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Halloween 1978 (Context of the time (Marketed at younger audience,…
Halloween 1978
Context of the time
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The use of VCRs and videos was still in its infancy in this decade and cinema going was one of the mainstays of a night out for young people
Life had become much more peaceful for those growing up as a teenager in the late 1970's, for the western world at least
Conflicts were far removed from the United States and Europe, the Second civil war was a distant memory and later conflicts like the Vietnam war were receding from public conscience
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Films starring teenagers, for teenagers and in a contemporary setting proved to be the magic formula to titillate and thrill young people
The United States, in particular was becoming synonymous with the term serial killer
Psychopaths like Ted Bundy- killed numoerous women between 1974 and 1978- template for characters like Micheal Myers
Halloween provided teenagers with a safe environment in which to come to terms with events that were happening around them, connecting with both their fascination for and repulsion of horror
Halloween not first slasher film- antecedents are Psycho, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Black Christmas, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- latter's emphasis on horror erupting from within the family had been explored on Hitchcocks earlier Shadow of a Doubt and Night of the Hunter- became the dominant theme of horror films from the 1970's onward
Many earlier films such as Last house on the left, The Omen and others all posit the family as a repository of repression and violence, rejecting earlier Hollywood representations of the sanctity of the family unit
Halloween begins with the devastating relation of a young boy killing his sister, a murder that confronts the debate about the conflicting forces that lie within the family
Cinema Techniques
First scene shot from killers point of view- establishes link between killer and audience straight away- forced into unusual and disturbing position of identifying with him- intensity of experience heightened by the unbroken steady cam that follows
Begins facing a traditional American house on Halloween night with the pumpkins and other images being the stuff from children's scary stories and nightmares
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Audience experiences killing as we see the killer murder the teenage girl- looks at his hand moving back and forth showing he is slightly removed
Soundtrack- we hear his heavy breathing-draws us even deeper into world- horror cliche which suggests to the audience that he is a stereotypical madman- makes denouement that the killer is a young boy all the more shocking
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