A Bit Tame By Today's Standards, But That's Good

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2007)

I didn't watch these '70s and '80s horror movies like "Halloween" until the mid 1990s when I watched every VHS I could get hold of, so a film like this looked pretty tame to what I was already used to seeing by the '90s. However, what this film offers (see below) has some real value, and has a major lesson to learn to the people who make movies..
Comparing horror series that were both popular in the 1980s, I did not find it anywhere near as entertaining as the "Nightmare On Elm Street" horror series. Maybe I was too old by the time I finally saw this, but I appreciated the humor "Freddie Krueger" provided as the main character in those Elm Street stories. A little humor, sometimes, is nice relief in a suspenseful horror flick.
That's not to say Halloween wasn't worth a look, especially with young Jamie Lee Curtis making her film debut. And, like many films with sequels, I found this first Halloween as the best of all of them.
Also on the positive side, it's nice to see a modern-day (post '60s) horror flick without all the blood and gore. The writers here were smart enough to play on our fears, not having gross body parts flung in our face. In other words, suspense is the name of the game here, something filmmakers did effectively for years in the classic era of movies. It seems a lot of that has been replaced with shock today. Young filmmakers who are into horror could learn a lot studying this movie.