Halloween Questions

Halloween Questions

How does the start exemplify a common technical code convention of the horror genre?

The film starts with a POV shot showing Michael walking around his stereotypically American middleclass estate home. The POV shot restricts us as viewers due to us only being able to see what Michael can see which creates suspense; one of the main ingredients in a horror film. The fact that the film starts in a stereotypical suburban environment entails the concept that ‘it can happen to you!’. This keeps the viewer on edge throughout and adds to the overall fear created. The film also starts with an effective spine chilling soundtrack that works perfectly in parallel with the shots and what is happening in them. The soundtrack is conventional to other horror soundtracks at its time having been played on an eerie sounding electric keyboard. 

How does the setting fit with the Horror genre?  

The films series of events conveniently take place on Halloween night which Is the reasoning behind the film’s title. Halloween along with Black Christmas (1975) was one of the first horrors to name the film after the night that the series of events in the narrative take place on. Friday the 13^th and PROM NIGHT (1980) followed shortly after.

Shortly after the opening we are shown two characters who go to a compromised mental institution where potentially dangerous patients are walking the street with Michael Myers amongst them. During the time that Halloween was produced, there was more fear than there was understanding for people with mental disorders. After Hitchcock’s archetypical Psycho (1960) was released, it became a well-known convention of the horror genre to have an antagonist with mental disorders. 

What iconography of “innocence”do we hear or see early on?

Early in the day we see children in Halloween costumes trick or treating like they would in regular American suburban neighbourhoods. We also hear the children in the background of certain shots up until quite late at night in the narrative. The very nature of children in itself is innocent which is important in Halloween because at the beginning of the film we see an innocent looking child stab and kill his naked sister after having watched her make love to her boyfriend while 15 years later we are shown regular innocent children trick or treating. This emphasises how dark and broken Michael Myers’s character Is.   Another representation of innocence is Laurie’s costume. Unlike the other characters Laurie isn’t sexualised in anyway, she is clothed like a middle aged women from head to toe which suggests to us that she isn’t a sexually irresponsible teenager like her friends; this tells us that she is likely a virgin. Laurie also comes across as a bit of a nerd not only because of how important it is to her to go and get her chemistry book because of the scene where she is watching Michael through the window watching her. Laurie’s teacher asks her a question while she is distracted   yet she is still able to provide an answer better than the average class mate.

What was the main industry impact of Halloween?

Halloween was produced on a reasonably sized budget of $300,000 and produced a profit of $47 million at the box office in the United States and $70 million worldwide. In terms of how much the value of the dollar has changed, the film produced a 2016 equivalent of $267 million becoming one of the most profitable independent films that has ever been produced. A lot of critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). The film had such an impact on its generation both culturally and historically that a copy was made for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Name some ‘’slasher ‘’ films which followed in from Halloween

Friday 13^th

Scream

My bloody valentine

What are the four plot rules of the ‘’ slasher ‘’ film sub-genre which Halloween began?

1.    A traumatic event in the past creates a psychopathic killer.

2.    The killer returns to the site of the event, usually on a specific date in the present that allows the makers to use a calendar motif in the title

3.    The killer stalks and graphically kills a group of obnoxious and stupid teens of both sexes, usually with some kind of bladed women, often a garden or farming implement

4.    A ‘’final girl ‘’ survives, usually boyish and often virginal, to thwart the killer, although he is never entirely vanquished.

Gives three ways in which Laurie is androgynous

Unlike any of the other characters including the men, Laurie fights back to try and save herself. She is also very asexualised through her choice of costume that makes her look like a middle aged women and not only this, but Laurie has an unconventionally low voice for a woman in a horror film. She also has a very masculine jaw. 

What does the extract mean by ‘’ a reactionary sexual agenda ‘’?

Unlike the other teens that are ‘distracted’ by sex as John Carpenter puts it in an interview, Laurie the virgin is able to protect herself until the very end. This represents teen sex as wrong which is conventional to the iconography of sex opinion during the late 1970’s after aids was becoming a western pandemic.

How does the director, John Carpenter, counter the suggestion that the Halloween has a reactionary sexual agenda?      

He explains that the other characters are simply ‘’distracted ‘’ by beer and sex and that nothing symbolic was meant by it.

Why does Mike Myers kill his sister?     

Personally I think that Mike Myers is a representation of the aids virus and the fact that he kills his very own sister embodies the idea that Aids, being a sexually transmitted disease does not in any way discriminate against its victims. It is a statement to teenagers who are sexually active to either stop or be extremely careful. I arrived at the conclusion after the killing of Myer’s sister was anchored sexually by the fact the Mike had stood and watched her with her boyfriend and proceeded to kill her in a phallic-like stabbing action while she lay naked on the floor.