My Favorite Movie

The first question usually asked to fans is, What is your favorite movie?

I've given many answers over the years. Oingo Boingo's nuthouse freakshow Forbidden Zone. The Shawshank Redemption. Hairspray (John Waters version, not the drippy musical). Ed Wood. The Evil Dead. Annie Hall.

Good choices all, but when it comes right down to it, there can only be one true answer. John Carpenter's Halloween.

They say there are no perfect movies. I beg to differ. I think the Coens have pulled it off a few times. King Kong isn't perfect? How about The Haunting? I wouldn't change a second of Susperia.

Halloween hits every note, and it does so to perfection. Maybe Donald Pleasance lays the eeevil shtick a little thick, but even that feels divine.

Forty-six years ago. I can barely remember it. I know I was hot to see Halloween. I was a horror fan already. There was a huge buzz about this one.

Buzz isn't strong enough of a word. The very air seemed to crackle with electricity. Everyone I knew was talking about Halloween and everyone wanted to see it.

I was seventeen. The perfect age and the perfect time to see a horror masterpiece. I remember being enthralled by the opening music, the image of the jack-o-lantern, the ambiance of the story.

I didn't know who John Carpenter was. The name, Dean Cundey, meant absolutely nothing to me. Jamie Lee Curtis? No idea who she was or her famous lineage. Donald Pleasance I barely knew from various late shows I had seen. They all became names of great import in my life.

I can hardly recall watching Halloween the first time, but I distinctly remember leaving the theater. There was a line of kids and young adults waiting to get into the next show. "How was it?" several people excitedly asked. "GREAT! A CLASSIC!", I raved.

I knew I had witnessed horror history. I knew, in the way we know we love someone, or when we discover divinity, that Halloween was the best thing of its kind I would ever see.

Five years later A Nightmare on Elm Street was released. Advance praise was incredibly strong. "Better than Halloween!". I doubted that. I knew I would love A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I did and always will love it. It's no Halloween in my eyes. Then again, nothing is.

I was a whitebread suburban brat and the streets of Haddenfield were familiar to me. It wasn't so different than the manicured lawns of Newport News, Virginia, where I grew up. The kids in Halloween rang 100% true in my eyes. And yes, I felt that evil was a corporate presence waiting just out of eyeshot.

I wouldn't have gotten along with the teens in Halloween. I was a gawky, awkward science fiction geek. I'm talking the kind who read Frederik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, Philip Jose Farmer, and of course Heinlein, Clark, and Asimov. Had I been a typical fan of Trek, Wars, or Dr. Whom, I may have found like-minded friends. As it was I never met another real SF reader. My life may have turned out much differently if I had.

I still like the kids in Halloween. The bad girls were a little to fast for me, but Laurie Strode was perfect. Plain-pretty, if not beautiful. Smart, quiet, sensible, but not above indulging in the occasional joint.

Hell rained down upon the teenagers of Haddenfield, and Hell was never far from my life either. I left home at age sixteen, fleeing an abusive father. Terror was behind me and it was in front of me. I was in no way prepared to face adulthood.

I'm far from alone in that regard. Too many kids are raised in hostile situations. They get it at home, they get it in the neighborhood, and they get it in school. Bullies, sadistic authority figures, horror in the news. Is it any wonder so many kids love slasher movies? It's a way to face the dangers head on, safely, and process the feelings behind the fear. Plus they are a whole lot of fun. Cooler than sports, more exciting than arts and crafts, and a whole lot more rewarding than anything in classes.

Halloween shaped my life in innumerable ways. I've loved many, many horror movies before and since, but John Carpenter's masterpiece is the Gold Standard and all others fall short.

Subtlety. Mystery. Halloween is a very frightening movie, but so much is left to the imagination. That's why most of the sequels don't work. Michael is Laurie's brother? Get the fuck out of here. Too much explanation, too many convoluted storylines, only weaken the intrigue of Halloween.

I've lived forty-five Halloweens since I first watched the movie. I have seen it countless times. From the walk-in theater where I first beheld its marvels, to the drive-ins, TV airings, cable, VHS, DVD, 4K, and now a Blu-ray Clara and I watched just last night. It's been five years since the last time I've seen Halloween. The movie still holds me in its spell, and it's still scary.

My heart surges at the kids partying. Laurie's would-be romantic interest, Ben Tramer, is out drinking with a friend. Oh, to be a teenager with a couple of six packs of illicit beer. Cruising along and burning a number and almost getting caught. I even swoon over a sleepover and a scary black and white thriller on television.

I can only have one favorite movie. Nothing else comes close. Halloween changed the landscape of horror and it changed my life. Both of them for the better. Halloween helped me grow up and realize death was coming for us all. It also keeps the youth alive inside my heart.

The old theaters where I saw Halloween are gone. Movies now look like motion capture animation. Kids seem like an alien species. Just as we did to our stuffy, awful parents and teachers. The friends I originally watched it with are dead. Horror is no longer taboo. Halloween has been sequelized and requelized to death. The original movie still stands tall, the greatest horror movie ever made. I cannot imagine a world without it.

Written by Mark Sieber