Halloween: A Groundbreaking Film

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his older sister, Judith, sneaks upstairs for a quickie with a guy from school. After the boyfriend has departed, Michael takes a knife out of the kitchen drawer, ascends the staircase, and stabs Judith to death. The entire sequence employs the subjective point- of-view, an approach that writer/director John Carpenter returns to repeatedly throughout the movie. Only after the deed is done, do we learn that Michael is only a child. The bulk of the movie takes place fifteen years later. Michael confined to an asylum for the criminally insane, escapes on the night before Halloween. His doctor, Sam Loomis, actually refers to Michael as " pure evil" and " it." The doctor is convinced that Michael is no longer human. Loomis, believing Michael to be the embodiment of evil tracks the killer back Haddonfield, his birthplace. From there, Loomis races against time in attempt to locate and stop the escapee before he starts again where he left off in 1963.
Michael's primary victims are ...

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is the avenging angel. He is the voice of reason that no one listens to, and, in the end, he is the cavalry coming over the mountain, gun blazing.
Nick Castle plays Michael (who is referred to in the end credits as "the Shape") as an implacable, inhuman adversary. Because he wears a painted white Captain Kirk mask, we only once (briefly) see his features, and this makes him even more frightening. He kills without making a sound or changing his expression, and his movements are often slow and zombie-like. Carpenter is exceedingly careful in choosing the camera angles he uses to shoot Michael. Before the climax, there is never a clear close-up-he's always concealed by shadows, shown ...

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