The Novelty of a Throwback

When John Carpenter's "Halloween" hit theaters in 1978, it was a groundbreaking accomplishment for not only horror but film as a whole. Considering that it more or less created the slasher subgenre, its originality made it a hit amongst critics and audience members alike. Add in the fact that it has a 96 percent on the end-all-be-all of critical gatekeeping that is Rotten Tomatoes, and you have a reason to believe that Halloween was a great film.

In hindsight however, there is a different story. Don't get me wrong. I still love the movie and believe that in context of its time it shines even more (kind of defeating the purpose of this post) But, if released today, how would we view it? Is it groundbreaking due to the pure fact that it was the first of its kind? Is a movie where a bad guy hunts down immoral teenagers, whom mostly put on a mediocre acting performance, a good movie?

I guess, the point of this is to question whether original ideas that succeed are always as impressive as they seem. At one point in time, humans decided it would be a good idea to invent soap. While I have a tendency to draw very strange analogies, I still think...Well, that's not a groundbreaking idea. You need to clean yourself. Seems like common sense.

Not to say that you should take that comparison with anything more than a grain of microscopic salt, but Halloween came from a relatively empty history of horror on the big screen. Yes, you already had "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby," but there were still endless opportunities to be take advantage of in the horror genre. With those endless opportunities, came the invention of the slasher which is admittedly a cheap way to conjure tension. No one wants to be chased around with a knife. It's really that obvious. So, in seeing the most blatant form of tension and human instinct on the screen, I don't view at as any surprise that a slow burning psychologically layered Rosemary's Baby aged better.

With The Shining coming later along with the classic 80s horror figures as well, we see these same types of films being mirrored today. And today, we see that the slasher typically does not hold the same quality. Like I stated originally, I do not believe that Halloween is bad at all. In fact, it's pretty damn good, but even John Carpenter himself speaks on the the straightforward nature of the film. It was the first time we got to feel tension and horror in that way. Does that make it good, or does that make it unfamiliar, which would cater even better towards a genre where unfamiliarity and a sense of weirdness is encouraged.

So I would love to hear everyone's opinions on not only Halloween's value, but the idea of "firsts" earning some inherent credibility.