Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

xxix
Friday the 13 th was Halloween (1978; dir. Carpenter) 2 , the film only copied the
narrative structure of the film and adopted the aesthetic template of the giallo, unlike
its contemporaries’ aesthetic replication of Halloween, which was an unexpectedly
successful independent film. An exception from this period could be made for Brian
De Palma’s film Dressed to Kill (1980), which doesn’t appear to emulate
Halloween’s aesthetic. However, De Palma is known for his close stylistic
emulation of Alfred Hitchcock’s films 3 ; Dressed to Kill closely mirrors Psycho
(1960; dir. Hitchcock) in both narrative and aesthetics. Moreover, some giallo
filmmakers, particularly Argento, owe much of their stylistic tendencies to
Hitchcock as well. One of Mario Bava’s earliest films is entitled La Ragazza Che
Sapeva Troppo which can be directly translated to The Girl Who Knew Too Much
(1963; dir. Bava), a title that alludes to Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1934 and 1956). Argento more recently made a film for Italian television entitled
Ti Piace Hitchcock? (Do You Like Hitchcock?) (2005) in which a film student
becomes entangled in the activities of a serial killer, and during the course of the film
a large number of set pieces are transposed onto the narrative from a multiplicity of
Hitchcock films. Even John Carpenter acknowledges a debt to Hitchcock’s
filmmaking as an influence, in addition to highlighting his intention to favour
cinematic suggestion of violence rather than overt portrayal. 4
Immediate
predecessors to Halloween (1978; dir. Carpenter) like Black Christmas (1974; dir.
Clark), The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978; dir. Kershner) and The Texas Chain Saw
2 To be discussed in Chapter 3.
3 This also comes by De Palma’s own admission. In an interview with Richard Rubinstein, he states,
“I am also a great admirer of Hitchcock and Psycho, and there are great many structural elements here
that are in all Hitchcock’s movies,” (1973; 3) in reference to his film Sisters (1973).
4 Both of these claims can be found in Carpenter’s segments of the audio commentary in the opening
sequence on the Halloween 25 th anniversary edition DVD released by Anchor Bay in 2003.