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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Halloween (1978)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Trick, Treat or Stab

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Halloween on DVD.

John Carpenter directed this movie on a low budget, patterned after Psycho and other great horror movies, and made a fortune. Halloween brilliantly uses its widescreen frame, a lot of hand-held camerawork, and scary foreground and background action. Donald Pleasance hams it up as a doctor who believes Michael Myers is pure evil. Jamie Lee Curtis is the prototype slasher-film heroine, the smart girl (and virgin) who lives to the end. P.J. Soles is the playful sex goddess who gets killed. Carpenter's simple synthesizer score is great and creepy. Siskel and Ebert were avid supporters of this movie, and lent it some credibility. As of 2005, there have been six sequels.

DVD Details: Even though this all-time great horror film has already been released in numerous special editions, Anchor Bay's Halloween: 25th Anniversary Edition two-disc set is now the ultimate. It comes with a new high-definition transfer, a new documentary, a commentary track (originally recorded for the Criterion laserdisc), the original screenplay, a 16-page booklet and tons more.

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Arthur Malet, David Kyle
Written by: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Directed by: John Carpenter
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 91 minutes
Date: October 31, 1995