#68: HALLOWEEN (1978)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

10

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, multiple times. I think the first time was in high school, but it might have been in university

BEST SEQUENCE

Tough call. Every murder is memorable in its own way, and you could definitely make an argument for Laurie's climactic cat-and-mouse chase with Michael, or even the opening sequence shot from Michael's POV. I'm going to go with the kill scene when he stabs a guy up against a door and then does the creepy head tilt gesture while gazing at the body

BEST LINE

"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes. The Devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil."

- Dr. Loomis

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

96%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Scary, suspenseful, and viscerally thrilling, Halloween set the standard for modern horror films."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again."

DIRECTOR

John Carpenter

MAIN CAST

Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nick Castle (as the masked Michael Myers, but not as the unmasked Michael; that was Tony Moran)

THOUGHTS

• Well, admittedly, it's not very seasonally appropriate for me to be posting this review on St. Patrick's Day. But what can I say, apparently the American Film Institute does not hold Leprechaun in very high regard. It would have been nice to review Halloween in October, but I did happen to watch it during the only snow-and-lightning storm I've ever experienced in my life, so that was a fair alternative
• Usually when I go into a rewatch of a movie I've seen before I have expectations about where it will rank on the Thrill Scale, especially when it's a movie I'm quite familiar with, like Halloween. I didn't actually think it would get a 10/10 from me, but it became quickly obvious that I had forgotten how chillingly effective this movie really is. I jumped, I yelped, I was scared out of my gourd
• Halloween was not the first slasher movie ever made, contrary to what some people believe. Depending on the criteria you require for a slasher, Black Christmas came out in 1974, as did The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and I'd even throw Psycho into the mix, from 1960. But in my opinion, Halloween did the genre better than anything that came before it or after. Much imitated but never bested, Carpenter made a tight, economical movie that doesn't feel dated and will never lose its power to scare
• Economical in more ways than one, too. Filmed on a small budget, Carpenter shows how much can be accomplished with moody lighting and creepy sound design. Just the sound of Michael breathing in his mask heightens every scene when he's stalking a character, and the shadows and the darkness onscreen are used perfectly. For a slasher movie, there's very little blood shown, and there doesn't need to be. And the score, written and performed by Carpenter himself, is iconic, especially when it kicks off right at the very beginning
• This was the film debut of newly anointed Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, and it feels great to type those words since I've been a fan of hers for a long time. A Fish Called Wanda is one of my favourite movies ever, and she's also great in Halloween, entirely convincing and believable throughout
• I think this is one of the best examples of using the camera's full range of vision to scare us, whether Michael Myers suddenly appears behind a character, immediately in front of them, or far off in the distance. This technique was also used to great effect in later movies like The Strangers or It Follows, just to name a couple
• This is the second John Carpenter movie I've reviewed, and it's also the second Carpenter film to get a perfect 10/10 from me. The Thing is one of my favourite movies, and it's interesting that while Halloween has been imitated for decades now, there's still really only one The Thing. Carpenter has a few other horror movies to his name, several of which I haven't seen. If we take The Thing and Halloween as Carpenter's top two horror movies, would anyone care to make an argument for what should take spot number three? Or even if another one of his movies is better than these two? I'm open to suggestions!

Up next: I think we'll hang out with Laurie Strode and Michael Myers a little longer. Supplementing the list with Halloween II, and maybe I'll even include a mini review of Halloween III: Season of the Witch

#69: THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

6

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

No

BEST SEQUENCE

The train hijacking sequence, or the final shootout

BEST LINE

"Well, how'd you like to kiss my sister's black cat's ass?"

- This movie is full of hardboiled cowboy talk like this, and this line is one of my favourites

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

91%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"The Wild Bunch is Sam Peckinpah's shocking, violent ballad to an old world and a dying genre."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them."

DIRECTOR

Sam Peckinpah

MAIN CAST

William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan

THOUGHTS

• Maybe I just don't find Westerns all that thrilling, and that's totally fine. This is about as Western as they get, a story of rough and tough men fighting it out in the wide expanses of the Mexico-US border in 1913, and I just didn't find it very engaging
• I also wasn't blown away by the previous Western movie, The Magnificent Seven; it was fun enough, but it wasn't amazing. And that sense of fun and lightness isn't really found in The Wild Bunch, a much more serious movie. Now, for some (including the AFI) this may be what makes them consider The Wild Bunch the superior movie, but for me the dourness made it harder to get into. Although it is worth acknowledging that the violence is more sudden and shocking when it happens due to the longer stretches in between action scenes. And when the violent scenes happen, they happen big, especially in the climactic gunfight. There's a fair chance that The Wild Bunch has the highest body count of any movie I've reviewed so far, possibly even higher than something like Terminator 2
• As per usual for Western movies, the scenery is pretty amazing
• A while ago I said that I didn't expect to see so much Angela Lansbury in these movies, and I also didn't expect to see so much Ernest Borgnine! I didn't like his performance very much in The Poseidon Adventure, but he was way better here, and his character, Dutch Engstrom, may have been my favourite. Borgnine will be showing up again shortly in The Dirty Dozen
• So, while I wasn't entirely engrossed by The Wild Bunch as a movie, I did find it interesting as a very obvious inspiration for two very good video games, Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. And, I didn't find any information explicitly confirming my suspicion, but I'd bet money that the Red Dead character Dutch van der Linde was at least partly (if not entirely) named after Ernest Borgnine's character here
• I'll be watching at least two more Westerns eventually, but not for a while. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is #54, and then it's High Noon at #20. I might also try to find an opportunity to shoehorn in one more Western that I have seen before, and that I remember liking, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Maybe I'll even include the rest of the Clint Eastwood Dollars Trilogy, which I haven't seen. Could be a good follow-up to Dirty Harry, #41

Up next: But hey, if Westerns maybe aren't my preferred flavour of thrills, it's hard to argue against the classic slasher movie, and this is a big one. 1978's Halloween