Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Halloween (1978)

Halloween is my favorite time of the year. I love the Fall season with leaves changing color, pumpkins on the front porch, and kids dressing up for Halloween.  In my youth, I dressed the gamut of horror creatures such as a skeleton, Frankenstein, and Dracula. As an adult, I have reserved October and Halloween as the month to watch old and new horror films.

It's hard to believe that no one had come up with a horror film set on Halloween until HALLOWEEN. When you think John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978), you think of it as the granddaddy of all the slasher films that popped up in the 1980's. FRIDAY THE 13TH, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, PROM NIGHT, and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS were among the slasher films that owe their birth to a tiny low budget ($300,000) movie. But HALLOWEEN really owes its roots back to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) which first gave us a knife wielding psychopath. And when PSYCHO was a big hit, copy cats sprang from all corners of the film world: PARANOIAC, THE SHUTTERED ROOM, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, and PEEPING TOM. Moviegoers showed with their attendance that they liked to be scared by maniacs with knives and axes and chainsaws.


What appealed to me about HALLOWEEN was the idea of a horror film taking place on All Hallow's Eve. When HALLOWEEN was released in 1978, I wasn't old enough to see it at a cinema. I bought the novelization of the film first (which was more graphic both in sex and violence than the actual film). I finally got to see HALLOWEEN  a year later at my friend John's house (John is the guy who could see R rated films before most of us could see them thanks to his liberal parents). John's family had the first VCR of any of my friends and we watched HALLOWEEN on the now defunct Beta format.

HALLOWEEN is more suspenseful than scary. Director John Carpenter (Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill wrote the screenplay) is more interested in mood and suspense than showing blood. Carpenter gives us red herrings and false scares at first to get us nervous. The biggest scares in  the film come from the music cues (Carpenter was the composer of its synthesizer score). And Carpenter's biggest coup was that he cast Jaime Lee Curtis in the lead role as the babysitter terrorized by evil incarnate Michael Myers. Curtis's mother was none other than PSYCHO star Janet Leigh (her father was actor Tony Curtis). So HALLOWEEN and PSYCHO had this instant cinematic connection. Mother and daughter would act together in Carpenter's next horror film THE FOG (1980).

HALLOWEEN begins at the scene of the crime, Haddonfield, Illinois 1963 on Halloween night. 6 year old Michael Myers (Will Sandin), dressed as a clown, stabs his sister Judith Myers (Sandy Johnson) for no apparent reason, except that she just had sex with her boyfriend. He waits in front of his house with a bloody knife when his parents return home from a night out. Michael is sent to an Illinois State Mental Facility where 15 years later, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), the psychiatrist who has treated and observed Myers, arrives on a rainy night to move Myers to another facility. But Myers escapes from the State Hospital, stealing a car and driving away. Loomis is positive that Myers is headed back to Haddonfield. Halloween is the next day.


Three high school girls will become linked with the return of Michael Myers to the town where he committed his heinous crime. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the straight laced good student; Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis), the daughter of the town's Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers); and Lynda van der Klok (PJ Soles), the wild one of the three. Myers return to his empty, dilapidated old house and begins stalking the three girls who live nearby.

Loomis arrives in town and hooks up with Sheriff Brackett. A visit to Judith Myers grave reveals her headstone is missing. Loomis knows Myers has returned. Costumed trick or treaters walk the sidewalks as nightfall approaches. Laurie and Annie both have to babysit on Halloween night. Loomis stakes out Myers old home but he never shows.

Annie is the first to be killed, strangled in the garage. Lynda shows up at the house with her boyfriend Bob Simms (John Michael Graham). They hop into bed since Annie isn't around. Myers will dispatch with Bob with a large butcher knife downstairs then throws a sheet over himself and impersonates Bob before killing Lynda. Myers heads over to finish off Laurie but she proves to be the toughest, most resilient of the three and battles Myers as Loomis finally arrives to help defeat the maniac.

After HALLOWEEN came out, many film critics saw a connection between the act of sex being punished by a violent death like in HALLOWEEN and other slasher films of the time. Carpenter insisted he just needed his characters to be doing something before the killer surprised them. Since the main characters were teenagers in high school, sex seemed the obvious teenage activity to distract them. But there is a theme that resonates in HALLOWEEN and its imitators that the virginal, conservative heroine like Laurie survives the madman's onslaught while Annie (who's going to pick up her boyfriend and bring him back to the house to have sex) or Lynda (who does have sex with her boyfriend in the house) are murdered because they're promiscuous and easy.


I remember watching Siskel and Ebert on television and both critics gave thumbs up to HALLOWEEN. But many critics saw HALLOWEEN and other slasher films as promoting violence against women. Although I abhor violence against women in any form, horror films are usually scarier and more terrifying when it's a woman threatened by an alien creature or psychopath than a man. Carpenter and Hill (who's a woman) make Jamie Lee Curtis the heroine. She's scared but not weak and she uses her brains to fight back against the masked bogeyman. Laurie becomes empowered when she's attacked. But she does follow all the classic wrong things to do in a horror film: walk into a dark house, drop the knife that could help save her, turn her back on the killer when he's wounded.

Although the storylines aren't exactly the same, HALLOWEEN has a lot in common with PSYCHO. We already talked about the fact that HALLOWEEN actress Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of PSYCHO star Janet Leigh. You can't get better cinematic karma than that.  The Donald Pleasence psychiatrist character is named Sam Loomis after Janet Leigh's boyfriend in PSYCHO (John Gavin played Sam Loomis in that film). Both films deal with a maniac wielding a knife. HALLOWEEN'S Michael Myers is described as pure evil. He takes on the persona of the boogeyman that frighten little kids like Tommy Doyle at night. Only Myers the boogeyman is after high school girls. They remind him of his first victim, his own sister. Norman Bates in PSYCHO has mother issues that crop up when he meets women, issues that lead him to impersonate his mother and take on her personality at times. PSYCHO'S bad man is more complicated than HALLOWEEN'S Myers.


Carpenter follows Hitchcock's lead and goes for the suspense angle in HALLOWEEN even though both films are considered horror films. But HALLOWEEN never dwells or shows much blood or gore just like PSYCHO only made you think you saw the knife touch Marion Bates in the shower. HALLOWEEN'S sequels and reboots and copy cat slasher films would ratchet up the gore and blood.  Music is the last component that unites HALLOWEEN and PSYCHO. I think Bernard Hermann's score in PSYCHO is one of the most chilling and haunting pieces of music ever. Carpenter's score is more modern with a synthesizer replacing an orchestra but he sets the mood with music and keeps the film tense for its entire 90 minutes.

Film buff Carpenter peppers HALLOWEEN with little cinematic easter eggs. Besides the homages to PSYCHO, he has the young kids watching THE THING FROM ANOTHER PLANET (1951) produced by Howard Hawks, one of Carpenter's favorite filmmakers. Carpenter would remake THE THING in 1982. He also named Haddonfield's sheriff Leigh Brackett. Brackett was one of Hawks' favorite writers who wrote THE BIG SLEEP (1946) and RIO BRAVO (1959). Carpenter tried to get Hammer horror stars Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing to play the psychiatrist Loomis but they turned him down. But he got Donald Pleasence, one of my favorite actors from THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) and the James Bond film YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). Pleasence brings class to HALLOWEEN.


One issue filmmakers have when casting actors to play high school students is they look too old to be in high school. HALLOWEEN has that problem. Actresses Curtis, Loomis, and Soles look like college coeds not high school teenagers (although Curtis was actually high school age). But their All-American good looks and camaraderie help make HALLOWEEN all the more scarier when Michael Myers comes stalking them. Jamie Lee Curtis would become the Queen of Horror for a few years appearing in HALLOWEEN II (1981), THE FOG (1980), ROAD GAMES (1981), PROM NIGHT (1980), and TERROR TRAIN (1980) before directors discovered her comedic talents in TRADING PLACES (1983) and A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988).

Nancy Loomis who plays Annie worked with Carpenter in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) and later THE FOG.  PJ Soles who plays Lynda would become a horror fan favorite from HALLOWEEN and Brian DePalma's CARRIE (1976). Soles also showed her comedy side in ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979) and STRIPES (1981).


Another talent who would emerge from HALLOWEEN'S success is cinematographer Dean Cundey. His lighting in Halloween is superb (check out the light filtering on Laurie as she hides in the closet). Cundey would go onto to work on many big budget films such as JURASSIC PARK (1993). HALLOWEEN was also one of the first films to use the Steadicam which makes tracking shots smoother, like the camera is floating (and it cuts down on the number of set ups for a small production like HALLOWEEN). I love the opening credits with Carpenter's creepy Tubular Bells like music and a flickering Jack O'Lantern growing larger. It sets the film's tone right away. And when Laurie and little Tommy (Brian Andrews) look out the window and see Myers standing in front of the house across the street wearing his cheap mask (a modified  William Shatner as Captain Kirk mask it turns out), that visual is as frightening and scary as any gory horror scene could be.


Carpenter's HALLOWEEN would spawn two sequels in the 80's and then a reboot with three or more films in the 2000 era. The only one I've seen and it's a departure from the series and the most bizarre, disturbing film is 1982's HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. It's very David Cronenberg like (but directed by Tommy Lee Wallace who was the production designer on HALLOWEEN).  Check it out if you dare.

As much as I rave about HALLOWEEN, the Michael Myers character has never been one of my favorite modern horror characters. He's not nearly as interesting as Freddy Krueger from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series. He's more like Jason Voorhees from the FRIDAY THE 13TH films, the only difference Jason wears the hockey mask while Myers dons the Halloween mask. But the original HALLOWEEN ushered in the modern horror film that has dominated the cinema ever since.  After you're done handing out candy to the Thor's and Hello Kitty's on Halloween night, lock your door and watch HALLOWEEN to top off your evening. But keep the lights on.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Phantasm (1979)

With Halloween less than two weeks away, I want to go back and examine the defining film that bridged my transition from the classic horror films of my youth like DRACULA (1931), FRANKENSTEIN (1931), and THE WOLF MAN (1941) to when I was a teenager and the modern horror films that reanimated the genre in the late 1970's/early 80's like HALLOWEEN (1978), PIRAHNA (1978), and DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). The film I'm talking about is PHANTASM (1979), a little known but beloved horror film among horror aficionados directed by a young Don Coscarelli.

Coincidentally, PHANTASM was released the same time that I discovered a horror film magazine called Fangoria that covered the new breed of horror films emerging from young talent like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Joe Dante, and David Cronenberg. Fangoria had vivid color photos and behind the scenes stories on all the new ghoulish make up and splatter special effects plus nostalgic looks back at the classics of horror.


PHANTASM was one of the first films I recall that Fangoria did a piece about and the story and photos had all the horror iconography I love: cemeteries, mausoleums, hearses, a creepy Tall Man, and a gothic looking funeral home (which the earlier 1976 horror film BURNT OFFERINGS also used). Its craziest invention is a flying metal sphere that races around the mausoleum with blades that attach itself to a victim's skull and then drills into the brain, causing blood to spurt from the victim's forehead. Even my local Portland film critic at the time Ted Mahar gave the low budget PHANTASM some love and a mostly positive review.

I had not seen PHANTASM since I first sat in a mostly empty movie theater back in 1979. I was a little nervous as I prepared to view it again. It was like reuniting with your first love after thirty years. Would it live up to my first infatuation or would time not be kind to it. I've been so out of touch with my beloved PHANTASM that director Coscarelli has made three sequels since the original (everyone all together now -- PHANTASM II (1988), PHANTASM III: LORD OF THE DEAD (1994), and PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION (1998). I have not seen any of the sequels...yet.

But I'm delighted to say PHANTASM lives up to my teenage recollections. It is what it is: an inventive low budget horror film that doesn't take itself too seriously, entertains and scares, and gets a lot of production value out of very little. PHANTASM relates the bizarre occurrences around Morningside Funeral Home and its adjacent cemetery. Jody Pearson (Bill Thornbury) and his best friend, Ice Cream truck vendor and part time musician Reggie (Reggie Bannister) attend the funeral for their friend Tommy (Bill Cone). Tommy was stabbed to death by the ghostly Lady in Lavender (sexy Kathy Lester) one night while having sex with the apparition in the cemetery. Jody and his younger brother Mike (Michael Baldwin) are still recovering from the recent deaths of their parents. Mike follows Jody around, afraid of losing his only surviving kin.


As the mourners depart, Mike, spying from some nearby bushes, notices the sinister funeral home director known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) lift up Tommy's five hundred pound casket all by himself and place it in the back of the hearse. Mike begins to investigate the funeral home. He sneaks into the basement where he encounters bizarre dwarves in hoods and the before mentioned flying metal sphere that almost kills Mike, latching onto the mortuary Caretaker (Ken Jones) instead. Mike barely escapes with his life.

Mike, Jody, and Reg will uncover the Tall Man's shocking secret as they stalk the mausoleum hallways and basement trying to solve the death of their friend Tommy. Their sleuthing will reveal the Tall Man's secret. The Tall Man is harvesting the dead bodies from the funeral home and turning them into dwarf slaves (the corpses crushed into dwarf size by gravity), laboring in another dimension through a gateway behind one of the funeral home's doors. It might not make a ton of sense but writer/director Coscarelli handles his material with the right combination of humor and frights.


At its core, PHANTASM is the classic tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf meets the haunted house on the hill (substitute funeral home for haunted house). Mike can't get his brother Jody to believe that weird things are going on up at Morningside Funeral Home. Not until Mike brings home one of the Tall Man's severed fingers (still moving in a small box) does Jody finally come around to believe his little brother. But writer/director Coscarelli upends his horror tale with a Sci-Fi subplot with a portal to another dimension and the malevolent flying metal sphere that seems to be protecting the Tall Man's secret purpose in the marble mausoleum. Coscarelli tosses in a bit of nudity, a cool muscle car (a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda), a car chase involving a hearse, explosions, and a great villain to satisfy the male teenage horror fan.


That great villain is Angus Scrimm who plays the Tall Man. Pretty much an unknown stage actor before moving to television and feature films, Scrimm seems born to play the part of the evil funeral home director. He's got the scowl, the comb over, and the standard black suit. Scrimm reminds me of a young Christopher Lee in his Hammer horror films days. The Tall Man appears to be a time traveler, showing up in antique photos from the turn of the century but clearly causing mayhem in the present. The Tall Man also has an alter ego as the beautiful but deadly Lady in Lavender, luring men to the cemetery with promises of sex before dispatching them with a dagger, turning their cadavers into shrunken slave dwarves.


Coscarelli also shows his directorial inexperience with PHANTASM as well. A gnarly demonic insect attacking Mike is amateurish (you can see the fishing line attached to the rubber insect).  The sound effects consist of too much crickets at night and howling wind (even when it's apparent there's no wind blowing). But Coscarelli's inventiveness and willingness to mix horror with the surreal trump a few gaffes by the young writer/director.  Coscarelli's next film THE BEASTMASTER (1982) would not be as universally praised as PHANTASM but Coscarelli has hung around in the horror genre, pumping out PHANTASM sequels and more recently, a new horror cult classic BUBBA HO-TEP (2002) which brought together Elvis Presley and an Egyptian mummy starring Bruce Campbell (EVIL DEAD).


I hadn't realized it but PHANTASM was one of several excellent modestly made horror films released by a company called Avco Embassy in the late 70's/early 80's. John Carpenter's THE FOG (1980) and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) as well as Joe Dante's THE HOWLING (1981) were also released by Avco Embassy. With slightly bigger budgets and better stories than the films that Roger Corman's New World Pictures were churning out, Avco Embassy was the king of Horror/Science Fiction for a brief period.

Coscarelli has said in interviews that he came up with the title PHANTASM from seeing the word in some of Edgar Allen Poe's writings. Michael's nightmare dream scenes as well as the scenes with the Lady in Lavender in the cemetery have a Poe like quality to them.  Coscarelli may not be held in quite as high esteem as John Carpenter, George A.  Romero, and David Cronenberg in the horror ranks but Coscarelli has carved himself a nice little niche in the genre with his PHANTASM series. Recent reports out of Hollywood indicate there is a new film in the series coming out in 2015 called PHANTASM: RAVAGER. You can't keep a good horror series down. But this Halloween check out the little horror film that started it all, a little terror gem called PHANTASM.