Halloween (1978)
90 %
Reviews Counted: 42 Fresh: 38 Rotten:4 Average Rating: 8.3/10
Consensus:
Scary, suspenseful, and viscerally thrilling, Halloween set the standard for modern horror films.
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Synopsis: Perhaps the most influential and successful independent film ever made, HALLOWEEN is the movie that put director John Carpenter on the map as a viable filmmaker. An exercise in simple, pure horror, HALLOWEEN takes us into the world of a mad killer, Michael Myers, who at a very young age stabbed... [More]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers
Director: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Producer: Debra Hill
Composer: John Carpenter
Screenwriter: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Producer: Debra Hill
Composer: John Carpenter
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
Virtually perfect. It is the one horror film that I would beg each and every lover of movies to watch, if I could pick only one.
Comment
07/13/08
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03/28/08
John Carpenter and Debra Hill's film is a genuine landmark in the horror-thriller genre.
09/21/07
The movie itself is repressed; Hitchcock would have admired the way Carpenter artfully avoids explicit bloodshed.
09/17/07
The film hits us at a level deeper than most slasher films, and even as we are entertained by it, we are drawn in by its powerful suspense and implications.
09/05/07
After a promising opening, Halloween becomes just another maniac-on-the-loose suspenser.
08/27/07
Top Critic
Regardless of how silly you think it all is, this will have you scared witless by the time the end credits roll; low budget horror hog heaven.
08/27/07
John Carpenter's 1978 tour de force, perhaps the most widely imitated film of the 70s.
08/27/07
Top Critic
...the kind of fright flick in which the plodding monster has his victim in his grasp and then inexplicably stabs the couch five feet to the right of her.
08/23/07
Perhaps not quite so resonant as Psycho to which it pays due homage, but it breathes the same air.
06/24/06
If Donald Pleasance tells you something is important, you should listen to him.
03/24/06
Halloween brilliantly uses its widescreen frame, a lot of hand-held camerawork, and scary foreground and background action.
12/06/05
Halloween is an absolutely merciless thriller, a movie so violent and scary that, yes, I would compare it to Psycho.
10/23/04
Top Critic
One of the first and the flat-out best of that ghetto of the horror film genre, the slasher movie.
09/12/04
It's hard to get behind a main character who's so unexciting. But maybe Michael Myers is the real main character. In which case, mission accomplished: I'm freaked out.
11/29/03
Even after repeated viewings, Carpenter’s minor masterpiece holds up as a staunchly effective thriller that will always stand head and shoulders above the cinematic progeny it spawned.
10/12/03
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