People often ask me what my favorite horror movie is and even though the question sometimes throws me for a loop as I consider all the great memories I have had with the genera, the answer always ends up being the original Halloween.  Come to think of it this is also the movie I have probably seen the least when it comes to my collection of horror movies due to my self imposed rule of only watching it during the month of October.  Nothing else in my collection has this rule, which just goes to show how special the original Halloween in to me.  It is also the only movie my wife and I actually had a heated argument over, which of course seems silly now given everything that happened between us during our short lived time together.  It was a month after we had been married and we were talking about movies and I mentioned how we should sit down and watch Halloween together on Halloween night since she had never seen it before.  She shook her head, however, and said that she had seen Halloween H20 and didn’t like it and wasn’t a fan of bloody slasher movies.  I told her that Halloween H20 was a terrible introduction to the series and that the original Halloween wasn’t even really a slasher film since there was no blood and one almost never sees a knife actually cutting into anyone, but she still refused to watch it, something which drove me crazy back then.  

I first saw Halloween when I was in seventh grade on Halloween night (it is weird but almost every movie I ever saw that scared the crap out of me was viewed on Halloween night).  My mother and I watched it together on one of the basic TV channels, one which always showed a small soundless scene from further in the film with the words WE WILL RETURN echoing from the TV before cutting to a commercial break, something which always seemed to make the movie even more frightening for me because the scenes they showed promised that a confrontation between Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Myers would happen, which would be scary (such things wouldn’t scare me today, but back then it really got the

heart going).  I remember wanting to change the channel several times while watching this movie, but also knowing that I had to see the ending, which is why we kept watching it, the music and the camera angles and the storyline cutting deep into me.  

Afterward I didn’t get a good night sleep for about a month, yet was glad I had seen the movie and really wanted my little brother and my cousin to see it so they could understand why I was so frightened of the man in the simple white mask.  I also wanted to see the sequels which I thought would be just as scary as the original, but had to wait for them to be on TV because my parents didn’t think seeing them on video would be appropriate for someone my age (I think it was the following year during October when I saw Halloween II, which I thought was pretty scary as well, but unfortunately didn’t get to see the ending because my Dad told us to go to bed before it was over).  

My little brother is a fan of this movie as well and several years later we forced two girls we knew to watch it right before Halloween and once again were reminded of how powerful the movie was because those poor girls were completely devastated by it and had to be escorted home (I think our scaring them with the white mask before they left also was a big hit, something the two of us have done several times around Halloween which is why no kids will trick or treat at my parents house anymore).  Since then we have sat down with many people who haven’t seen the movie and relished in the terror they felt while watching this classic

It has been a long time since Halloween came out (over thirty years now) and because of this many people who haven’t seen it, especially young people, seem to think it will be a bore and therefore would rather see the remake, which is really upsetting.  NOTE: I haven’t actually seen the remake yet, and really don’t want to due to my love of the original, so I can’t say whether it was good or bad, but am almost positive that it doesn’t compare to the original and get sickened by the fact that it probably draws attention away from that movie, but such is the life in a world where remakes are dominating the big screen.  To anyone who hasn’t seen the original, however, and is contemplating watching the remake first, I strongly urge you to take some time to view the one John Carpenter made first.