13 Movies That Scared Us: Halloween

In celebration of Halloween, we are counting down the days with 13 of the scariest, creepiest, or simply unforgettably grim horror movies that ever crawled under our skin and never left. Join us each day as we look back on 13 horror movies that still know how to trick and treat viewers to their nightmares. Enter Halloween…

Of course it’s Halloween. On a day like this, could it possibly be anything else? Besides being the first memorable horror flick to work in the reason for the season with its title, this is one of the earliest, scariest, and most original slasher films ever made, most especially because you rarely see any slashing. Instead, Halloween lingers long on its trick of conceit before it delivers the treats that gorehounds would come to expect from the ever-diminishing sequels.

However, this original John Carpenter film holds up today as scary when viewed in the original context of its creation: it brings evil home. Prior to Halloween, the burgeoning and unnamed slasher genre primarily took place beyond the safety and confines of society. Janet Leigh might have brought it on herself when she stole the money and stayed off the highway, ending up in the boondocks near the Bates Motel where a monster waited to gobble her up. Equally as perverse was the other Ed Gein-inspired big screen serial killer icon, Leatherface. In Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface and his whole family also lived as a symbiotic “Other” outside of civilization’s laws or control when a group of promiscuous teens venture too far away from the suburbs that became the refuge of white flight in the mid-20^th Century. In many ways, these protagonists were making the same mistakes as Hansel and Gretel when they went into the candy house.

But in Halloween, the evil not only comes home to those bastions of middle class peace of mind: it was there all along. Chillingly exemplified in the opening POV shot of an eight-years-old Michael Myers wearing a clown costume as he inexplicably murders his sister, this blank faced kid is evil simply because. Not all evil has a rational or psychological reason; it is a primordial force and economic background and location cannot protect you.

This is also why Halloween’s heroines/victims are so strong. While John Carpenter, who wrote and directed the film, perhaps didn’t have the best ear for how young, teenage women talked, he understood that they were still independent and had their own hopes and aspirations beyond being the naked chick at the end of the knife (though that still happens here too). Laurie, Annie, and Lynda are just three young women getting through Halloween one babysitting gig at a time when they are randomly targeted for slaughter by the ominous Shape. Indeed, Michael Myers is more of an idea than a character, hence the brilliance of “the Shape” listing in the credits. In this original film, there is no hokey and melodramatic reason to kill Laurie Strode, as introduced in inferior sequels. She just happens to walk by the wrong house on the wrong day at the wrong time, and she becomes the fixation for his latest bloodlust.

Carpenter then takes his time—pretty much the whole movie—in building up to that evening’s massacre. Beyond developing his lead characters, he is also sending home the message that one must be vigilant, because even in the quietest of towns, the Other can be present. Laurie is the only one that notices they are being stalked, and she is the only one of the three friends to survive…barely. The ending chase is still the standard bearer of the genre: realizing she is the crux of a killer’s obsession, one who is randomly attempting to recreate the murder of his sister twenty years ago, Laurie is chased down the streets of a neighborhood full of suspiciously dark houses that like everyone else turn a blind eye to the depravity of the world; Michael eventually has her cornered in a closet, having confined her places of refuge into spaces that are increasingly smaller and smaller until there is nowhere left to hide.

Donald Pleasence, the consummate character actor, had his first turn here as the beloved and hammy Dr. Samuel Loomis. As much a modern day Van Helsing as he is a crackpot, Pleasence played the part to the cheap seats while still getting the best scene in the movie. Like his Dutch ancestor’s ability to have the scientific mind open enough to believe in Dracula, Loomis is a psychologist who after spending 15 years treating Michael Myers understood the true nature of real evil. There is no rationalizing it or arguing with it; it simply is.

At the end of the film, Loomis saves Laurie by shooting Michael Myers half a dozen times off the second floor of a quaint Illinois home. In tears, Laurie asks the doctor a question that she had dismissed from children she’d been babysitting all night, “Was that the boogeyman?” Loomis without missing a beat exudes, “As a matter of fact, it was.”

When he goes to the window where Michael took his swan dive, he looks out and sees that the serial killer has mysteriously and impossibly gotten up and walked away. Loomis doesn’t look horrified; rather, he displays a reluctant satisfaction that his suspicions were fulfilled. Indeed, the final shots of the film are of all the houses Michael visited: their living rooms and bedrooms, their hallways and closets. Evil can be anywhere at any time. In their houses…or yours.

Beyond featuring what we consider the best horror theme of all time (also written by Carpenter), Halloween has an undeniably disturbing message that quiets viewers 35 years later. It’s a masterpiece of the form, and it is quite literally tailor-made for today.

Happy Halloween.

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