Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [94]
HALLOWEEN MAY have taken a lifetime to dream up, but it was shot in four weeks. Since he had Donald Pleasence for only a short period of time, Carpenter filmed the movie out of sequence and gave Jamie Lee Curtis a “fear meter” to let her know the level of terror for each scene. Nick Castle, Carpenter’s old colleague on The Resurrection of Broncho Billy and Dark Star, played Michael Myers and improvised a tilt of the head after killing one of his victims, almost as if he was amused and mystified by the death. Carpenter insisted on simplicity: “Just walk. Don’t lurch. Don’t be a monster,” he told Castle. “Just walk. I wanted to simplify things so you read into what’s there.”
At the end of the film, Laurie escapes and Dr. Loomis shoots Michael Myers six times until he falls out of the window onto the grass below. When the doctor looks outside, Myers is gone. Carpenter turns to a reaction shot, and instead of a shocked look, Pleasence’s face barely changes, as if he knew all along that this man would never be there. Then the movie ends on a series of eerie shots of empty spaces, quiet exteriors, and shadowy rooms while the famously propulsive, unstoppable synthesizer beats quickly ahead, repeating itself over and over again. We are left with nothing. Michael Myers is nowhere and yet he seems everywhere at the same time.
Yablans invited all the major studios to see the film, but none of them showed up for the press screening. Before its domestic release in October of 1978, Yablans, working the connections he had made through his years at Paramount, took the movie to Milan, where the reaction was strong. He made over $800,000 in foreign sales, which allowed him to more effectively promote the movie, with a carefully planned rollout starting in Kansas City, far away from the media on the coasts. It moved to Chicago, where it sold out four drive-in theaters, and then throughout the Midwest.
Some of the early reviews of Halloween described just another “woman in trouble” horror film. In a glib review in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the movie lacked rhythm and “may satisfy in a childish way that more sophisticated horror films do not.” But it didn’t take long for mainstream critics to catch on that this was a uniquely frightening movie made by a director in love with his craft. Roger Ebert singled it out on his popular television show At the Movies, arguing that it proved that horror films did not have to be immoral and crass.
A turning point was a rave review by Tom Allen of The Village Voice that called it “an instant schlock horror classic,” putting it alongside Psycho and Night of the Living Dead. Allen also was insightful enough to distinguish that Carpenter, working with warm colors and sleek tracking shots, was breaking away from the “realistic school” of horror. Almost a decade after he talked with Dan O’Bannon about making fantasy movies when social drama was in vogue, Carpenter had made a new scary movie for a mass audience. It was the beginning of an artistic trend, and the end of a business model.
Halloween took most people in Hollywood completely by surprise. Most crossover horror movies were based on bestselling books. The classic movies (Frankenstein, Dracula) as well as the popular new ones (The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Carrie) had a literary pedigree that gave the audience the excuse that the cheap thrills were somewhat respectable. But this one was slapped together. There was no popular title or famous actor or star to exploit. There was just a great title