心慌慌

John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is a seminal low-budget slasher that spawns an ever-growing horror franchise, 40 years after its genesis, as the genre’s spooky ropes become proverbial, it is inexorable that its gripping and scary quotients are considerably blunted for new audience. But since it is such a money-spinner, one of the most successful independent movie ever, so that it obtains a Teflon shield owing to its capitalist high-water mark.

One of its most innovative esthetics is the perverse use of subjective POV, prominently in the prologue, when a cold-blooded murder is seamlessly edited from the unseen executor’s chilling viewpoint on a Halloween night, with a shocking reveal that the perpetrator is a six-year-old “bad seed”.

15 years later, another Halloween day, after escaping from the sanatorium he has been incarcerated ever since, the said “bad seed” Michael Myers (Castle) is back in the sleepy town Haddonfield, Illinois, and his new target is a bookish high school girl Laurie Strode (Curtis) and her two more world-savvy friends Lynda (Soles) and Annie (Kyes), the ensuing suspense is conjured up by rote, and Carpenter archly teases us when and how Myers’ unwitting victims will meet their makers, and knowingly refrains from producing a gory fest, blood is rarely shed, and everything looks more sinister under the Stygian lighting and Panavision expansion, in a forlorn suburbia, all Carpenter needs is two houses across each other and a thickset, silent man wearing a white mask to give audience the creeps we are craving for.

The usual trappings of the genre, like gratuitous nudity, misogynist whiff, teenager lust and angst, are all prescribed in right dosage, plus the moral yardstick, Laurie is the final girl mostly because she is not sexed up like her two ill-fated friends, yet amidst the ludicrousness of screaming, panicking and stabbing, it is rather bathetic she doesn’t emerge eventually as the savior herself (she has to leave the sharp knife beside a seemingly unconscious Myers not once but twice, turns her back to him and weep instead), it is a man who comes to her rescue in the person of Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasence), Myers’ psychiatrist, ok, baby steps, a heroine’s self-making would run through the entire franchise for our scream queen Ms. Curtis, sinking her teeth in her very first movie.

As yours truly sees it, HALLOWEEN’s undimmed renown is more rooted in that it is a de facto exemplar of shoestring filmmaking that hits the jackpot, than its artistic value or cinematic flourishes, it is a no-frills, bantamweight horror/thriller, an archetypal adrenaline generator, and more than anything, bequeaths its unsettling, plonking theme strains to the posterity, invoking the eternal haunting of a creepy, preposterously bulletproof bogeyman.

referential entries: Carpenter’s THE THING (1982, 7.3/10); Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960, 9.2/10).

我的观影体验基本如下：

一个得了老年痴呆症的变态杀人狂的万圣节轻松捡人头的福利路人局，和一个逃命像躲猫猫并带着矜持的大龄处女之连续三次反杀变态杀人狂的故事。

谁能告诉我，女主反杀的基本盘在哪？相比起便当领得麻溜的配角，女主优势基本就顶着主角光环，以致于反派每次暗中动手都是冲着衣服和沙发去的。几个路人配角死得可真是太冤枉了。

反派没超能力？其他细节我就不说了，光是被女主捅了这么多次，尤其脖子这种致命部位，最后身中数枪从二楼摔下、还能瞬间悄咪咪逃走的玩意儿，你跟我说没超能力？

手段新颖开创性？对不起，本片可能，，，，也就是占了拍得早的先机罢了。就像房价疯涨之前入手的嘲笑后面买不起房的不够努力一样。这些花招就算没在1978年被拍出来，迟早也会被后来者踏足并发扬光大。

至于那两个小孩，我看着基本就是烘托氛围的工具孩，对剧情推进可以说是几乎毫无影响（说得好像本片有什么剧情一样）。在这恐怖片里算败笔，换其他亲戚一样可以，交代好性格就可以。孩子在万圣节能发挥的恐怖氛围渲染作用，本片却一点都没把握住。。。。。

PS：

已知：反派七八岁被抓进精神病院，15年后靠着工具路人送的轿车逃跑了。

问题：反派去哪学的车？？？？？

本系列一集弃，2018新版暂时也不会看了。