This file was generated 2002-09-03 03:17 GMT. This movie's information hasn't changed since 2002-08-19.

Scott Ventura >> Movie Commentary >> September 2001 >> Halloween

Halloween

Movie Commentary by Scott Ventura

Details

Scott's Rating:
1 / 5
Times Seen:
1
Viewing Date:
September 2001
IMDB Name:
Halloween (1978)
Director:
John Carpenter
Keywords:
horror
Made:
1978
MPAA Rating:
R

More Dead Teenagers

I have very little patience for dead teenager movies. Aficionados can revel in the bad plots, silly gore, and worse acting, but not me. Quite frankly, movies like this give the horror genre a bad name. I am willing to make occasional exceptions for dead teenagers with a bit of humor to them, like Friday the 13th Part 2 or even Scream. Unless pretending a 20-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis is in high school counts, Halloween provides no humor to accompany its slaughter. I'm sure most connoisseurs would disagree with my assessment with regards to the quality of its construction, but Halloween was entirely devoid of entertainment value for me.

Halloween certainly gets off to a quick start: a little boy murders his sister. From there, we must content ourselves with assurances from Donald Pleasance that we're dealing with a horrific monster. I had my doubts. One of the first mistakes made by writer/director John Carpenter and writer Debra Hill is making Michael invincible. If there's no way to kill him, there can be no suspense: everyone else will die. If they don't bite it in this installment, then it's safe to assume they'll die in the interminable chain of sequels. Save his willingness to kill, Michael was a curiously unmenacing killer. Carpenter and Hill skimped severely on the kind of background detail that would've made me scared. What made him this way? Almost any explanation would've sufficed, but there is none.

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Copyright 2001-2002 by Scott Ventura. All rights reserved.