[cheebacheeba]

Halloween (1978).
We watched this in preparation of seeing the 2018 follow up.
It's been a while.
In fact, not since I've been with Spal had either of us seen it, and so yeah that's going back 'fore the turn of the century.

I think I touched on this before, but when I was quite young I never paid Halloween or it's sequels too much mind.
They were slower, and less visually ?unusual? than the kind of horror I'd been exposed to as a child, things like Hellraiser, NOES, The Thing, and the evil dead (thank you, parents.)
For these reasons I was never really into it, as a kid, for me different things drove my lower attention span.
Things like atmosphere, well done pacing, set up, dialogue, musical score all sadly took a back seat - and these factors are exactly what this movie had going for it.

When I watched it a little later down the line in my mid teens, I kind of started to "get it" to a point. Maybe appreciate it a little more. I consider 1&2 pretty much a double feature, and they do stand quite seperate in style from what was to follow.

Now that I have had years more exposure to films of past and present, watching this after that awesome period of time has passed that erases most of what you know about a movie? More than ever before it shows why people say it's so iconic.
All in all, it's a simple story - and "not much happens".
But a lot going for it that set it apart from the films of around that time...some interesting camera work and spanning like "follow" kind of shots. Not to mention the villain perspective stuff (did they do that in the others? I feel like they didn't). One nice early example of "jump scare", and not many more...you know...sparingly, like it should be.
The minimal explanation of Michael via the medium of Loomis.
Only showing the over-the-shoulder view of the shape for a large portion of the movie. The cut-away to the class speaking of "fate", where little more than that influenced him to go after her it seems.
"Dead/Not Dead", inhumanly strong silent villain, simply choosing and stalking prey. The excellent musical score and the pacing of it in so many scenes really just, it still manages to build atmosphere for all the time that's past and how far movies have come...this still puts you in an almost vulnerable state.
This movie, impressed adult me.

It will be interesting to see how they follow up in the new one...glad I've largely forgotten most of the sequels...because yeah, Laurie, for all her efforts, essentially lost that fight. Psychologically that would weigh. I'm interested in seeing where that goes.



Side notes:

It was interesting having watched all the scream films seeing how many of Randy's "rules" the cast breaks.

One thing I never noticed was how fucking pleased with himself Loomis looks when he tricks the young children "Hey Lonnie, get your ass away from there" Yes. Genious...this made me grin.