@Hybridous
I finally managed to buy Halloween today - yay!
I was in Manchester last week, going for a job interview. So afterwards I went to the HMV store in Arndale.
No Halloween - WTF?! I bought some other films instead (inc. Halloween 2 - a very mixed bag of a movie).
Then today I was looking around Bolton market and the second-hand dvd shop had Halloween for £2 - can't be bad!
Gotta say, it was a very good film - I love the way Carpenter built up the tension throughout. There were some key moments that stood out for me ...
1. the opening sequence, where you see someone's pov. You see hands reaching for a knife in the kitchen, then you walk upstairs and a mask is put on. Then into a teenager's bedroom, the knife being used to stab her repeatedly. Then the person walks out the house, still in his pov. It's revealed to be 6 year old Michael Myers - pretty chilling!
2. Bobby's downstairs getting Lynda a beer. He thinks he hears something in the dark. Myers bursts out the closet and kills him by pinning him to the wall with his knife. And then he tilts his head, first one way then the other. Almost as if he's admiring his work. It's totally creepy, other-worldly. It kinda reminded me of the way a dog or cat tilts their head to listen.
3. Laurie is alone in the dark house, freaked out by seeing the three dead bodies of those already killed. Crying, she backs up against a wall, next to an open doorway that leads into a pitch black room. And then the distinctive white mask appears in the black doorway!
4. the music! John Carpenter's music was simple but very effective.
Also, there was hardly any blood and gore - remarkable for a slasher film. This is probably due to the tiny budget. I assume the lack of extras - there were lots of shots of empty streets - was due to the tiny budget, too. The lack of extras doesn't really interfere with the film - just the opposite, I think, making sure the focus is on Jaime Lee Curtis, or whoever else is in the shot.
I'm glad there was next to no blood and gore. Instead, Halloween gets the audience scared by building up the tension, plus a few jump scares, all mixed in with the sheer otherworldliness of Michael Myers and the imagination of the audience. In other words, the audience is scared or creeped out by what it thought it saw, not necessarily what it actually saw.
All in all, it's a very good film.