Halloween
The Movie

The film which ushered in the modern age of horror stands well above its many sequels and clones because John Carpenter's taut direction makes it truly scary. Jamie Lee Curtis in her debut role plays a babysitter who must protect herself from the deadly Michael Myers a mental institution escapee who killed his sister on Halloween fifteen years earlier. Called "the most successful independent motion picture of all time" HALLOWEEN is also one of most frightening films ever made.

"You can't kill the boogeyman," explains John Carpenter in Halloween, and to prove it he brings Michael Myers back in this handsome but grisly sequel. Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode but spends most of her time cowering in a hospital gown, and Donald Pleasence runs around like a maniac as the panicky doctor desperate to hunt down Myers before he kills again. Carpenter writes and produces with partner Debra Hill, and together they replace the mystery and uncertainty of the original with an exponentially bigger body count and some strange tales about the Druids and pagan ceremonies, and the now-familiar family ties between Michael and Laurie.

After the mysterious death of a toyshop owner, a doctor and the man's daughter investigate the Irish-dominated Northern California community of Santa Mira, a company town owned by the Silver Shamrock Novelty corporation. The two are typical low-rent horror movie protagonists, dim bulbs who discover an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style conspiracy involving sharp-suited corporate robots. But guest star Dan O'Herlihy steals the film as a Celtic joke tycoon who hates the way American kids are despoiling the religious spirit of Samhain and decides to teach them a nasty lesson. His scheme, which involves a stolen Stonehenge megalith and a techno-magic spell that turns the heads of TV watchers into writhing masses of snakes and insects, is value for money, and O'Herlihy mixes enough serious malice into the charm to come across as a great screen bad guy.

Laurie is gone, but guess who's back in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers? Acting as if the third entry never existed, this installment picks up 10 years after the original, with mad maniac Myers in a coma and moved to a new facility. But wouldn't you know it that as soon as a loose-lipped orderly lets slip that Myers has a surviving niece he springs back into action, leaving a bloody trail of corpses on the road to Haddonfield. Donald Pleasance returns as Dr. Loomis, scarred and crippled from his last encounter with Myers and seething with a fanatical zeal to stop the freak from repeating his previous rampage. Pleasance is the best thing about the film as an aging hero seemingly on the verge of madness who drags a bum leg in his manic rush to save little orphan Jamie, the 10-year-old terrorized by her homicidal uncle.

Starting around Halloween 4, that masked nut Michael Myers stopped chasing his sister (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the first and second films, as well as Halloween H20) and went after his niece. Now he's chasing her around again in part 5, but it's a lot of other people who die in the process. Donald Pleasence continues his mad-doctor bit from the earlier movies, Danielle Harris is the unfortunate relation, and Donald L. Shanks plays the monster. The film is an improvement on parts 2 and 4 (part 3 having nothing to do with Michael Myers), but it still amounts to routine slaughter with none of John Carpenter's stylistic brilliance from the original movie.

For pulse-pounding suspense and relentless thrills, nothing can match HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS -- one of the most frightening chapters in the chilling HALLOWEEN series! In a single horrifying night, Michael Myers' masked reign of terror changed Halloween forever! Now, six years after he was presumed dead in a fire, Myers has returned to kill again -- and this time there's no escape! As the homicidal fury builds to a spine-tingling climax, the long-hidden secrets of the screen's most maniacal murderer are revealed ... with shocking results!

Now the headmistress of a private school, Laurie Strode is still struggling with the horrifying, 20-year-old memories of the maniacal killer Michael Myers. This Halloween, his terror will strike a whole new generation but this time Laurie is not going to run again.

Original HALLOWEEN star Jamie Lee Curtis is back and joined by Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks in the terrifying HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION -- the latest in this electrifying horror film series! The reality programmers at DangerTainment (Rhymes, Banks) have selected Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas), and a group of thrill-seeking teenagers to spend one fun-filled night in the childhood home of serial killer Michael Myers. But the planned live broadcast turns deadly when their evening of excitement becomes a night of horror as Michael himself decides to crash the party!

More of a supercharged revamp than a remake, Rob Zombie's take on John Carpenter's Halloween expands the back story of masked killer Michael Myers in an attempt to examine the motivation for his first deadly attack, as well as some reasons for his longevity as a horror icon. Zombie's Myers is a blank-eyed teen whose burgeoning mental problems are left unchecked in a horrific home environment; harassed by schoolmates, a randy sister, and his mother's deadbeat boyfriend, Myers' homicidal explosion seems inevitable, and intervention by Dr. Sam Loomis does little to impede his development into a mute, unstoppable killing machine bent on finishing off the only survivor of his family's massacre--his sister, now grown into teenaged Laurie Strode.