John Carpenter's Halloween

Well, I haven't yet seen Rob Zombie's remake or reimagining of John Carpenter's "Halloween" just yet. I was hoping to, but something personal came up. In preparation of seeing Zombie's vision of Michael Meyers, I wanted to take a look back at one of the all-time great horror movies, as well as one of my all time favorite John Carpenter movies. I am a big John Carpenter fan and always have been. "Halloween" was the movie that finally out him on the map in Hollywood, and it took everyone by surprise.

Now what is there to be said about "Halloween" that has not already been said? It has been discussed ad nauseam in many circles. Even John Carpenter must be sick to death of talking about it all the damn time. On one of the more recent releases of the movie on Anchor Bay DVD, they ended up having to include the original commentary track from the Criterion Laserdisc edition because John felt that everything that needed to be said about the movie was on that track. In all fairness, it's a great commentary track, so you can understand why he was reluctant to do that all over again.

We all know the story by now, and it is in large part due to the countless (not to mention endless) imitators who rushed to create their own psychotic killer once they saw how much "Halloween" had made at the box office. At the time it was released, it was the most successful independent movie ever made. Made for about $300,000, the
movie ended up grossing over $50 million. Hollywood of course, just had to feed off of that success. "Friday The 13^th" would have never existed without "Halloween," and is much more responsible for the numerous clichés we see in slasher movies of this type.