Halloween (1978)

The scariest Halloween movie ever made is...you guessed it...HALLOWEEN!

Without Halloween, there is no Jason or Freddy or any of the other dozen of slashers that would follow in the footsteps of the one true psychotic silent murderer, Michael Myers! John Carpenter's low-budget masterpiece spread its legs and gave birth to the entire genre. And even 30 years later with dozens of sequels and remakes under its belt, the original is STILL one of the scariest movies ever made.

I can't overemphasis how little money was used to create this horror masterpiece. I think the total budget was a little over $12. Jamie Lee Curtis was an unknown at the time and worked for a case of Activia while the now iconic Michael Myers mask was a $2 William Shatner mask that the crew bought and painted white and dyed the hair (which makes William Shatner the father of modern horror...who knew, right?). It just goes to show that you can make a quality film without a billion-dollar budget and all the latest special effects (I'm looking at you Avengers and Avatar).

I've mentioned this before with some of the other horror classics, but what separates Halloween from the turd sandwich horror movies made in the modern era is the mood. It possesses a quality that no modern movie has: patience. The body count is miniscule by today's standards. The deaths are simple and unimaginative. There's barely any blood or gore at all. And yet it's STILL scary as hell. Carpenter does the subtle things so well. The movement of shadows on the wall, the rise and fall of the music as a character crosses a deserted street. You feel actual tension while watching it, and Carpenter lets it build and build and build and then he finally delivers with the pay-off. Beautiful...

I also love how enigmatic the character of Michael Myers was in that first movie. He's not presented as being a supernatural menace like Freddy or an unstoppable monster like Jason. He's a man who possesses pure evil deep in the abyss of his blackened soul. He can be hurt. He's stabbed in the eye by a hanger and he bleeds. But when Dr. Loomis finally catches up with him and shoots him five times in the chest, sending him tumbling over the second-story railing to the ground below, his body...disappears. That's how you create a truly creepy antagonist. You keep the audience guessing.

This movie also gave birth to several horror clichés (including if you're a hot teenage chick who takes a babysitting gig you're pretty much dead), but my favorite has to be the virgins live/sluts die rule. Carpenter claims it was a complete coincidence that all the whores died in the movie (he claims Laurie was more observant because she was less focused on her vagina and more aware of her surroundings), but it also stands as an interesting piece of fundamentalist propaganda. Laurie literally defeats Michael with her virginity. Pew! Pew! Choke on my lack of sex, bitch!

Why It's Awesome: Michael Myers is part of the holy trinity of slasher antagonists (along with Freddy and Jason).  He's the most refined of the three, and his original tale (the 1978 flick, not Rob Zombie's abortion where he make Michael into a huge, hulking man-beast) is the best film of the three movie franchises.

Best Quote:

Dr. Loomis: I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.