• ⇤
• ⇽
• ≡
• ⇾
• ⇥

movie review - Halloween

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

So this is the flick that started it all! Halloween is a surprising thing: it's a real movie. Most of the 'horror' films either fall into the Xtro category, where someone started with a sci-fi flick and went into overdrive with the gore and, um, horror; the Friday the 13th category, where lots of pretty half-dressed kiddies get slashed by some idiotic cardboard cutout who gets his in the end; or the last category, which shall be called "cheesier than thou". While this is a solid category-two film, it's miles above the likes of Nightmare on Elm Street simply because of its horrendously real setting.

I'm not going to suggest that this one go down in the logs as a hilight in human civilization, but its a typically '70s slow-paced and strangely-shot tense little number done with real style and pacing, if not with a huge budget.

The tension is mostly derived from the mechanism of the doctor, a psychiatrist who stalks the stalker, right until the final frame, where he empties his six-gun into the bad buy. Pleasance portrays the doctor wonderfully, struggling with the results of his failed treatment of his most diseased (and supernaturally immune to bullets?) patient.

Recommended.