Halloween is here and it’s a good day to give my five reasons why “Halloween” is the most inspiring Halloween movie of all time. “What?” you say, “How can a movie about Halloween be inspiring?” Here’s how:
5. “Halloween” was an original, made on a thin budget, which meant few special effects and lots of real people. It meant a real neighborhood, not expensive sets on a backlot. There was an authenticity to John Carpenter’s “Halloween” which moved past the surfacy holiday stereotypes but not as far as the over-the-top way Hollywood often handles this day.
4. The heroes of the film, Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis and Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie, are decent people and there is a goodness about them, but they’re not portrayed as religious or church-going. It reminds us that the Battle Between Good and Evil is fought among all people, not just those who talk about it at church.
3. The music! That little piano riff, the “da-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-da-da-da-da-duh-duh-duh…” that repeated throughout the movie not only never got old, but came to represent the overlay of the forces of evil upon some simple people trying to have a good time on Halloween.
2. The movie didn’t flinch. It didn’t hint. It reminded us that evil is in the world and people have been swallowed up by it. It didn’t answer the question of where the “evil” came from, but it acknowledged that it existed. Too many Sunday Schools water it down or just scare their people into clean living. Neither really helps people become aware of a spiritual war that’s been going on since before creation. In “Halloween,” without camera tricks or expensive gimmicks, we were genuinely scared in almost every scene, as Michael’s possible entry was imminent.
1. All of the “good guys” survive! The kids survive. Jamie Lee Curtis lives. The good doctor lives. Okay, okay, so Michael lives as well. But there was a gentle underlying statement that partying kids, rebellious teenagers and arrogant types who don’t listen will all end up in trouble. It may not have quoted chapter and verse, but it probably kept more of us out of trouble than the flannel-board lessons of those Sunday School years.
I believe that battle between good and evil is real, and that faith-based people need to be aware of it, and the spiritual forces behind it. “Halloween” was the first film that took me there, even though it (admittedly) didn’t have much of a biblical foundation to it.
