halloween

Rating: 10/10 (8 June 2005)

Director:John Carpenter, Script: John Carpenter and Debra Hill, Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Kyes(Loomis), P.J. Soles.
There isn't much I can say about this film that hasn't already been said. It's influence on the horror and slasher genre had been overwhelming. This is a little off the subject but I will get to the point soon. I am a record collector and rock collectors often use the term "pre" or "post" Beetle to distinguish between groups that came before or after the Beetles. While, the same can be said about the film Psycho. I use the term pre-Psycho and post-Psycho to categorize horror movies because the horror genre changed so much after Psycho. OK to get to the point, Halloween is my favorite post-Psycho horror movie. It is one of the giants of the post-Psycho movies. The others are The Haunting(probably the best horror movie of all time), the ground breaking Night of the Living Dead by George Romero, Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Bob Clark's Black Christmas and Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween has a reputation for being worse than it actually is in terms of gore and graphic violence. Like all great horror movies, it is the atmosphere and sense of doom that makes it so dam scary! They went over budget on this film to pay Donald Pleasence and he almost didn't take the part of Dr. Sam Loomis (it was already turned down by Christopher Lee). Irronically, of all the movies Pleasence was involved with this was probably the one he was most known for and he ended up doing all the sequels up until his death. Come on people can you really imagine another Sam Loomis besides Pleasence-I think not!
John Carpenter is a director with a very big following. Some of his other great movies are Escape from New York, The Thing(The thing from another World)remake and a great one at that and The Fog. Before Halloween he did Assault on Precint 13, which was recently remade, and Dark Star.