Fifteen years ago, Michael Myers brutally murdered his sister. Now, after escaping from a
mental hospital, he’s back to relive his grisly crime again, and again...and again.
Before Freddy Krueger, before Jason Voorhees, before Chucky, there was Michael Myers. On a dark
Halloween night when Myers was a boy dressed in the outfit of a clown, he grabbed a large kitchen
knife, went upstairs to his sister's bedroom and stabbed her to death. This horrific act is the
opening salvo in John Carpenter's Halloween, a film that spawned a generation of horror
films,
sequels and variations on the slasher theme. The difference between the original and most of what
came after is that John Carpenter is tremendously talented and learned his craft better than his
peers. He used the camera and sets (usually in cramped areas of houses) to generate suspense and
terror, but never became too formulaic in his approach to camerawork.
A young Jamie Lee Curtis got her career off to a good start as Laurie Strode in Halloween. The
definition on the Blu-ray looks fantastic.
In the opening scene, the camera becomes the eyes of Michael Myers. The effect is chilling
because the audience is forced to not just witness a murder, but to see it through the eyes of
the murderer. Myers reaches for a mask on the floor and puts it on his face before the stabbing,
the action is shown through two narrow eye holes. This is horror cinema at its finest: a glimpse
of the knife held aloft, the blade descending, the girl holding up her hands in a weak attempt to
defend herself. The eye holes only allow hints of the action. But where a lesser director would
feel obligated to continue using the camera as Myers' eyes in later scenes, Carpenter is not
boxed in by his earlier choices.
After the initial murder, Myers is locked up in a mental hospital for many years. Realizing that
the young man is pure evil, his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance), tries to keep
him locked away forever. But Myers escapes the night before Halloween, returns to his old
neighborhood, and there Carpenter starts laying on the suspenseful camera-work and
claustrophobic feel of the shots. Rather than limit the camera to the eyes of the killer, Carpenter
surprises the audience with several approaches. Most effective is to show views inside a window
while suddenly a shadow or close silhouette of Myers appears in the foreground. Creepy. The
trademark music and blasts of synthesized audio heighten the terror.
A studious high school student, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), becomes the focus of Myers'
stalking. He first sees her as she approaches the house he lived in as a child. Then he appears
outside her classroom at school, behind a bush as she walks home through her neighborhood
and terrorizes her friends. Strode appears more resourceful than her friends, using implements
such as sewing needles and a hanger fashioned into a stabbing weapon to fend off the knife-
wielding attacker. By the time Myers catches up with Strode, Loomis is aware of Myers'
whereabouts. But can he intervene in time to save Strode?
Brighter, clearer, more detailed and with vastly improved resolution over previous NTSC versions,
Halloween on Blu-ray looks like it could have been filmed last year, rather than 30 years
ago. The
depth is startlingly lifelike, aside from lens issues that cause foreground blurriness in a few scenes.
These problems are in the original film and not related to the digitization process that yielded
1080p content. Overall, the grain and blur are not intrusive and the average viewer will not notice
it. Contrast, black level, color saturation and skin tones are spot on.
I especially enjoyed the daytime scenes in the suburban Illinois neighborhood as Strode walks to
and from school. With quiet streets, autumn trees, green lawns and houses of various colors, the
picture is alive with vibrant detail and lush color. And that just brings the horror of the film home
even harder.
The Blu-ray disc's one weak spot is its audio performance. Back in 1978, audio engineering
seemed
to be at a low point. Here, the voices, sound effects and music sound boxy, slightly muffled and
tonally odd. The voices fare best while the music sounds absolutely terrible, weak and distorted.
The PCM content helps some, but Starz may not have had all that much to work with in the
original master recording. A remaster can only be as good as the original recording. Still, the
voices
had decent presence and the screaming and music had enough impact to stand one's hair on
end.
Audio can elicit a more primal emotional response than video, and Carpenter uses it to great
effect
here. Take, for example, the scene where Loomis is casing the inside of the old Myers residence
and
a large object comes through the window, creating a loud sound. It is difficult to see what
happened, but the audio alone creates the drama. Compare that to the scene shortly thereafter,
when Loomis, standing outside and waiting to see if Myers will return, is suddenly grabbed on the
shoulder by the sheriff. With no loud noise, the scene doesn't have as much impact. Often,
Carpenter uses the music to punctuate the action and provide the emotional cues to prepare us
or
surprise us.
The only worthwhile bonus feature included on the Blu-ray disc is audio commentary with John
Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and producer Debra Hill. The others are mostly throwaways, though
they may provide the occasional tidbit for die-hard fans: Fast Film Facts, A Cut Above the Rest
Featurette, Trailer, TV Spots and Radio Spots.
In the tradition of Psycho and Rear Window, Halloween succeeds on many
levels to bring horror to
the screens of Blu-ray enthusiasts. Much can be said of this cult classic. I find it interesting that the
only women who are killed seem promiscuous, while the woman who survives is not sexually
active. Is Michael Myers really a moralist? I'm not serious, of course, but it is interesting to follow
such things in horror movies. For picture quality and for fans of the genre, Halloween gets a
solid
recommendation.
This summer, Anchor Bay Home Entertainment will bring two of the Halloween sequels to Blu-ray - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. As their respective titles indicate, these features deal with the grisly exploits ...
This September, Universal Home Entertainment will release 1981's Halloween II in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Picking up immediately after the events of the first Halloween, the sequel finds Michael Myers terrorizing Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, Trading Places) ...
