The Film
I shrugged when the end credits started rolling for this film. This, admittedly, being the very first time I ever saw Halloween, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'd heard all the hype from horror film aficionados and read the rave reviews, but wanted to go into this with a fresh mind. What were my thoughts? Well, I can tell you in all honesty, that I wasn't frightened at all. The acting was campy, the dialogue was banal, and the "monster," Michael Myers (Tony Moran), was inexplicably indestructible even when stabbed in the eye by a wire hanger, stabbed in the chest with a knife, and shot several times in the back. I also felt the urge to scream at the Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) character in the movie's ending scene, as she was trying to get away from Michael Myers, to stop throwing down the knife that she somehow kept managing to wrestle away from him.
But, all manner of ridiculousness aside, Halloween does still have its merits. John Carpenter effectively meshed 1950's "creature feature" films with the psychological thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock to create a genre all its own with Halloween. That is what aided it to launch an endless stream of sequels and spawn a slew of never-ending imitators, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Perhaps the most inventive moment of the film comes at the very beginning; Carpenter makes use of the newly invented Steadicam to show us, the viewers, a first-person perspective of the young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) walking through his house before putting on a clown mask, where we then see through the eye-holes from his perspective as he murders his sister with a knife.
The film, though burdened with the label "slasher flick", is actually far less graphically violent than one would expect. Carpenter, true to his Hitchcockian influences, relies far less on egregious amounts of violence and more on tension and suspense -- using technique and his own musical score to create an atmosphere intended to hint at horror and shock with unexpected moments rather than bludgeon the viewer over the head, so to speak, with endless gore. This latter point is what the imitators that followed it have missed, and it is what makes Halloween the standout "slasher flick" among fans of the genre to this day. Although I cannot claim to have been scared by the film myself (even though I watched it alone in the dark at night), I can still understand the film’s merits, and see why those who are avid followers of the genre hold it in such high esteem.
The Picture
Halloween appears on this Blu-ray release in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in a 1080p/24 AVC/MPEG-4 encoded high definition transfer around which much controversy swirls. Apparently this new high definition transfer was done by Anchor Bay in 2003, forgoing a previous DVD transfer done by Dean Cundey - the film's original Director of Photography - which was supposedly approved by John Carpenter himself. Cundey's transfer emphasized the blues in the night scenes. He also oversaturated the oranges and de-emphasized greens during the daytime scenes for a more autumnal, Midwestern appearance.
Purists scoff at Anchor Bay's new transfer. I will not jump on the bandwagon, however, especially not to defend the artistic vision of a director who by his own admission, and I quote, "ho'd out," by adding extra scenes to this very same film just to appease NBC for the purpose of allowing it to fit into their allotted time slot for television. Carpenter, and I paraphrase, is perfectly happy to have them making an endless amount of rubbish sequels because "he makes a lot of money off of them." I've read people say that John Carpenter disapproves of this particular transfer, but I've neither heard nor read that from him directly, and I can honestly say that although the Cundey color timing does have a certain mood, it appears murky and is severely lacking in detail, particularly in the nighttime scenes, which take up the majority of the film.
This Blu-ray edition stays somewhat faithful to the Cundey transfer during the daytime scenes, which is a good thing, as the autumnal look of small town Midwest is preserved, though greens are a bit more saturated. During the dark scenes is where this Blu-ray pulls ahead of all previous editions. Black levels are absolutely superbly solid and inky. Although there are some moments where a bit of the blue saturation is present, for the most part it is scaled back, tempered, and the look is more grayish-white. This results in far more shadow detail coming through than in any previous release of this film on any home video format. Leaves on trees, pumpkins on porches -- they are all now clearly visible where before they were just amorphous black shapes, especially in the Cundey edition.
The overall look of the film is obviously low budget, and Anchor Bay have done a very good job with the transfer, but it does have some minor flaws. The source does show some flecks and scratches in places, which perhaps could have been cleaned up, but mostly for a thirty-year-old low budget film, it's clean and well kept. I would highly recommend this edition to anyone on the basis of the added detail and depth alone.
The Sound
For this release, Anchor Bay have supplied English uncompressed PCM 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit), Dolby Digital 5.1 and Original Mono (Dolby 2.0) audio options.
For the purposes of this review, I listened mainly to the uncompressed PCM mix and occasionally sampled the original mono mix throughout the viewing. While the PCM mix is effective in places, filling the surrounds with ambient effects such as passing traffic and the sounds of nature, the mix is mostly stagnant and does not benefit much in the expansion from one channel to six. The liveliest sounding scene is early on in the film, where a thunderstorm fills every channel, and the rumbling makes good use of the LFE channel. John Carpenter's musical score, though mixed at a good level and well pronounced in the overall mix, only occasionally bleeds into the rear channels and is barely spread out across the front channels.
The weakest part of the sound mix is the dialogue, which is mixed to a somewhat low level that, although it never quite gets buried in the mix, leaves the listener straining at times to hear what is being said. Voices also sound shrill and grating. If I had to guess, I would say that there was a slight peak somewhere around the 1kHz or 2kHz frequencies and perhaps a bit of a roll off below that, leaving the voices sounding pinched and nasally.
Kudos to Anchor Bay for providing the original monaural mix for those purists seeking an experience closer to what they recall from the film's original theatrical run. Unfortunately, the monaural mix is neither lossless/uncompressed nor a "true" monaural mix, because Anchor Bay chose to provide the mix in a Dolby 2.0 configuration rather than utilize solely the center channel for a true Dolby 1.0 such as Warner did on their Elvis Presley Blu-ray Disc releases, for example. Regardless, the mono mix somewhat fixes the problems with the dialogue levels and provides a sufficient sense of depth, good dynamics and of course authenticity. Fans and purists will without a doubt appreciate the option of listening to it on this release.
The Extras
The extras provided on this release offer a lot of information on the evolution of Halloween, the process that went into filming it and much of the struggles the film first faced to get a major distribution deal. Unfortunately, there is much overlap among the supplemental material so that if you listen to or view one it negates the need to try any of the others. My suggestion would be to watch the surprisingly informative, albeit rather lengthy featurette Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest (1.78:1/HD) for an unobtrusive form of information gathering on the film. Although the nearly hour-and-a-half long featurette claims to be in high definition, most of the footage is upscaled 480i and looks of a rather poor quality. Other extras included are an audio commentary from director John Carpenter, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and producer Debra Hill that covers much of the same material from the featurette, an in-movie trivia track that pops up factoids also covered in the featurette and audio commentary, the original theatrical trailer (1.78:1/standard definition), three original television spots (4:3/standard definition) and three original radio commercials.
Final Thoughts
Halloween is the quintessential "slasher flick;" the film that launched a genre and an endless spawn of imitators. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then John Carpenter and Halloween have been flattered many times over -- too many times to count. This Blu-ray edition proves that the technology behind Blu-ray can benefit even a low-budget film like this one, bringing out far more detail than ever before and maintaining a film like appearance. For any fans of this film not caught up in the debate over color timings, this is the version to get.
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