cold synths and hypnotic melodies that stick in our minds even after the film has ended.
Vulnerable women and children are typically the targets of bogeyman / stalker folklore. In this sense, Laurie’s shyness with men makes her the classic victim. She is teased about this by her friends and tries to back out of a date with a boy named Ben Tramer, who she has already admitted she is attracted to. We don’t get to see Ben Tramer, but her sexual fear of him could be embodied in the presence of Michael Myers.
Also present in Myers is the classic bogeyman trait of a compulsive and robotic desire to kill. He doesn’t run, even when giving chase. He doesn’t put his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t crouch. Watch him in the background after Laurie has stabbed him. He sits up in a single robotic movement and then turns his head in an entirely separate maneouvre. He is as rigid as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. Like the Terminator he even commits murder just to obtain a few items of clothing (the naked body near the abandoned truck). He also doesn’t seem to eat, apart from perhaps a mutilated animal found by Dr Loomis and the Sheriff.
Like the classic Bogeyman, Myers, keeps himself well hidden. He lets his presence be known gradually in order to maximize the fear. And he only reveals himself fully just before the kill.
The title shot of a jack-o-lantern in the dark emphasizes this. Over several minutes the evil face creeps steadily toward the camera for an eye to eye close-up. The rest of the film then repeats this long drawn out revelation of Myers. He is seen from long distances driving around at a snail pace, standing on street corners and hiding in bushes. He tails Annie and Laurie in their car from daytime right through to full darkness. Gradually he is seen closer to the camera, but only from the neck down. This changes after we find out the masks have been stolen from the hardware store. Myers then gets out of his car and we see just the edge of his face as he watches Laurie and Annie from behind a tree.
Annie is the first of Laurie’s friends to be killed by Myers, at which point we finally get to see his face up close, but he is blurred by the condensation on the windscreen. From here on we begin to see his face in full shots that gradually get closer and closer to the camera, but always in darkness. Eventually, Myers does something interesting when he is breaking his way through the cupboard doors to attack Laurie. He switches on a light bulb, which finally reveals his masked face in full light, and then he switches the light back off before continuing his attack. Perhaps he wanted her to see him fully lit.In Laurie’s final encounter with Myers, she pulls off his mask and reveals a face that is strangely disfigured.
His incredibly slow approach to killing is undoubtedly part of the classic stalker’s desire to induce as much fear as possible. Covered in a sheet with a pair of glasses over his face he stands staring at Lynda in the bedroom for as long as necessary to spook her out. We’re given the impression he would stand there all night if necessary. Or perhaps he wanted Laurie to hear the struggling over the phone as a way of luring her into a trap.
In chasing Laurie he strangely misses her with two swipes of his knife that seem almost deliberate. After she discovers her friend’s bodies he has a point blank free swing at her, but somehow only grazes her arm. Then, when hiding behind the sofa, he swings and misses her completely. Again this is before she moves out the way.
Even when Laurie is screaming her head off in the street he is unconcerned about silencing her. He gives her time to run back to Tommy’s house then strolls casually across in her direction. This happens again upstairs in the house. He makes his presence known by standing in full view, waits for Laurie to hide the children and then hide herself, then he gives slow pursuit. He seems more interested in scaring than killing.
And another classic stalker cliché used in Halloween is that of murdering expendable characters in order to let the main character know what’s in store for them – once again, maximizing the fear.
The decision to have Myers wear a mask for the majority of the film was an original touch in 1978 and has been mimicked many times since. The black clothes and pale white mask, with it’s dark eye holes, vacant expression and stern features, is symbolic of the emotional coldness of bogeyman mythology. Dr Loomis: “I met him fifteen years ago. There was no reasoning, no consciousness, no understanding, not even the most rudimentary sense of life or death good or evil, right and wrong. I met this six year old child with this blank, pale emotionless face, the blackest eyes, the devils eyes”.
An interesting mismatch of timing is that we only begin to see Myers face after it is revealed that he stole a knife, mask and rope from the hardware store, but in an earlier scene a child runs into Myers arms by accident outside the school. From the brief glimpse we get of Myers face in this shot, it is obvious that he was already wearing the mask. This is before he allegedly stole the mask from the hardware store and is most likely because the mask is symbolic of Myers empty soul.
Another clue as to the symbolism of the mask is the presence of a James Ensor poster in Laurie’s bedroom. Ensor was a Belgian surrealist, renowned for painting grotesque and masked faces. Below the Ensor portrait is a creepy red haired doll, like one of Ensor’s monstrosities made flesh.
The morbid obsessions and sexual perversions of stalker infamy are also subtly portrayed in Myers. In the opening murder scene, Myers the child plays peeping tom and catches his sister and what we can assume to be her boyfriend getting frisky then sneaking upstairs. Are we to take it that Myers then proceeds to kill his sister out of jealousy? Or did he already have murder in mind to begin with? There are two possible indicators that this murder was a compulsive jealousy reaction. After witnessing his sister kissing the boy, he fetches a knife from the kitchen and then puts on the mask that the supposed boyfriend tried to scare her with. If this murder had been planned in advance wouldn’t he have brought these items with him? It’s also unlikely a six year old could even plan such a murder.
Myers obsession with his sister and her death is also known by Dr Loomis, hence Loomis requests to see Judith Myer’s grave and hence his absolute certainty that Myer’s would return to the house where she died.
It seems that the adult Myers wishes to relive his first murder experience by reconstructing the events. Masks and knives are once again his tools of choice. He targets teenagers of a similar age and spies on them as he did with his sister. And after killing Annie he places Judith Myer’s gravestone above her on the bed, lit by the hellish glow of a jack-o-lantern. Perhaps in Myer’s mind, each girl he kills represents the killing of his sister all over again.
Judith Myers murder also took place on Halloween and so we can safely assume that he timed his escape from the hospital so that his new murders would coincide with Halloween once again.
The original murder featured a jack-o-lantern on a porch, prominent again at the front of Annie’s house. In the original murder he crept in through a back door left open, which he does again at Annie’s house. Before killing Lynda and her boyfriend he stands watching them as they kiss on the sofa, again a repetition from Judith’s murder.
A stronger clue of a jealousy or sexual frustration theme is seen when Myers spies on Annie through the patio window. She strips half naked while chatting to her boyfriend on the phone and Myers reacts to this by pulling down a hanging plant from the porch. She also got stuck in a window in the shed with her rear end on display for Myers to see.
Another symbol of emotional content in Myer’s activities is the jack-o-lantern. It’s gaping expression of evil laughter looks and laughs upon Annie’s dead body in the bedroom. The cross symbolism between Myers and this jack-o-lantern is shown in that his shadow passes over it while Lynda and her boyfriend are having sex. It’s firey grin depicts Myers sense of joy in terrorizing and killing.
Combined with all this is a victim theme that is very much in line with Hitchcock. The victim’s fear of deserved punishment. The characters who are killed in this story do less homework than Laurie, they like to drink, smoke joints, and screw around with their boyfriends. And the inclusion of Annie’s father as the sheriff simply enhances the feeling of them being naughty little girls.
Stepping into more traditional aspects of bogeyman mythology we also find that Michael Myers has supernatural abilities. Doors and windows always seem to be conveniently left open for him as if obeying his wish, for example the window left open next to the sofa as he pursues Laurie. And his footsteps never seem to give him away – no crumpled leaves, and no creaking floorboards or staircases.
He always seems to magically anticipate what his prey will do next. In Laurie’s case he somehow knows which corner she will cringe in after finding her dead friends and so he is ready and waiting in a dark doorway. When she runs back to Tommy’s house he hides behind the sofa, knowing full well that’s where she will cower again. And when she opens the balcony doors to give the impression she has jumped into the garden, Myers instantly knows that she is in the cupboard.
He also displays abnormal strength by smashing his bare hand through a car window and by lifting Lynda’s boyfriend up by the throat with a single hand, despite him being the same height and build.
Without uttering a single scream of pain, he is stabbed with knitting needles and knives and is shot six times before falling from a balcony, yet merely plays dead in response before returning to life. Laurie, after stabbing him in the neck: “I killed him”, Tommy: “You can’t kill the bogeyman”, after which Myers is seen standing at the top of the stairs once again.
His other worldliness is known full well to Dr Loomis, who frequently refers to Myers as “it”. Sheriff: “A man wouldn’t do that”, Dr Loomis: “This isn’t a man”.
A ghost-like motif is also present on many levels. The Halloween setting, the white gowns that Myers and the other escaped inmates wear in the hospital grounds, his hiding behind white sheets outside Laurie’s window, his dressing up in a white sheet before attacking Lynda … and of course the ghostly white mask.
These supernatural messages are straight forward bogeyman folklore. You can’t hide from him, you can’t fight him, and you can’t kill him, because he is the ghost of the living dead. He can appear at any time, in any place and he will never stop his pursuit.
Laurie’s teacher offers a subliminal hint of this unavoidable doom: “Samuels definitely personified fate. In Samuels writing fate is immovable, like a mountain. It stands where man passes away. Fate never changes.”
Aside from Myers supernatural ability to appear out of any shadow, Halloween subliminally presents the notion that anyone can be the bogeyman in disguise. Of course part of the Halloween fun is that we can all dress up as knife wielding maniacs if we wish, but this is also communicated in more subtle ways.
In the opening shot we do not realize that we have been watching a murder through the eyes of a child until we cut away from his viewpoint. Judith Myers boyfriend also unexpectedly puts on a scary mask to frighten her, the same one young Myers uses when killing her. Later on, Laurie baby sits Tommy, a boy of roughly the same age as Myers the childhood killer.
The stalking shots in which Myers stands up close with his back to us and his head off screen are repeated in scenes involving the sheriff, as if he is a potential stalker too. When Laurie is spooked by her first sighting of Myers she turns and bumps into him. Sheriff: “Its Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare”.
Tommy is harassed in school by three other children who pretend to be the bogeyman, and he later taunts young Lindsay in the same way. In the cemetery, a man begins telling Dr Loomis a story of a regular family man who snapped one day and “picked up a hacksaw”.
Laurie and Annie debate in Annie’s car about whether the identity of the man watching Laurie from her neighbour’s garden. Laurie: “I wasn’t spooked … I saw someone watching me from Mr Rittle’s back yard”. Annie: “Probably Mr Rittle … He was watching you. Laurie Mr Riddle is 87” Annie: “He can still watch”. Laurie: “That’s probably all he can do”.
Like Myers, Dr Loomis himself hides behind a bush in the middle of the night. In his mack he could pass for a flasher. He also puts on a creepy stalker voice to scare three children away from the Myers house. Immediately afterwards he has a smirk on his face as if he’s enjoying himself, but is then startled by guess who ... the sheriff.
And lastly, we find that Myers puts on Lynda’s boyfriend’s glasses over a sheet, pretending to be him.
The classic stalker and bogeyman figures can potentially be anybody, no matter how well we think we know them or how pleasant their demeanor. He is everywhere at once. Sheriff: “I still think I should notify the radio …”. Dr Loomis: “No, if you do that they’ll look for him on every street corner and in every house”
The two psychological devices I’ll offer in this chapter are, in my opinion, unique to Carpenter’s Halloween and have helped maintain its status of superiority over competitor psycho-slasher films for over 30 years. Although I am uncertain of how much conscious effort was made by Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill in this respect.
In the opening shot we are presented with nearly ten minutes of footage from the killer’s point of view. In this scene we are the hunter, not the hunted, but yet the scene is still disturbing. I believe that a key element here is our fear of solitude, violent compulsion and emotional vacancy. The idea of actually having to be the bogeyman is in itself as terrifying as being pursued by him. Imagine the long dark silences of creeping around and waiting for the next victim and being powerless to refrain from murder.
The rest of the film is presented in the standard cinematic observer mode, but there are repeated implications that Myers remains behind the camera, even when he is on screen.
Carpenter’s choice of shots, while following Laurie and her friend’s around the suburbs, are distinctly similar to the viewpoints of a stalker. In our first view of Laurie, we witness a shot of her walking away that cuts back to a shot of her Father, but both angles appear to be from the same stationary camera position, as if the camera is an invisible character looking back and forth. Some shots appear to be from the windows of slowly moving cars, like an observing driver. Other shots begin from a distance and gradually move toward the girls or wait for the girls to approach us. The girls’ dialogue is mostly irrelevant teenage nonsense, hence their voices fade in and out depending how far away they are. What matters here is that they are being watched not just by Myers, but by us, the invisible camera lens that is all seeing and all knowing. Notice that the menacing score often kicks in when the camera is at a distance, even when Myers hasn’t appeared on screen.
Many shots such as the one of Laurie at the back of her class room, creep toward the central characters with the stealth of a hungry cat.
In some shots we see Myers on screen, yet we can hear his breathing as if we are wearing his mask. The concept of the camera lens as the invisible stalker is emphasized right before the end credits. We cut back and forth between various interior and exterior night time locations, while Myers breathing grows in volume. Where ever the camera goes in this film he is there watching from behind the camera.
Finally I’d like to mention that Halloween is a prime example of film makers turning resource limitations into creative opportunities. In low budget film making small casts, minimal props, minimal special effects and cheap locations are usually what have to be worked with. Halloween takes these limitations and turns them into original and effective fear devices. The film is so effective in this respect, that it doesn’t even need to rely on the usual gore and blood splatter approach of low budget horror. It also makes minimal use of female nakedness, while the sexual exploitation approach is common to many other films in the same genre.
If you’re hoping to write a feature script that can be shot on the cheap yet will stand up to the best of Hollywood, then Halloween should be top priority viewing in your DVD collection.