26 – That Time of Year (Halloween)

It seems an age since that day in the clearing. The day the darkness tried to take you. The day you were saved.

The good people of Carpenter’s Meadow pulled you away from the creature and chased it into the trees. They brought you back to their sleepy forest town and nursed your body and mind back to health.

The experiences over the days preceding…was it even days? How long had it been since you left the town of Solstice and your bed at the Green Man. The whole thing has felt like a dream, or more likely a nightmare.

I must say you’re looking a good 20 years younger than the day I first saw you in that clearing.

The voice belongs to Donald, the town physician and the man who truly brought you back to yourself again.

The island is a dangerous place. Most people stick to the towns and villages and rarely travel alone, and that goes for island folk. Being an outsider I’m frankly amazed you made it this far, you’re something special it seems, or lucky…

Come. I think it’s time you joined the land of the living again. Ironic really, you’re just in time for the festival of the dead.

Ok so it’s definitely throwing some big names at me recently. I’d say it’s because my collection is so full of classics but really there’s a lot of crap, I just seem to have lucked out so far. Technically this film is the most likely one to come up because it has the most sequels, but still, we’re due something more obscure.

In the meantime I’ll be reviewing John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween.

So where do I start with a film that’s often credited with being the first Slasher film. I mean probably by pointing out that Black Christmas and about a billion Giallo films came before it. You could even say the 40s Mummy films from Universal fit the bill, but honestly you could get away with saying that Halloween popularised the sub genre.

To summarise, Halloween follows Laurie Strode and her high school friends on Halloween night in the town of Haddonfield, as they are stalked by escaped killer Michael Myers. Alongside this, Michael’s doctor from the Asylum, Dr Loomis, tries to convince the police of the danger his escaped patient poses.

Chances are if you think about Slasher films then it’s all about the crazy kills, gore, and dumb teenagers. Well Halloween has one of those, it certainly has dumb teenagers, or should that be it ‘totally’ does, one of the girls is endlessly saying that word. So yes, dumb teenagers, check, but crazy kills and gore, no. It surprises me a bit that this film is an 18 if I’m honest, it’s probably more a case of them not updating the rating to reflect modern sensibilities. The kills, though effective, are pretty gore free, it wasn’t until Friday the 13^th came along a couple of years later that gore became the norm for slashers.

From an acting point of view I wouldn’t say that anybody in the film is amazing. Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis put in the best performances but I wouldn’t say that either are Oscar worthy. I do very much enjoy how intense Donald Pleasence’s Dr Loomis is though, he puts me in mind of Robert Shaw’s Quint in Jaws. It’s especially amusing because he’s often talking to people who you can tell think he’s exaggerating about the threat of Michael Myers.

If the acting isn’t stand out then the directing certainly is, Halloween has some truly great choices when it comes to visuals. We see first person views fairly regularly, putting us in the Killer’s shoes as we stalk our victims. Then at the other end of the scale we’re made to feel like we have no idea where the killer is, or to feel like he can disappear into thin air. John Carpenter does a great job of creating suspense and a feeling of unease. We know it’s coming, we know he’s coming, but we don’t know when.

A big part of the atmosphere the film provokes is thanks to the score. Again we have John Carpenter to thank for this. His iconic main theme is one of the most recognisable film pieces out there today, so in a way it’s difficult to judge it on it’s own merits outside of “Oh shit, it’s the Halloween theme!” but the fact that it is so recognised speaks volumes. It’s a simple series of piano notes but it elicits a sense that something is coming, and that’s all you need. If you hear that theme song, you’d better get out!

The use of a masked killer, though not unique, goes a long way to give this film a creep factor. The scariest threats are ones where you cannot reason with them, cannot appeal to their humanity. Michael’s mask with its blank expression and black eye sockets takes away any hope that this is a person to be reasoned with, he is a blank, soulless killer. In the credits he is referred to only as, ‘The Shape’, which feels very appropriate.

It’s hard to ignore how much of a big deal this film was when it comes to low budget films making it in the industry. The film made over 70 million dollars with a budget of significantly less than half a million. It opened the floodgates to small independent films coming out of the shadows and becoming household names. Of course this often resulted in them spawning endless increasingly diluted sequels, but the fact that Hollywood gave a shit about them at all was a win for Horror as whole.

Rating time, and this wasn’t as cut and dry as you might think. A bit like with the last film, Nosferatu, despite this being hailed as one of the horror masterpieces I also have to take into account how much I like the film personally. Now this isn’t my favourite Halloween film, it’s not even my 2^nd favourite Halloween film. A 5 for me is a film which I think is both well made, which this undoubtedly is, and one which really pushes all the right buttons for me, and ultimately it’s not one of the films that I will choose to watch that often. Therefore I’m going to give Halloween 4 bedsheets out of 5. I’d tell you that you should watch it, but chances are if you’re on a horror review site, you already have. If you asked a random person on the street to name a horror film, there’s a high chance this would be their answer.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

A part of the film which never made much sense to me was in the opening sequence when Michael’s sister and her boyfriend go upstairs together. Michael watches them go through the window, then, in the amount of time it takes Michael to go round the back of the house and get the knife from the kitchen, the boyfriend is already leaving. Wow. I feel bad for her, not only does she get stabbed to death by her little brother, but it lasts longer than her boyfriend.

Actually I don’t feel too bad for her, I mentioned before about the acting not being particularly stand out. Well, hers does because it’s pretty lacklustre, I don’t get much of an impression that she’s being stabbed, more that she’s mildly irritated by the knife.

Something else which stood out to me was a scene where Michael is following Tommy Doyle outside the school and for whatever reason we’re not viewing it from Michale’s perspective, instead we’re viewing it from the back seat of the car. At first I thought this was a mistake and it’s supposed to be from the front, but then we see Michael sitting in the front, so maybe it’s more like we, the viewer, are a passenger, along for the ride. I’m pretty sure everything visually in this film is done that way for a reason.

I referenced it earlier but something which you can never unhear is the amount of times the character Lynda uses the word ‘Totally’. She says it all…the…time, 11 times in…total, at least according to the Halloween wiki.

As a last point I should talk about Michael’s seemingly unlimited stamina and resilience. He’s stabbed in the neck, the eye, the chest and then shot 6 times and still manages to get away. Now, as far as we know Michel is just a regular guy. You could put some of it down to adrenaline, particularly the stabbings, but being shot 6 times in the chest and falling from an upstairs window you think would incapacitate him at least longer than the few seconds it takes Dr Loomis to look out of the window. This raises the question, is he really just a man? It’s often theorised that he’s the walking embodiment of evil and so cannot truly be killed, or that he won’t rest until he’s fulfilled some agenda. Personally I like the idea that he represents evil itself, evil that has to steal a car…but still evil…

Odd, I thought I saw somebody staring at me from across the street. It’s probably nothing.

25 – Seen and Not Heard (Nosferatu)

As you approach the injured child you find yourself distracted by the glowing object. The boy is saying something to you but his voice seems to fade away the closer you get, the colour bleaches from the clearing and your hand reaches out, not to the boy, but to the object.

The boy appears to be shouting now, though his voice is barely audible, a faint whisper in the monochrome shroud. Your fingers brush the object.

A grip like iron fastens itself around your wrist…the boy. You turn, the world is silent now and the child has changed. Beneath a smooth bald scalp his face seems to have elongated, rat-like, his teeth likewise longer now.

You cry out, a silent cry and the boy creature bores into you with a beady intense stare, it draws you in, soothing and terrifying all at once.

Suddenly the rat thing jerks it’s head to the side, it releases it’s grip and you find yourself pulled backwards by strong hands, pulled back into a world of sound, and shouting, and colour.

Wow. OK. This is one of the true milestones of Horror cinema. It’s certainly not the first horror film, not even the first feature length horror film, but it’s probably the one that the most people will have heard of if you mention the silent era of horror. It’s going to be quite a different film to review as well, many of the things we associate with film are either not present here or are in their infancy and I’m going to take all of that into account as I review Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, the 1922 original.

First, since there are a bunch of different prints of this, the version I watched was the Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray featuring the 2006 restoration. Essentially this just means the colour tints for various parts are a certain way and the musical score is the Berndt Heller re-imagining. For a more in depth look I urge you to read this article by Brent Reid.

So what’s it about? Well, if you’ve read Dracula then…its kind of like that…sort of. It’s an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel though it’s certainly not that true to the book. There was in fact a legal dispute at the time with Stoker’s widow who was very much still alive at the time and hadn’t given permission for the material to be used. She won that battle and all copies of the film were ordered to be handed over to be destroyed. Thankfully some copies survived allowing us to view this piece of cinema history over 100 years later. So yeah…it’s Dracula.

Alright, that’s a bit flippant of me. The story is about a young man, Thomas Hutter, who is sent to Transylvania to meet a client of the company he works for. This client, Count Orlok is looking to move to Hutter’s own town of Wisborg in Germany. Hutter soon discovers that the count hides a terrible secret. So yeah…it’s Dracula.

How does one judge the acting in a piece like this? The age of silent cinema is very different, it’s almost a different medium entirely. The actors use exaggerated facial expressions and body movements to portray emotion and action and the results are far more effective than you might think. When combined with the title cards I never found myself lost as to what was happening or how a character was feeling. There is of course the caveat that I have read the book and have seen at least 3 other sound adaptations of the story, but still, the experience did not feel as far removed from a regular sound film as you might expect.

This film is beautiful. The locations we visit, be it rural countryside, gothic castle or industrial town work together is way which feels believable. Interestingly it is set in the early 19^th century and not the late 19^th almost turn of the century period of the book itself, a period which would have been only about 25 years before this film was made. Perhaps this was done to give it more of an old world mysterious feel, a bit like setting a film made today in the 1930s rather than 1999, both would technically be a period piece but a lot more people remember the later date.

OK I went a bit off track there, but yes, everything looks great, the use of shadow in particular is fantastic, the shot which sticks out in my mind is the iconic shadow of Count Orlok on the stairs where we see only his shadow ascending, clawed hands reaching out, it’s effectively creepy and probably had audiences in 1922 peeking through their fingers. Though not actually scary, certainly not for modern audiences, the film has a fantastic gothic atmosphere and could certainly be described as spooky at the very least. The count himself does vary somewhat though. At times he looks positively goofy whilst at others he appears a true and ominous threat.

The film uses at least a couple of fun special effects that you wouldn’t expect in a film from this era. Firstly we have a scene of Count Orlok rising straight backed from a coffin, an effect apparently combining both mechanical manipulation with a back board and stage hands, and an element of stop motion. The other interesting effect was a character fading out of existence, a fairly simple effect, even at the time but not necessarily one that a filmmaker would think to use. Horror as genre, like sci-fi, really gives great scope for experimentation, for example why would a character fade out in a drama, it’s one of the reasons I find older horror so fascinating to watch.

Rating time, no pressure or anything. So…this is quite difficult. As a piece of cinema history Nosferatu is undoubtedly a 5, however these ratings aren’t really about that though, they’re more about how much I enjoyed them as well as how ‘good’ they are. With that in mind I’m going to give Nosferatu 4 unfortunate scarecrows out of 5. It’s difficult to really judge this film in the same way that sound films are judged, it’s almost a different medium. It’s a beautiful piece of art, but as a movie I found myself at times engaged more due to the necessity of reading the cards or by the novelty of watching something more than a century old, rather than the film’s merits. Having given it that rating though, everybody should see this film at least once. It’s probably not a film you’ll come back to again and again, but it’s a true piece of cinema history.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

There were some stand out scenes in the film, for various reasons.

I already mentioned the scene of count Orlok’s shadow ascending the stairs. This is the one that’s often shown in stills of the film, but actually it’s the shots after that which really stood out to me. Count Orlok extends his arm and his hand and fingers appear to elongate and stretch through the doorway. Then as Thomas’s wife Ellen backs away onto the bed the shadow of Orlok’s hand slides onto her body and grasps her heart, it’s a fantastic sequence.

Something else I enjoyed, for entirely different reasons was when an angry crowd, upset by the deaths of so many townsfolk since the Count’s arrival in town, are chasing the madman ‘Knock’, Thomas’s former employer. They are searching for him when one of them sees a scarecrow in a field and they run up to it, cast it down and then proceed to fling it about all over the place. It’s a fun and somewhat unexpected bit of comedy and it made me smile.

Another fun sequence is when Count Orlok disguised as a coach drive picks up Hutter to transport him to the castle. The scenes of the coach driving through the countryside are sped up to give a sense of speed. A common enough effect, often used to make car chases seem more dramatic but for whatever reason I wasn’t expecting to see it here. What it actually did was put me in mind of the fact that old film footage often appears sped up due to the different frame rate, though this isn’t the case here, the film having been adjusted so it appears at amore natural speed.

The other interesting part of the coach scene is that one shot is a negative, though that’s not the whole story. In the shot the coach is travelling through the forest which appears to be glowing white with a black smoke or fog in the foreground. The thing is the coach should appear white here as the ‘colours’ are inverted, but in fact it’s still black, so the shot must have been adjusted somehow to retain the black of the coach. There really are lots of interesting techniques being used.

I’ve talked long enough, darkness draws in, the shadows lengthen, it’s time to go…