Not the first, not the best, but very good and very important to the horror genre.

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2006)

I guess I take pride in being a horror movie geek. I am obsessed with the genre and find something good in almost all horror. I prefer slashers and zombie films above all and admire the writing style of Dardano Sacchetti, Stephen King,and Dario Argento.
As far as directors go so many stand out as being faves. Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Leoni, Lamberto Bava, Clive Barker and Sam Raimi are just a few of the ones I admire most.
John Carpenter has always stood out to me and remained very high on my list as well. Many of his movies are favorites, but I think the majority of the people will agree that Halloween is definitely his masterpiece.
I love slashers and as a kid was forbidden to watch horror and when I first got my taste of slashers in the form of Jason Vorhees I became obsessed with him and still to this day I think he is the greatest.
As I got older and started trying to get a hold of every horror I could it didn't take me long to stumble across Michael Myers. Part 4 and 5 were the first ones I watched and I absolutely loved them, bloody and lots of killings and just your average slasher - which to me is a recipe that will never taste bad.
I finally got to see part 1 and I liked it a whole lot less than 4 and 5 , but I was young and I wanted a killer and I wanted blood and part 1 was not anything like that. I have never been scared by slasher movies, its the psychological aspect that would get me, but Halloween even left much to be desired there for me.
As I got older I gained a lot of respect for the movie and see it in a different light now that I am 30 years old and tonight is Halloween 2006 and I just finished watching it for Im guessing about the 15th time and I wanted to express my opinion about it.
I have to say several things about it and the bottom line of it all will result in me basically saying I do in fact love the movie. I understand how so many people praise it for being the first of many, but I disagree by saying it wasn't the first slasher. It wasn't the first movie about a man in a mask. It wasn't the first movie about a babysitter being stalked. It wasn't the first movie that had teenage sluts getting killed. It wasn't the first movie involving a kid being a killer. It wasn't the first movie that had a mental patient escape and seek revenge. It wasn't the first movie about killings on Halloween, it wasn't even the first horror movie called Halloween.
It Was the first however to combine all of those things and make the world take notice in an overwhelming way. The one thing all other movies lacked was personality. Halloween has John Carpenter and no one else had that. The direction was amazing, the editing was great the lighting was PERFECT and the technical things that make a movie work all seemed to be as real and in your face as the characters themselves.
The great Donald Pleasence in my opinion was what sold the movie, he was the only one famous or with any credit really when the movie was being promoted. Moustapha Akkad was not known yet, John Carpenter had done a few things but nothing that had gained him much attention at all and all the other actors were either newbies or nobodies. Pleasence was a legend by the time Halloween was offered to him and I am glad he kept doing the sequels until he died.
I do not like Jamie Lee Curtis and I think the role could've been so much better with someone else playing it, she still to this day acts as if she is responsible for the fame of the series but she is way off.
Michael Myers - wow, what can one say about him? The mask, the stare, the knife, the determination, the shape, the shadow - the Boogey Man! He will be part of our movie legends guild forever. I really think 100 years from now that he will still be remembered and that this series will still be on cable or computer chips in out brain or whatever technology has in store for us in the future, that is if the series isn't still being continued in Halloween part 74.
This movie made a lot of people want to see these types of movies, many movies were made to copy it and it spawned several sequels. The first of the movie with its image of a child killer all the way to the mysterious rantings of Dr. Loomis about a kid who is pure evil with the blackest of eyes, all the way to the last shot of a man shot 6 times only to disappear and let us know the boogeyman is still there - the fear is not over - you can't stop being scared or locking your doors at night, cause evil has came to your little town.
Watch this movie and keep horror alive - real horror!