It
seems like it would be an exercise in redundancy to recap the plot synopsis of
John Carpenter's seminal 1978 film Halloween. The film has been theatrically released,
aired on cable and network television, and released in virtually every home
video format in existence at one time or another. Its latest incarnation is in
the form of a Blu-ray disc (for the second time in this format) which contains
a brand-new commentary featuring both John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis as
they watched the film together. This is different from the original commentary
which consisted of a feature length discussion culled from separate comments
from John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and the late Debra Hill. This appeared on both the Criterion
Collection laserdisc in 1994 and the Anchor Bay DVD in 2003.
This
new Blu-ray features a stunning transfer supervised by cinematographer Dean
Cundey and the film has never looked better; television and radio spots; the
theatrical trailer; the additional twelve minutes of footage shot for the
television airings in both 1981 and 1982 (it would have been nice if they had
incorporated this footage into the film in an alternate version by way of
seamless branching, but I suppose that would have been more expensive); the On Location: 25 Years Later featurette;
and a new featurette cleverly called The
Night She Came Home which runs nearly an hour and features a camera crew
following Jamie Lee Curtis from Los Angeles to a Horror Hound Weekend
convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, the one and only convention that she has
done for this film. Unless you were actually at that show, you may not have the
patience to sit through the featurette in its entirety. However, these one-hour highlights give the
viewer who may not have ever attended a horror film convention before an idea
of what goes on, the type of people who frequent this sort of thing, and how genuinely
nice Jamie Lee Curtis is towards her fans.
It
also includes an 18-page essay with black and white on-set photos by
photographer Kim Gottlieb-Walker depicting the shooting of the film.
Recommended
for die-hard fans of this now classic film!
