"Death has come to your little town, Sherriff.
You can either ignore it or you can help me stop it" - Dr. Loomis

Halloween - 25th Anniversary Edition


Halloween - 25th Anniversary EditionYear of Release - 1978
DVD Release - Anchor Bay Entertainment - 2003
Region 1 - NTSC - Rated R
Running Time - 90:50

Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J. Soles and Nancy Loomis
Music: John Carpenter

John Carpenter and Debra Hill met during the filming of Assault on Precinct 13 and decided to make a movie together. They decided to make a movie tentatively called The Babysitter Murders and named the villain after one of the British distributors of Assault.

His name was Michael Myers and the movie was re-titled, Halloween.

Up until the (in my opinion) overrated Blair Witch Project, Halloween was the single most successful
On Halloween night 1963, in Haddonfield, Illinios, 6-year-old Michael Myers took a knife and stabbed his 17-year-old sister, Judith, to death.
15 years later, as Dr. Loomis (Pleasence) arrives to the Smith's Grove Sanitarium to deliver Michael to a court hearing to be tried for the murder as an adult, Michael escapes and steals Loomis' car.
Loomis believes that he knows where Michael is headed. He believes that Michael is coming home!

Laurie Strode (Curtis) is a clean-cut 17-year-old who is going to babysit Tommy Doyle on Halloween night. Her friend Annie (Loomis) is babysitting Lindsey, while her other friend Lynda (Soles) is going on a screwing safari with her boyfriend.
That afternoon, Laurie swears that someone is stalking her, or at the very least, playing a Halloween prank, because she keeps spotting a strange man in a mask looking at her. Naturally, she thinks nothing of it.

Michael Myers is stalking them. He's going on one last trick-or-treat. It's Halloween night, everyone deserves at least one good scare...

VIDEO

Filmed in Panavision, Halloween - 25th Anniversary Edition is presented in 2.35:1 aspect and is 16:9 enhanced. The transfer has been remastered and restored with DiViMax - "a High Definition film transfer process that provides state-of-the-art picture quality". But it's really just a fancy name for what is (or what should be) done with most modern transfers. Halloween has never looked better on a near flawless transfer. I say nearly flawless because apparently there are issues with the transfer of which I did not pick up when I first watched it. According to some websites, the 25th Anniversary transfer has "washed out" colours (but on the other hand is extremely sharp with not an artefact to be seen).
Go here for a good review and comparisons:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/halloween-25/
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/halloween-25/compare.shtml
Personally, I'm extremely pleased with the transfer.

AUDIO

There are 4 audio tracks for Halloween - 25th Anniversary Edition. Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround 2.0, the original Mono soundtrack, and the Audio Commentary in Dolby Surround 2.0.

The music, composed by John Carpenter, is so simple it's brilliant. The main theme is genuinely creepy and the themes used in the film, heighten the suspense and tension throughout.

EXTRAS

Disk 1

Audio Commentary - John Carpenter, Debra Hill & Jamie Lee Curtis

I think this Commentary is the same that was featured on Criterion's Halloween Laserdisc. It's one of those patch-up Commentaries where the participants are not in the same room together watching the film. It's not bad, but lacks the warmth and friendliness of the other "John Carpenter & Others" Commentaries.

Disk 2

Documentary - Halloween: A Cut Above The Rest - 87:02

A pretty good documentary. Features a lot of previously used and released interview material with some new material, making it worth watching. Interesting enough for Carpenter's thoughts on sequels and imitators (something that he also brought up during the Commentary).

Featurette - On Location: 25 Years Later - 10:35

A small, only slightly informative, featurette which looks at how some of the houses and streets in which Halloween was filmed appear today.

Trailer - 02:42

The usual trailer of average audio and video quality.

2x TV Spots - 00:31 each

The same TV Spots that were featured on the other Halloween release that are of poor audio and video quality.

2x Radio Spots - 00:30 each

Radio advertising for Halloween that was on the previous Halloween release.

Poster & Still Gallery

Has some interesting foreign Poster Art, but is "Still" a Gallery - of which I find pretty boring.

Talent Bios

Pretty good bios and brief filmographies of John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence.

DVD-ROM Features

Has the screenplay of Halloween in PDF format and some Screensavers.

OVERALL

What can I say? Halloween is quite easily my favourite Horror film, and quite possibly my favourite film of all time.
There is something about the seeming simplicity of the film, both in the photography and the direction, that makes it superior to every other attempt to replicate it. The themes of evil as a pure force, loss of innocence and driving obsession are all over the film. Executed with absolute class and sheer energy. I put this down to the genius of John Carpenter and Dean Cundey.

Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first major film role, is very good. Her character of Laurie Strode, the virginal, dilligent student and good girl, contrasts strongly against the other female characters. Laurie is repressed where her friends are pretty much up for anything. Why does she survive? Why does she beat the odds and defeat The Shape? Post-Modern interpretations would tell you that it is a metaphor for society's ostracision of "bad" behaviour in teens. Teens that are sexually active, that smoke, that experiment with drugs, are the targets for society's very own "serial killer". John Carpenter and Debra Hill say that Laurie survives simply because she was to only one that wasn't too busy having sex to notice that something out of the ordinary was going on! Either way you want to interpret it, there is no denying Curtis' outstanding performance.

In a lot of ways, it's Donald Pleasence's bordeline obsessed Dr. Loomis that steals the show. Pleasence was an elder statesman of British Cinema whose talent was rivalled by a small few. Interestingly, Carpenter first approached Peter Cushing (then Christopher Lee) for the role of Loomis. Pleasence is quite simply brilliant. Enough said.

Of course, Nick Castle's preformance of "The Shape", Michael Myers, was nothing short of spooky. The Shape represents pure, anadulterated evil. No gimmicks. Just pure evil. And, again, there is something about the seeming simplicity of Castle's performance that perfectly portrays that pure evil. Although the character of Michael Myers has never attained the main-stream popularity as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, I feel that he is a scarier character because of his untainted evil.

This 2-Disk 25th Anniversary Edition DVD is worth getting if you are a serious fan of the film and also if you wanted to have an upgrade to the previous transfer of the film. However if you feel that having yet another copy of Halloween is excessive or if you are just a casual fan, then it probably isn't worth your while. But if you plan on buying Halloween for the first time, then this is the release that I would recommend.

Compared to the 25th Anniversary Edition -

The Halloween - 2-Disk Limited Edition (Anchor Bay - OOP - R1) DVD misses out on:

The Halloween (Anchor Bay - R1) DVD & the Halloween - Extended Edition (Anchor Bay - R1) combined are identical to the 2-Disk Limited Edition

The Halloween (Force Video - R4) DVD misses out on:

Compared to the other releases of Halloween -

The Halloween - 25th Anniversary Edition (Anchor Bay - R1) DVD misses out on:

I'd favour the 25th Anniversary Edition as the best overall version - even with the (minor) issues with the transfer. If you're a fan, you'd get the TV Version as well. The R4 Force release is OK if you're on a budget, but you do miss out on a 5.1 audio mix.

Halloween is a classic by any sense of the word and if you haven't seen it, then what are you waiting for?

The Film:
The Disk: 1/2

independent/low budget film ever.

SYNOPSIS

"Dark Lord" Paul Lenkic
"Accept the Lord of Darkness as your saviour!" - The Undertaker
© 2003

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