Halloween (DVD)

Advantages: Good scary moments, good storyline, great cast
Disadvantages: You have to wait until the sequel for more of the storyline.

On Halloween night in 1963, 6 year old Michael Myers murdered his sister Judith. After 15 years in an institution, Michael escapes and heads back to his home town of Haddonfield. He stalks Laurie Stode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and goes on a murdering rampage of her friends and neighbours. Only Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasence) knows the full extent of Michael's twisted mind, but will he convince the town's people in time. For me, this is the original and best ... Read review

Advantages: Terrifying, intelligent, masterful.
Disadvantages: None. Unless we consider the sequels. Or the remake. Which we won't.

...the damn thing is. Certain scenes in Halloween will, I dare say, hang around in the mind for as long as I'm fit to remember anything. The ghostly face of Myers rising out the black of a darkened back-seat is one such moment. Much of this has to do with John Carpenter's oft-praised use of widescreen photography. No inch of screen-space is wasted. Myers haunts the furthest edges of the frame, appearing by this or that hedgerow or gatepost, stalking the periphery of the image. Needless to say - it's a Widescreen purchase. Avoid any panned and scanned variants like the plague. Halloween has been issued on DVD more times than just about any other film I can think of, and the most recent 25th anniversary 2-disc set (or 3, I believe, if you pick it up from HMV), is the best one to go for, complete as it is with an array of deleted scenes... Read review

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Advantages: terrifying, amazing effects
Disadvantages: unneccesary nudity

...For information, my DVD version of this film is the directors cut edition, Halloween Uncut. Effectively the same movie, but the cover and features may differ a tad. So Rob Zombie Directs this movie, which is a re-imagining of the original story rather than another tired sequel. I liked this idea and was curious from the start. So the story goes that Michael Myers killed his family when he was a youngster, all but his baby sister. He then escapes from the assylum where he is kept, and tracks down his sister, who is now in high school. I was pretty prepared for lots of blood and guts, as in the other Haloween movies, but was hoping that, under Robs Direction, the movies could become as spine tingling as they were originally, as they had become so commercialised, slasher flicks and I was becoming more and more disappointed... Read review

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Advantages: A timeless classic of a Teen Slasher film
Disadvantages: None that I can think of

...With today being Halloween I thought that I'd write a nice topical review of one of my favourite horror films of all time, this of course being John Carpenter's 'Halloween', a film that I'm sure most of you have seen by now given that it tends to be shown on one channel or another pretty much every year. Tonight the film can be found on BBC1 at a quarter to midnight, so for those of you that have not yet seen the film then there is no excuse not to now. While researching on the internet to see if the version that I have of the DVD is still available, I found that it was actually deleted a couple of months back. I wasn't particularly shocked to find this seen as the version I have was an apparent 'Limited Edition', however after searching around I found that the American version can be bought online from one website for £11.95 which I... Read review

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