Classic Movie Themes: Halloween
Halloween (1978) is both a genre and cinematic milestone. It made stars of Jamie Lee Curtis and director John Carpenter as well as kickstarting the slasher genre that dominated the box office for the next 15 years. Unlike many of the inferior imitations that followed in its wake, Halloween is not a gorefest but a far more suspenseful and unsettling film. It’s shocks and sinister atmosphere are the result of sumptuous panavision cinematography by Dean Cundey and inventive editing by Tommy Wallace and Charles Bornstein. Another invaluable asset to the film’s effectiveness is John Carpenter minimalistic synth and piano score which perfectly embellishes the film with an air of menace. After 33 years and various re-arrangements in subsequent sequels, the original Halloween Theme is still as effective today as it was when the film was first released.
Halloween (2018)
It is a bold move to write off six sequels and effectively retcon a major horror cinematic milestone after forty years. Yet that is exactly what Director and co-writer David Gordon Green has done, producing a follow up movie to John Carpenter’s 1978 original, that is distinctly more than the sum of its parts. And in the process of doing this, Halloween has attracted a great deal of media attention that has somewhat skewed subsequent reporting. There has been a great deal of hyperbole and marketing hype in the lead up to the film’s release which is concerning, because in an atmosphere of such exuberance and fan excitement, it can be difficult to accurately gauge the public mood. I have only ever experienced the one other deferred sequel that generated such a similar buzz and that was Psycho II back in 1983. Despite a lot of reservations, that proved to be a worthy successor to Hitchcock’s classic.