Donald Pleasence

Jamie Lee Curtis

Halloween
Limited EditionLimited Edition
Serial # 9352 of 30,000
Deluxe Hologram Cover

Includes Both Theatrical & Extended TV Versions

~ Dolby Digital 5.1 Sound ~

~ THX Approved Widescreen ~

~ Brand New, Factory Sealed DVD ~
~ Out of Print! ~


This deluxe 2-DVD limited edition is long out-of-print and is limited to only 30,000 numbered copies (this one is # 9352). The set contains both the original theatrical version and the extended "TV" version of the film (with 12 minutes of additional scenes!) and also includes the following special features: "Halloween Unmasked 2000" featurette with interviews; cast/crew biographies; TV and radio spots; theatrical trailers; poster gallery; behind-the-scenes gallery.

 Halloween (1978):

On Halloween 1963, the small town of Haddonfield is shocked when six-year-old Michael Myers returns from trick-or-treating and for some unknown reason stabs his older sister to death with a big kitchen knife and is found by his parents staring into space with the bloody knife in his hand. Sent to a mental institution, Michael spends the next 15 years just sitting, still staring into space despite the best efforts of his Doctor, Dr. Samuel Loomis. Now, on October 30th 1978, something triggers Michael off and during a storm manages to steal a car from Dr. Loomis and Nurse Marion (who was coming to take Michael to a court to keep him locked up) and goes back to Haddonfield where he steals a white mask. There, Laurie Stode, student and daughter of an Estate Agent, finds that for some unknown reason Michael is stalking her during the day (at school, at her home etc - but she doesn't know who he is.) As Dr. Loomis arrives and with the Sheriff frantically looks for Michael he doesn't know that Laurie is baby-sitting Lindsey and Tommy and that Laurie's friends Annie, Lynda and Bob are disappearing one by one...

http://aycu16.webshots.com/image/18015/2001433928371271061_rs.jpg The personification of fear:

John Carpenter took a low budget film and he scared a generation of movie goers. He showed that you don't need budgets in the 8 or 9 figures to evoke fear on an audience. Because sometimes the best element of fear is not what actually happens, but what is about to happen. What was that shadow? What was that noise upstairs? He knows that these are the ways to scare someone and he uses every element of textbook horror that I think you can use. I even think he made up some of his own ideas and these should be ideas that people use today. But they don't. No one uses lighting and detail to provoke scares, they use special effects and rivers of blood. And it is just not the same. You can't be scared by a giant special effect that makes loud noises and jumps out of a wall. It's the moments when the killer is lurking, somewhere, you just don't know where, that scare you. And Halloween is the best at doing that.

In 1963 a young Micael Myers kills his sister with a large butchers knife and then spends the next 15 years of his life, silently locked up in an institute. As Loomis ( his doctor) says to Sheriff Brackett, " I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying make sure that he never gets out, because what I saw behind those eyes was pure e-vil. " That sets up the manic and relentless idea of a killer that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. And all he wants here is to kill Laurie. No one know why he wants to kill her yet, but he does.( Halloween continues the story quite well )

What Carpenter has done here is taken a haunting score, a haunting use of lighting, and tightly paced direction and made a masterpiece of horror. There is one scene that has to be described. And that is the scene where Annie is on her way to pick up Paul. She goes to the car and tries to open it only then does she realize that she has left her keys in the house. She gets them, comes back out and inadvertently opens the car door without using the keys. The audience picks up on this but she doesn't. She is too busy thinking about Paul. When she sits down, she notices that the windows are fogged up. She is puzzled and starts to wipe away the mist, and then Myers strikes, from the back seat. This is such a great scene because it pays attention to detail. We know what is happening and Annie doesn't. But it's astute observations that Carpenter made that scared the hell out of movie goers in 1978 and beyond. Halloween uses blury images of a killer standing in the background, it has shadows ominously gliding across a room, dark rooms, creepy, haunting music, a sinister story told hauntingly by Donald Pleasance and a menacing, relentless killer. My advice to film makers in our day and age is to study Halloween. It should be the blue print for what scary movies are all about. After all, Carpenter followed in Hitchcock's steps, maybe director's should follow in his.

Halloween personifies everything that scares us. If you are tired of all the mindless horror films that don't know the difference between evil and cuteness, then Halloween is a film that should be seen. It won't let you down. I enjoy being scared, I don't know whay, but I do. But nothing has scared me in the 90's, except maybe one film ( Wes Craven's final Nightmare ). If you enjoy beings scared, then Halloween is one that you should see. And if you have already seen it a hundred times, go and watch it again, back to back with a film like Urban Legend. Urban Legend will have you enticed at all the pretty faces in the movie. Halloween will have you frozen with fear, stuck in your seat, not wanting to move. Now tell me, what horror film would you rather watch?