The tension in the
air is palpable. The audience sits on the edge of their seats, digging their
nails into the armrest. Suddenly, a knife is thrust into the unsuspecting
teenager and the audience screams in terror. The movie, Halloween,
terrified audiences across the United States and birthed a new kind of
movie—the “slasher” film. John Carpenter wrote and directed many horror films
thereby earning himself the nickname “Master of Horror”.
Beyond “Master of Horror”
Known mostly for
horror films like Halloween, The Thing, and The Fog, John Carpenter also delved into the
world of science fiction with movies like Dark Star, and the highly-popular exploitation
film, Assault on Precinct 13. The movie Halloween
pioneered aspects of filmmaking that we still see in horror films, today. By
creating the “slasher” subgenre, Carpenter presented a new twist on horror
films where psychopathic murderers brutally kill a staggering number of victims
in expressly graphic ways. Since the killer typically wields weapons like
knives or chainsaws, they were dubbed “slasher films”. In Halloween,
Michael Myers’ murderous rampage targets teenaged babysitters and their
boyfriends. Carpenter’s legacy has stood the test of time, as many of his films
are still considered mainstays as your local DirecTV or cable provider’s airwaves are
besieged by horror marathons during the month of October.
Halloween and Psycho
Halloween is often compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Most
notably, Jamie Lee Curtis played the female
lead in Halloween and her mother, Janet Leigh, played a victim in Psycho. In
both films the audience “becomes” the killer by seeing through his eyes. Norman
Bates peers through a peephole to watch Marion Crane dressing in her motel
room. Likewise, moviegoers got to look through Michael’s mask in Halloween as
he watched a young couple’s romantic interlude. Through the mask, we see the
knife a split-second before Myers plunges it into the lovers. There is little
blood in each film, but the audience’s terror is by the murder itself. In Psycho,
the audience never sees Norman Bates kill Marion Crane. They merely see a knife
slash through the shower curtain, followed by the victim’s screams then watch
her blood mix with water as it slowly washes down into the drain.
Film Critics
Film critics have
perpetrated Halloween as misogynistic and sadistic claiming the audience
identifies with the killer. Other critics centered their criticism on the
sexual promiscuity of teenagers and loose morals but in the end, the chaste
heroine claims victory over the evil perpetrator. Roger Ebert, a noted movie
critic, saw the movie differently. In a review of Halloween, he said, “sympathies are
enlisted with the side of the woman, not the killer.” Ebert found that
Halloween was not the stereotypical horror film, but had “artistry and
craftsmanship”. He went on to say that the film had “developed characters as
independent, intelligent, spunky, and interesting people.”
The Final Girl
Originating in Halloween,
the "final girl" concept changed horror films. The “final girl”
depicts the surviving female facing down the killer. Characteristics of the
“final girl” have received some concerns from feminists. Typically,
"the final girl" is intelligent and feisty but she does not engage in
sex nor is she free to partake in pleasures, such as alcohol or illegal
substances, like her friends. The heroine’s femininity is expunged, and she
becomes masculine by using a phallic symbol such as a knife to slay the
assailant. Others view the “final girl” as a woman with strength of character
who overcomes her fear and kills the evil perpetrator. Audiences are
intelligent and can identify with both ideologies and simply just want to watch
a good horror flick.
John Carpenter’s
ideas and innovation have made him a master storyteller as well as the
"Master of Horror" and a pioneer of the genre. So, in honor of both
him and Halloween, rewatch some of those classics and see
if they still make you jump in your seat like they did the first time you saw
them.