Halloween [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray]

Halloween (1978)

Overview

One of the highest-grossing independent films of all time, director John Carpenter's horror masterpiece pays homage to other great masters of cinematic suspense as well as establishing Carpenter as a genre auteur in his own right. The story, penned by the director with co-producer Debra Hill, is deceptively simple. The film's prologue takes place on Halloween night, 1963, in the peaceful suburb of Haddonfield, IL: six-year-old Michael Myers, clad in a clown costume and mask, enters the bedroom of his teenage sister and stabs her to death with a butcher knife. The story picks up 15 years later at the state hospital for the criminally insane, where the fully-grown Michael is to be picked up by his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), in preparation for an upcoming murder trial. Amid an ominous thunderstorm, Michael makes his escape. The balance of the film is set in Haddonfield on Halloween of 1978. We are introduced to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), a pretty, bookish teenager whose Halloween plans are limited to babysitting young Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). Laurie's girlfriends Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Annie (Nancy Loomis) have very different plans, mostly involving beer and illicit trysts with their respective boyfriends. As the day passes, a gray station wagon can be seen lurking about the neighborhood, and the desperate Loomis meets with local Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) to warn him of the danger facing Haddonfield. Though skeptical, Brackett agrees to help Loomis case the neighborhood, beginning with the abandoned Myers house. Unbeknownst to Laurie, who wiles away the evening watching old horror movies with Tommy, Myers is stalking Annie and Lynda with murderous intent...and is saving Laurie for last. Carpenter fills every moment of the film with pervasive dread, even in the early daylight scenes, but it is after nightfall that the horror reaches an unbearable pitch. What could have been a standard stalk-and-slash scenario is given a kind of mythic resonance by Carpenter: Myers is depicted not as a flesh-and-blood psychopath but as an unstoppable creature of evil, somehow embodying the dark nature of Halloween itself. Sadly, this unique approach paved the way for similar impervious killers in countless lesser films of the genre, as well as the oft-noted "slasher" convention in which the killer punishes the film's promiscuous characters with death, while the virginal heroine usually manages to escape. Halloween was followed by several increasingly substandard sequels from the production team of Debra Hill, Irwin Yablans, and Moustapha Akkad, in which Carpenter's participation quickly dwindled down to a mere "created by" credit.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/28/2021
UPC:	0826663219586
Original Release:	1978
Source:	Shout Factory
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Format:	Blu-ray
Sales rank:	435

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Donald Pleasence	Dr. Loomis
Jamie Lee Curtis	Laurie Strode
P.J. Soles	Lynda
Charles Cyphers	Brackett
Kyle Richards	Lindsey
Brian Andrews	Tommy
John Michael Graham	Bob
Nancy Stephens	Marion
Arthur Malet	Graveyard Keeper
Mickey Yablans	Richie
Brent LePage	Lonnie
Adam Hollander	Keith
Robert Phalen	Dr. Wynn
Tony Moran	Michael at 21
Will Sandin	Michael at 6
Sandy Johnson	Judith,Actor
David Kyle	Boyfriend
Peter Griffith	Laurie's Father
Nick Castle	The Shape
Nancy Kyes	Annie Brackett
Andi Matichak	Actor
Adam Holender	Keith
Nick Castle Jr.	The Shape
Nancy Loomis	Actor
John Carpenter	Composer

Technical Credits

Debra Hill

Irwin Yablans

John Carpenter

Debra Hill	Producer,Screenwriter
Jim Windburn	Stunts
Irwin Yablans	Executive Producer,Producer,Screenwriter
John Carpenter	Screenwriter,Producer
Thomas D. Causey	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

With its almost blood-free frights, gutsy heroine, and peerless score, Halloween became the gold standard for the late '70s-'80s teen slasher cycle (as Scream cheekily acknowledged in 1996). Taking full advantage of the widescreen frame (and offscreen space), John Carpenter builds tension through the constant suggestion that something terrible lurks just out of Laurie's and the audience's view, whether it's behind a bush or in a passing car. Carpenter also shifts to the killer's point-of-view, leaving the audience with only the sight of the unaware victim and the sound of Michael's breathing. Evoking Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo, as well as Howard Hawks' original The Thing, Carpenter and co-writer/producer Debra Hill render Myers an inhuman force that paradoxically points up the psychosexual anxieties under the surface of small-town life, especially in the wake of the late-'60s/early-'70s sexual revolution. Teens responded to Halloween's thrills, as the 325,000-dollar indie film went on to gross 47 million dollars, begetting six sequels and numerous imitators, like the Friday the 13th series.