Drew Turney
What must it have been like to be one of the first to see this film in the cinema, before the term ‘slasher’ was even coined, let alone overused to the point of exhaustion?
Like most film fans, I first saw it on video during the 80s, and by then this sort of premise was a cliché. In hindsight a melding of ”Psycho” and ”The Terminator”, the motif of the relentless, silent, impossible-to-kill murderer is a good one, but it was a one-joke act and can’t really be replicated, as increasingly lame ”Friday the 13th” sequels and a legion of parodies have shown.
If you need the plot explained to you, you probably haven’t seen ”Star Wars” either. A young psychopath with a knife fetish escapes from the asylum after wielding his blade and wreaking havoc years before, and he’s far from cured – as kindly psychiatrist Pleasance and babysitter Curtis are about to find out.
For all the schlock that surrounds the genre nowadays, it’s easy to forget how effective it is; whether it’s Carpenter’s sparse direction or his chilling five-note riff (a nod to ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind”?).
Disc : For a film that’s forty years old, “Halloween” looks and sounds terrific. Sure, the Dolby Vision/HDR10 4K transfer and 2.39:1 aspect ratio transfer does encompass a bit of grain here and there, but it’s almost expected, and considering the age of the print one might’ve expected far, far less. The audio mix also shows its age at some points during the film but it’s blissfully perfect for the most part.
The special features on the disc you’ve seen and heard before – Audio Commentary with Writer/Director John Carpenter and Actor Jamie Lee Curtis, “The Night She Came Home” Featurette, “On Location: 25 Years Later” Featurette, TV Version Footage, Trailer, TV Spots, Radio Spots – but if by chance you don’t own the previously-released Blu-ray, which all these bonus bits were on, you’ll consider this stuff worthwhile to sift through.
