I’ve grown to love this movie for all the ways it feels like a true successor to Carpenter’s Halloween and for all the ways it doesn’t. I like to imagine a world where this was a success and we got a slew of subsequent stand-alone Halloween anthology-style movies for twenty years instead of what we ended up with. I love Michael Myers as much as anybody but that was a true opportunity missed, in my opinion.

Take the VHS scan-style animated title sequence here and consider how it cleverly re-imagines the title sequences established in the previous two Halloween movies. Just think of the endless ways we could have seen a pumpkin be carved under opening credits. More importantly, the central concept for this is rock solid, creepy as hell and far more interesting than “dude in a mask stabs people”. This film is full of disturbing ideas and imagery. That whole sequence with the masks and the bugs is genuinely nauseating. Also the score by Carpenter and Alan Howarth is probably the best they’ve ever done. Certainly their most experimental. I own it on vinyl and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve dropped it onto the turntable to make my late nights all the more discordant and unnerving.

And can I just say….
TEN MORE DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN.
TEN MORE DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN.
SIL-VER SHAMROCK!