Horror Film Excellence

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 2008)

Made on a shoestring budget John Carpenter's definitive horror movie came out of nowhere in 1978 to become the highest grossing independent film ever made (a record only recently bettered by a film of similar ilk - The Blair Witch Project).
Michael Myers, a boy incarcerated for 20 years for the murder of his sister, escapes from the loony bin he's being held in and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield to wreck revenge on Allhallows Eve (mostly on nubile teenage babysitters.) It's a fairly simple premise but it's really in the application that this film excels. The opening tracking shot, the legendary minimalist score, top actor Donald Pleasance as a desperate psychiatrist, a young Jamie Lee Curtis (her mum was the lead in the classic "Psycho" trivia fans) making her debut, the "Shape" appearing slowly out of the darkness (or just standing between the Washing lines looking terrifying in a $2 "Captain Kirk" mask), a mounting tension threatening to explode, an inventiveness that put the horror genre firmly on the map. All factors that make this not just a simple Horror film, but simply put - one of the finest Horror Films of all time.