Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 22

movies DETROIT FRCE PRESSFriday, DEC. 1. 1978 2B 'Halloween': A cult film is born By SUSAN STARK Free Press Film CrHIc A low-budget horror movie called "Halloween" I iM m. A played some delicious creeps in the past but who here wanders around the edges of the action looking forlorn. Jatrii Lee Curtis, who Is the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis and resembles Lauren Bacall, plays the terrorized baby-sitter.

She's pleasant company, but Sissy Spacck need not worry. If forced to predict the future for Carpenter based on what he shows in "Halloween," the smart money must go on a career In music for movies. In addition to directing and co-scrlpting "Halloween," he wrote Its score, and a grand score It is leaden piano chords, clanging alarm bells and all. murderer. The other occurs at the very end and shall remain a surprise.

And there Is one example of director John Carpenter's work that suggests he may Indeed have something more than B-movies In him. The picture's most Impressive moments, from the straight filmmaking point of view, occur just after the opening credits. In a single, wonderfully fluid, tracking shot, the camera establishes the quiet character of a suburban street, the sexual hanky-panky going on between a teenage couple in one of the staid-looking homes, the departure of the boyfriend, a hand in the kitchen drawer removing a butcher's knife, the view on the way upstairs from behind the eye-slits of a Halloween mask, the murder of a half-nude young girl seated at her dressing table, the descent downstairs and whammol The killer stands speechless on the lawn, holding the bloody knife, a small boy in a satin clown suit with a newly-returned parent on each side shrieking in an attempt to find out what the 'spectacle means. re-hashlng the hackneyed scare tactics of sub-standard horror movies blowing curtains, doors that open or shut as if they had a will of their own, things that go bump and click in the night, heavy breathing. After Darth Vader, heavy breathers tend to make us go limp with laughter Instead of going tense with fright but apparently Carpenter has not caught on to that yet.

He also reveals a primitive understanding of exactly how sophisticated audiences have become since the days of Howard Hawks' "The Thing." Twenty-seven years ago, when "The Thing" came out and Carpenter was Just out of diapers, audiences would accept the sight of a frightened girl wandering through a pitch-dark house, room after room, not ever thinking to turn on a light. Today, someone's apt to shout, "Turn on the light, dummy." Finally, Carpenter doesn't show much of a way with actors In "Halloween." The only name in the picture is Donald l'leasence, who has David Bollag as David Frankfurter, a Jewish activist 'Confrontation': A Jeiv in Nazi-era Sivitzerland 1 Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween" corpses In rapid succession and in unlikely places. There are two genuine surprises. One, near the beginning, reveals a six-year-old as the III I "fir if? I Y. I 'i crept into local theaters on little cat feet Nov.

15. The poor timing alone seemed to assure that it would soon creep out again. But no. "Halloween" Is still with us as we move Into December, not setting any box-office records by a long shot, but pulling In enough customers to justify another week's booking, and another, and another. The media people who make career of finding a new DePalma, a new Coppola, a new Scorcese, a new Spielberg have helped "Halloween." Ads for the movie rotate quotes from their raves.

And among young moviegoers, the cult phenomenon Is at work here. There are people who do not simply go to a movie. They latch on to it, and live with It three, four times a week for as long as the run lasts. Kubrick's "2001" became a cult film. Same for "Harold and Maude." "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" right now is reaping that kind of benefit and so, to a smaller extent, Is "Halloween." With all that, you get no rave for the picture from this quarter, not even a serious suggestion to the general au dience that "Halloween" is worth checking out.

REDUCED TO THE sim plest terms, and It is easy to get simplistic with this kind of material, the picture describes what happens when a six year-old who killed his older sister on Halloween escapes confinement 15 years later and returns, as a heavy breather in a denim jacket, to terrorize the old neighbor hood. There is one genuinely scary moment In the movie. It occurs near the end when a young girl discovers three RBalM Vl'ltf i VI Ji SATURDAY IS 'A compelling thriller." mwnoc lambs-to-slaughter theme that we have had. Perhaps more significantly, "Confrontation" wreaks havoc with the cozy notion of Swiss neutrality that we have long cherished. Here, the Swiss who are not damned by their outright empathy for the Nazis are damned by their apathy In the face of Nazi aggression right on their own soil.

"CONFRONTATION," by design, has the feel of a documentary most obviously in its black and white, also In Its spare, straightforward camera style and its unflinching commitment to the record, even when the record consists of a scries of speeches by long-winded lawyers. At one point, Frankfurter put down by his colleagues as "evil-minded." "The truth evil-minded," he replies. Someone ventures another opinion. "The truth is uncomfortable." Lyssy's film lends precision to both epithets. xj NO QUESTION, that is good filmmaking moody in the extreme and loaded with information.

For the rest, "Halloween" settles down to mm Ha AMl AX, art, i it 4. i i. r. a i Paramwml PforhirM Prtwnt A Lou Mkt PrnduLTiim By SUSAN STARK Free Press Film Crillc In 1936, a solemn, introspective young man named David Frankfurter murdered a bluff, portly middle-aged man named Wilhclm Gustloff in the Alpine resort town of Davos. Swiss director Rolf Lyssy returns to that 42-year-old crime in "Confrontation" and extracts from it a revealing, deeply affecting statement on the Nazi era in Europe.

Frankfurter, a Jew, was driven by burgeoning anti-Semitism In his native Yugoslavia to presumedly neutral Switzerland, where he planned to finish his medical studies. Gustloff, a German, came to Switzerland to see to Hitler's business In that country. LYSSY USES the first half of the film to establish the characters of both principals and to document the metastasis of Nazism In Europe between '32 and '36. From what he has seen In his own country, in Berlin while visiting an uncle, and in the daily papers, Frankfurter grows increasingly alarmed and, when put down as a wor-rywart by most of his acquaintances, Increasingly depressed. Gustloff, meanwhile, busies himself keeping1 upstart journalists in their place and administering oaths of allegiance to Swiss goons eager to spread the Fuhrer's word in their own provinces.

Newsreels and dispatches from Deutschland show that the ranks of swastika-sporting, goose-stepping marchers have grown to a thunderous multitude. Morose about the situa- tsV 4 3- HELD OVE COUPLES NIGHT DSL wvticmmiLOillPLlfi LHELDOVELQ I I HALLOWEEN Adams, neighborhood theaters Plmnrt Lnurl Jamlt LoeCurlH Annl Nancy Loomll Linda P.J.Sot A Comna Internallonal r-orodic bv Debrg Hill and directed bv John Carpnlr; cc-ulv prodncr, Irwin Yablam, wilh crnplav bv Carontr and Hill, music bv Carpenter; pholnu-ranhv bv Dean Cundev. In color. Haled K. Pirn Up in 1 CHECK DIRECTORY FOR SHOWTIMES TIMES till Ik I aTV BOTH MATE SO XXX WE PHINT THE Noon to 2 a.m "THE FREAK SISTERS PitS "FLIP CHICKS" HI Y-RATEUJi 1 HUH 1 11 1 17 FEMALE DANCERS CAN'T DETAILS! l.V iTTmrn 11 "BETWEEN YOU AND ME" PLUS "BRUTE THERAPY" "One of the year's top Anthony Hopkins will get an Academy Award for his magical performance." -vernon scott, upi "A chiller that ranks with the decade's best." GENE SISKEL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE "Some of the scariest moments since 'Psycho'.

Hopkins' performance is one of the year's best." -CHARLES CHAMPLIN. LOS ANGELES TIMES "SLAM-BANG ONE OF THE BEST OF IT'S KINO SINCE 'THE CONFRONTATION Arts Institute David Frankfurter Plr Bollag Wilhelm Gmlloff Gerl Haurkt Fran GuslloM Marianne Kehlau Rabbi Frankfurter Michael Rlllerman President of Ihe Court Max Knano Stan Alfornav Peler Artm tion, Isolated from his colleagues by the wall of their indifference, Frankfurter withdraws from them, from his studies, from all that might assuage his feelings of fear, rage and helplessness. He buys a gun, eventually kills Gustloff, and turns himself in to the police. THE SECOND half of the film recounts key moments in the four-day trial, a trial dominated by not one but three attorneys for the prosecution. When the defense attorney gets his turn, half those present and formerly attentive stalk out, journalists quit taking notes, the judge dozes off.

"Why did you do it?" the stunned widow asks Frankfurter at the police station. "Because I am a Jew," he answers. In one sense, "Confrontation" is the story of a unique type of his time, the Jewish activist. As such, it provides a most welcome antidote to the endless variations on the mmmm "THE CLUB" PLUS "HARD TIMES" Hi Mi ffnrrp J3m Richard Drey fuss- Noses Wine Private Detective. go figure BONNIE BEDELIA JOHN LITHGOW OFELIA MEDINA FRITZ WEAVER "THE BIG FIX' Sormpl.y by ROGER SIMON on Hit Novrl Dirrclrdby JEREMY PAUL KACAN 1 Produced by CARL BOKACK kV.

ind RICHARD DREYFUSS Muftic by B) LL CON I A UNIVERSAL PICTURE FTTTFrTTT Is is III DIRTY rTTTTTTV IB qxyy i 1 I "AN EXCITING PICTURE, CELEBRATING THE EXPLOITS OF A BRAVE BAND OF SOLDIERS. 'WILD GEESE' IS WORTH A WINSTEN, N.Y. POST THE CRITICS AGREE DREYFUSS HAS DONE IT AGAIN. "HICHAM DREYFUSS' MOSES WINE IS A CHARACTER OF RARE VINTAGE. HE IS THE BEST, MOST ENTERTAINING FIGURE ANYONE HAS MANAGED TO INVENT FOR AN AMERICAN MOVIE THIS YEAR.

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LEVINE AND RICHARD LEVINE DIRECTED BY RICHARD ATTENB0R0UGH WHIMitt IICmtlD inil latin (W hi i niwiti tti.ii tVAH (tOVO mur )in ANfMI Mr M( I 4CII ll IHI lMM I 1 I I NK prints BY DELUXE TECHNICOLOR jpf PRINTS BY DELUXE" TECHNICOLOR vVx.Vv'IlM xW. technicolor 4 mKU 1 xt 1 msmmm IsumcLouunt I Brf I PRODUCTION SHELLY MORRISON 1 "jf Jt li I 1 PI rf 1 A SEYMOUR BOROE tM, I mJ lmm' 'Ll and ASSOCIATES TH WEEK OF THRILLS CHILLS! lilliHilatiililiHJ NINTH BIG III amp. at rSwmwfiil fTttvr. 1 1 hiiiillliiluliiiliillilil'illfcj II THESE DR.VE-.NS: UlilMgJ 1 WLJ 3 I CHECK MOVIE GUIDE FOR ADDED FEATURES:.