Night 28 of "Attack of the 31 Nights of Halloween"

Welcome to night 28 of "Attack of the 31 Nights of Halloween". Tonight we have a review of the next movie on our Halloween Movie List. Make sure to stop by our GIANT Giveaway and enter to win a goodie bag full of frightfully good treats from 17 different shops! But first lets get to our featured item of the night from Laughing Vixen Lounge.


Tonight's Featured Item - Cute 'n Spooky Halloween Charm Bracelet

Cute 'n Spooky Charm Bracelet $45

Purchase this item from Laughing Vixen Lounge during October and get 10% off. Use code OCTOBER10
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Night 28 - Halloween

Tagline - The Night he came home
              He's come back
              The trick was to stay alive
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Written and Directed by John Carpenter (The Fog, Starman and Big Trouble in Little China) and released on October 25, 1978 by Compass International Pictures (rated R). In 1963 little Mikey chops up his sister on Halloween for no apparent reason. Now it's 15 years later and Michael has come home to Haddenfeild, IL for another round. Escaping from the institution he had been living in, Michael Myers (Nick Castle) returns to his home town to wreak havoc on a group on teenagers. Our leading teen, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), is great at ignoring all the obvious signs that something is wrong and just going about her day. The little boy she is babysitting keep telling her he sees the boogieman outside but he's told to shut up. As all of Laurie's friends start to die around her she starts to realize that indeed the boogieman does exist. And he doesn't die very easily!
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This film just works. Slightly dated which adds to the creepiness, a very scary villain and a bunch of dumb teenagers. I mean really, if they weren't dumb we wouldn't have much of a movie would we?

The music is great and completely creepy. The atmosphere is perfect and the suspense is high (unless you've seen it too many times and know where everything happens). I love the way Michael just appears out of the dark. Sometimes you don't even realize he's there right away. It really is one of the only characters that truly scares me. While I wonder why I would continue to watch something that bothers me on a certain level, I always find myself coming back to it year after year. I guess we need that healthy dose of fear and preferably on the screen where it can't actually hurt us!

The original and it's sequel are both great. You can skip part 3 as it has nothing to do with any of the characters from the original. Part 4 was the first one I ever saw and I still like that one. Part 5 and 6 get pretty darn bad but part 6 was Paul Rudd's first movie so that's fun. Part 7 or H2O was to be the final chapter of the series. I love this one and it's a fun and great end to everything. But it was too much of a success that Hollywood had to make Part 8. Watch it once if you haven't seen it so you can say you saw them all then forget about it!
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Some trivia about the movie...
1. This was Jamie Lee Curtis' film debut.
2. The movie was on such a tight budget that they used the cheapest Halloween mask they could buy. It happened to be a Captain Kirk mask that they spray painted, teased up the hair and readjusted the eye holes. Somehow it makes me feel a little less scared if I just remember it's William Shatner's face there. How can that not make you giggle?
3. The movie the kid's are watching on TV is 1951's The Thing which John Carpenter would remake in 1982.
4. The character of Laurie Strode was named after John Carpenter's first girlfriend.
5. There are some names that are taken from Psycho in this movie. Dr. Loomis shares the same last name as Marion's boyfriend in Psycho. There is a character here named Marion Chambers a combination of two Psycho characters. And of course, Jamie Lee Curtis is Janet Leighs' daughter.
6. Halloween was shot in 21 days in April of 1978. Made on a budget of $320,000, it became the highest-grossing independent movie ever made at that time.
7. According to screenwriter/producer Debra Hill, the character of Laurie Strode was named after John Carpenter's first girlfriend.