Textual Analysis Of the opening Halloween

The film Halloween (1978) is set in a middle class American town called Haddonfield,Illinois, USA. This made the film more realistic to those who lived in a middleclass town.

At the beginning of 'Halloween' there is an empty black screen and iconichorror theme tune playing over the top, this builds up a horror atmosphere, thestereotypical horror theme tune runs throughout the whole of the openingcredits. The first title is of the company who made the film this is placed onto a black background making it stand out more and showing its importance. Theblack background shows darkness and murder, the writing placed on top of thedark background are red, yellow and oranges there’s colours are stereotypicallinked in with Halloween and the colours could be related to fire and danger.The words go from red to yellow back to red; this should indicate that there ismore bad than good in the horror film. A Traditional looking pumpkin is placed at the left side of the screen, thisis another iconic feature linked into Halloween and it lets the audience knowthat something bad might happen in the film, the fire inside the pumpkinflickers this shows that something isn’t right. The camera zooms into thepumpkin showing its getting larger; this could indicate that’s its going totake over. The pumpkin disappears and the text is smaller and turns to whitestill on a black background, the is showing the importance of the text as it isdifferent, the text says where the film is set and what date it is, at the endof the credits ' Halloween Night, 1963' is flipped backwards this shows thatsomething isn’t right. At this point the horror music changes to a sound bridgeof children singing a Halloween nursery rhyme, at the end the all shout 'trickor treat' this is telling the audience that life is still the same, nothing badhas already happened to the town. There is no sound playing after the openingcredits, it goes straight into a long shot showing the area around the houseand puts the audience on edge as they don’t know what part of the scenery tolook at, this is used in horror movies as it’s a great way to capture the audience’sattention. Next it goes into a hand held shot making the film more realisticand jumpy, it is forward tracking towards the big building, which appears to bea typical middle class American building with which is assumed to be where themurder is going to take place. The lighting is dark which builds up suspense asit makes it difficult for the audience to see, this is typically used in mosthorror movies as they want their audiences imaginations to be wondering whatwill happen next.

At this point we realise that were looking through the subjective point ofview, this puts the audience on the edge as the murderer is looking at thehouse and walking towards it. Instead of trying to get into the house there isa forward tracking going from the side of the house to the window where theperson looking in the window can see a girl and a boy kissing on the sofa, thisbuilds tension as the horror movies audience who live in these type of houseswill be thinking it can happen to them. This is commonly used in horror moviesas the people in the eye of the killer, don’t know that they are being watchedoutside the window this puts the audience on edge and builds up tension. Insidethe house is a typical 70's American house. The boy inside the house picks up aclown mask and puts it on jokingly, the clown mask is a stereotypical Halloweencostume. The light is coming from the flickering tv in the corner or the room, this links in with the fire flickering inside the pumpkin on the opening credits. The audience are still watching from the eye of the 'criminal' and it’sstill a hand held camera angle. We know that something bad is going to happenas soon as the killer enters the kitchen and grabs a knife from the kitchendraw. As the character walks up the stairs, this is the part that builds tensionand puts the audience on the edge of their seats. The person were lookingthrough the eyes of has grabbed the clown mask which was used down stairs bythe teenage boy messing around. The audience is now looking through the mask, thesecuts out a lot of the scenery and we can only see what the killers see. Theyenter the girl’s bedroom she is sitting naked at her dressing table brushingher hair. The sound gets higher pitched and there is dialoge coming from the girl sitting at the dressing table she shouts 'mike mike mike' this completelyconfuses the viewers as the girl knows who it is that we have been following,he then stabs her repeatedly. Mikes breathing gets heavier and heavier; maybehe is shocked at what he has done. It’s not till the end of the opening scene weno longer are looking through the eye of the murderer, the camera shot nowturns to a crane shot zooming out from the building, we realise the killer is achild. The crane shot shows the victim’s brother who murdered her standing withthe weapon (knife), and his mother and father standing next to him looking athim in shock. There is high frequency incidental music and the lighting gets brighter as the camera zooms out, this makesthe audience more relieved that they now know who the killer is, but still on edge into what will happen next.