Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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escape the threat. Occasionally she will see herself just leaving the visual scope of
the stalker as she runs away. This sequence manages to use the viewer’s experience
of the eye/camera to benefit the protagonist and create a new dimension to the
suspense created with the device. A similar event occurs during the climax of the
film, when Laura confronts her would-be attacker. She watches as she stares back at
herself, trying to prepare for and second guess any coming attack. When the killer is
finally dispatched, the vision leaves, and the film ends. The film is framed by
Laura’s initial vision and her final vision, but it is never explained. The audience is
only given a reason for killing, but not for Laura’s assumption of another first-person
perspective, and by the end this question is almost entirely moot. The viewer has
come to accept this viewpoint as next to natural.
Considering the significance of Halloween to the rise of the slasher film – its
financial success providing a generic template for the cycle of slasher films
succeeding it – it is important to consider what it brings to our understanding and
analysis of the eye/camera. J.P. Telotte argues that the opening credit sequence, as
the camera track into the eye opening of a jack o lantern, initiates the theme of vision
and seeing (1987; 116). While the visual accompanying the credits establishes
theme, the opening shot translates this theme into narrative. The opening shot,
which has been written about at great length by Clover, Telotte, and Steve Neale to
name a few, is an extended eye/camera shot beginning with an establishing view of
the Myers house. The sequence is shot with a hand-held camera, similar to Black
Christmas, obviously codifying the perspective as first person. Unlike Black
Christmas, the edges are not blurred, and the sequence is not shot with a wide angle
lens. In fact, Halloween is shot with an anamorphic lens creating a widened
panoramic field of vision, separating its eye/camera shots from the extremely limited