A Comparison Between Halloween's Two Most Popular DVD Versions
Halloween. What a perfect title for a Horror movie. It's hard to believe back in 1977 that there had never been any movie, let alone a Horror film, that incorporated that title. And what good usage it got. Written, directed, and even musically scored by John Carpenter (with great assistance by then girlfriend Debra Hill), this was truly a film that brought Horror to it's roots, leaving an impact that only George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead did ten years earlier. Showcasing a deranged killer by the name of Michael Myers who in childhood murdered his sister in cold blood on Halloween night, only to escape his asylum to return to his Illinois home to hunt down babysitter (and eventually known little sister) Jamie Lee Curtis 15 years later, was truly an amazing film that never exploited the genre, keeping the imagination and terror flowing within the viewers mind rather than blatantly on the screen. For it's time it was the number one profitable independent film ever made, and after...
A Great, Scary, Classic Made Even Better!
This new, Extended version of Halloween is something no fan should be without! 12 minutes of additional footage (4 scenes) has been put into the original version, and the result is awesome. These scenes were not deleted. They were really shot in 1980, when the film was released on cut TV. The scenes were shot using the cast and crew of Halloween II (another must see!) and directed by John Carpenter, himself. These scenes include:
#1 A very well made scene where Dr. Loomis (Doneld Pleasance) has an intense conversation with two sanitarium officials. He begs that they move Myers to a maximum security ward, saying that the boy is dangerous and has an instinctive forsce within him. The officials are unimpressed by what Loomis says, and simply keep Myers in the minimum security ward.
#2 A scene directly following the previous added scene. Loomis walks into young Michael's cell. For about 1 minute he simply stares at the boy, who stares out the window...
This review pertains to the 35th anniversary blu-ray.
Anchor Bay has re-released John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece "Halloween" about as many times as they have the Evil Dead trilogy. It's been almost impossible to know which one to pick up over the years there are so many versions. Halloween was originally released on DVD by Anchor Bay featuring a bad transfer that didn't do the film any justice at all. They then re-released it again on DVD with a transfer approved by the original director of photography Dean Cundey. The transfer was greatly improved but it was lacking in extras for a film of such great importance. Then they released another cut of the film in which the extra scenes filmed for the TV airings of the film (filmed during the making of the sequel oddly enough) were cut into the film. A 4th DVD release then occured as part of their "divimax" line which was a 2 disc set with plentiful extras and a brand new remastered transfer.
That 4th DVD release proved to be the most problematic. While the quality of detail was...
Click to Editorial Reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment