Welcome to JOE’s 31 Days Of Hallowe’en. For each and every day of October, we’ll be bringing you a horror movie to tuck into for the lead up to the big night. It could be new, old, an undiscovered gem, or a classic you’ll have seen a thousand times. No matter what it is, we guarantee you that it is brilliant, and it is SCARY.
For Day 31, what else could it possibly be other than the seminal 1978 slasher classic, Halloween.
There is a certain kind of simplistic horror at play here that made Michael Myers such an instantly terrifying creation, and is the reason why Halloween still plays just as well today as it did nearly 40 years ago.
Set 15 years after a young boy murdered his older sister with a big knife, we find out that young Michael has grown into dead-eyed brute-force psychopath, and that the doctor was assigned to treating him (Donald Pleasence) is pretty sure he knows where he is going: back home.
Meanwhile, in that very home, a young babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) is sitting in while all of her friends are off having fun. One by one though, they cross paths with Michael, and his big knife, but ultimately he has his aim set squarely on the babysitter.
You’ve got to think that James Cameron must’ve been watching Halloween when he was coming up with The Terminator, because they both heavily feature terrifying, unfeeling, force of nature killing-machine with the singular desire to kill one specific woman (and anyone who gets in between them).
Clip via Halloween Network
To date there have been 10 movies in the franchise, including one Rob Zombie directed remake, as well as a better-than-you-remember 20 year anniversary return for Curtis in Halloween: H20, and next year there’s another (supposedly final) sequel set to be released.
However, unlike Jason, who went to hell and space, and unlike Freddy, who died about a bazillion times, and eventually became a weird comedic version of himself, Michael Myers never became a parody, never stopped being anything short of terrifying,
Unlike those killers, who seemed to get some real joy out of being as over-the-top violent as possible, Michael just wanted things to be dead so they’d be out of his way, so he could continue on to his ultimate goal.
While Halloween was predated by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas in terms of being the first teen-slasher on the market, it is responsible for influencing pretty muck 99%Â of horror movies as we know them.
And it is still holds up remarkably well as a horror movie to this day.
Hallowe’en just wouldn’t be the same without Halloween.
Check out our previous recommendations below:
Day 2 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Day 13 – Friday The 13th (1980)
Day 19 – The Blair Witch Project
Day 25 – Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
