01 November 2004

Carpenter (1978)

1978 - Someone's Watching Me! - In a way, a bit of a test run for Halloween. This time, pure evil takes the form of a mostly faceless, electronically-savvy voyeur. Not a particularly enjoyable movie to watch, though I did like - for the most part - Lauren Hutton's moxie-filled character.

1978 - Halloween - Perhaps the perfect horror film. I watch this once a year on its namesake holiday. This time, I noticed the excellent pacing in the movie. This is not a fast-paced movie, yet it is unrelenting. Every few minutes, leading up to Laurie's discovery of Michael, there's a "horror beat" in the film. A credit to John Carpenter's multi-talent, this beat is not always Laurie catching a glimpse of the Shape spying on her; sometimes it's just a revving up of Carpenter's excellent score as Laurie walks down the street. Overall, this builds an impending sense of doom in the first half of the film, which has become a Carpenter movie-making trait ever since.

(comment in the main post)