Halloween (1978)

 “You can't kill the Boogeyman!"

At last I find a subtitled version. Hooray. It's about time.

This is, as I kept saying about the early Friday the 13th fims, an absolutely textbook slasher movie, and one of those films which played a big part in setting up the tropes we all know- sex, saying "I'll be right back" and smoking weed (while driving, tut tut) are all hazardous for one's life expectancy although, if you're over twenty, you'll probably be all right.

What separates Halloween from these films is, quite simply, it's much better directed by the splendid John Carpenter and, indeed, much better made. What's different here, as shown in the superb camerawork, music and use of the pumpkin motif, is that this is the first slasher since Psycho that isn't a B movie.It may be a straight-down-the-line slasher, but it's done really well, with the dialogue and acting a cut above what we's expect from the genre. It's slow, and the killing doesn't start until fairly late on, but there's excellent use of suspense, with Michael Myers being glimpsed everywhere.

A very young Jamie Lee Curtis heads a very young cast, while Donald Pleasance is a rather astute piece of casting for Dr Loomis. It's rather jolting seeing him play an American, though, and his accent lapses on occasion. It's interesting, too, to see the use, and meta-commentart, of the 1951 version of The Thing from Another World (must see that at some point) on the telly, given what Carpenter would proceed to shoot a couple of films down the line.

It's a textbook slasher, but it's the textbook slasher, impressing even someone so jaded with the genre as myself.