Not-Altogether-Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, one and all! I must confess this is a holiday that used to mean something to me, but now passes almost without notice. But there is one tradition that I haven't let slip. Every year at this time, I like to watch the original film Halloween, by John Carpenter.

This year, I "celebrated" a day early, by going to the movie theater. Halloween was showing on the big screen. Encouraged by my recent experience seeing Back to the Future in the theater, I felt like doing the same for Halloween. The main difference in this case was that I had never before seen Halloween on film.

Unfortunately, I still haven't. Halloween was presented on the big screen, but via digital projector. And not a good one, at that. We're not talking about the incredible crystal clarity of digital projectors that have been slowly appearing in theaters for events like major animated movies, or the new 3-D incarnation of The Nightmare Before Christmas. This was a pixelated, dimly-lit mess. I know someone with a home theater who owns a sharper projector than this.

And while the small crowd did hold some affection for the film, like the crowd of weeks ago had for Back to the Future, Halloween doesn't hold up nearly as well. Somehow, the imperfections of the movie -- which I know damn well are there, having watched it at home every year for some time now -- seemed less forgiveable on the big screen, with a sometimes-laughing audience:

Haddonfield has strangely shifting geography, depending on the time of day one is trying to get around. Lynda's boyfriend doesn't quite seem to know what he's doing in the bedroom. Coat hangers are strangely effective weapons.

And these are just the things you can hear people mumbling about.

If you can somehow overlook all that and get caught up in the emotion of the movie, Halloween is still a great, visceral ride. But it seems to be getting harder for me, and this year was the hardest of all. Before the film, I'd been having a conversation with a friend about how I wasn't sure what to think of Rob Zombie's upcoming remake of the film -- I've never had the experience of being an existing fan of an original movie receiving the remake treatment. Yet after the movie, I found myself thinking, "well, there actually is a lot they could improve here, provided they don't mess with certain key things."

Not the same sort of catharsis as I had two weeks ago, but a cartharsis nonetheless, I suppose.