Scream and Halloween Essay

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Analyse the opening sequences of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978) and Wes Craven’s “Scream” (1997) accounting for their similarities and differences.

Both “Halloween” and “Scream” are examples of the slasher genre. “Halloween” was revolutionary for a few reasons. One was because it started the slasher genre. The typical conventions of these films are a killer, an innocent victim, probably blonde, blood, music, and a house in the middle of no where.

     The film “Halloween” was not promoted at all, because it was a film that people thought would not succeed and did not have a big budget. Anchor Bay, the film company who created “Halloween” was never heard of before. The same for the director John Carpenter, he was an unknown. “Halloween” used many unknown actors and lot of extras that acted for free, because of their small budget. This film made a lot of people famous. With a small budget of $325,000 to make, this is nothing compared to “Scream.”  "Halloween" was not promoted at all, yet still is it one of the greatest horror movies of our day. Word of mouth is how, one person would go and see the film then they’d go tell someone else and so on. As for "Scream" it was a blockbuster film that was promoted heavily through adverts, trailers and commercials. When people went to watch "Scream" they were disappointed, because it had been made out to be the greatest film of all time, the way they had promoted it made everyone think it was.

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     The victim in both films are vulnerable and naive, the killer takes advantage of this. Drew Barrymore who plays the victim in “Scream”, and Jamie Lee Curtis who played the victim in “Halloween” are both portrayed as naïve young girls trying to act older, this is what gets them into danger.

      The narrative for both "Scream" and "Halloween” follows Propp, as the victim is like the princess and is a damsel in distress and the villain is the killer. Both victims play with danger a lot. In "Scream," the girl flirts with the killer ...

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