The Original and Best.........alongside Halloween II

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2004)

You can tell a very good horror film by the amount of imitators it has had and Halloween has had its fair share.
But what makes Halloween a classic scare story is the unique and chilling bogeyman character that is Michael Myers, stalking young female babysitters in the town of Haddonfield.
He is quite simply a murderous killing machine dressed in mechanical overalls with that scary 'captain kirk' white mask exclaiming nothing but motiveless murder.... It is here that John Carpenter successfully confounds us with the truth that this monster is a twenty one year old kid who brutally murdered his older sister when he was six and has returned to Haddonfield fifteen years later to relive that past crime over and over by stalking Jamie Lee Curtis and her sex mad friends and offing just about anyone, (or any animal, it must be said) that gets in his way.
Excellent performances from Curtis, Donald Pleasence, and the supporting players, plus a special mention for the actor/director Nick Castle who brought to life probably the most frightening bogeyman of them all.
On its own, Halloween plays as a one off, but its first sequel, Halloween II, is excellent and essential viewing as a worthy concluding companion. Forget the other sequels.
Ten Out Of Ten.