Here's a pathetic real story from my own life. The night that the East Coast of the United States was plunged into darkness a few months ago (remember that?) I was at work at the midtown Manhattan offices where the company I work for does business. As the hours passed and it became increasingly obvious that electricity wouldn't be coming back anytime soon I decided to stack-up on batteries and supplies before heading to New York's Times Square and watch the crazy people do their thing. Since I live in Harlem (about 85 blocks from where I worked) inside an oven of a studio apartment I decided that spending the night at the slightly-cooler office building that housed my employer's office. So, from approx. 10:30PM Thursday to 11:00AM Sunday I was inside a windowless office with no fresh air or electricity that was pitch-black unless I had a flashlight on. Of course I couldn't leave the flashlight on all night, so it was turned off most of the time. But, whenever I had to turn the flashlight on to do something (go to the bathroom, turn on the battery-powered radio, etc.), I swear to you I was afraid I would see Michael Myers' faceless mask staring directly at me.

Why? Because, damn it, the night before the North-Eastern blackout hit I was up all night watching Anchor Bay's re-re-release of John Carpenter's "Halloween: Divimax 25th Anniversary Edition." Had I known I would spend an uncomfortable dozen or so hours stuck in the dark at my office I wouldn't have allowed that creepy Carpenter-composed musical score for "Halloween" to be so fresh in my mind. Then again, it isn't anybody's fault that this flick happens to have superior staying power and fright reach beyond its age after all these years. When they set to do a low-budget horror movie about an escaped mental patient that goes back to his hometown for a killing spree on the anniversary of the day he brutally stabbed his older sister to death, writers/producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill had no idea they were laying the foundation for what would become one of the most relentlessly copied horror movie formulas in the genre's history.

You'd think "Halloween's" body count (five dead, plus two dogs), tame-by-today's-standards gore (blood is not shown in copious or even disturbing amounts), blink-and-you-miss-it nudity and 'he's not really dead' finale would be deadly dull and boring in the year 2002. But, as yours truly found out the hard way during the North Eastern blackout, Anchor Bay's Divimax version of the 1978 Carpenter-directed flick can still send a shiver or two down the spines of even the most jaded review critics. It might be 25 years old, but "Halloween" is as effective in manipulating today's DVD audience into paranoid fits of fright as it was in movie theaters over two decades ago. The tone of the movie is set during its opening credits, when John Carpenter's masterful music score gives way to a first-person view of someone killing a young woman named Judith Myers with a kitchen knife on October 30th, 1963. This leads to the revelation that it's a young boy named Michael Myers that has killed his older sister, effectively shocking the audience into stupor at the thought a person this young could be capable of such behavior (which was certainly more atypical back in 1978 than 2003).

Fifteen years later and on the same date (October 30th) we watch as the young man's psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), is driven in the middle of a storm to the Smith's Grove mental institution to transfer a grown-up Myers to another location. Before you can say 'atmospheric use of darkness and music to scare the audience yet again' (!) Myers hijacks Dr. Loomis' car and drives away into the night. Convinced he's headed back to Haddonfield Dr. Loomis chases after Michael, finding along the way that he's gotten himself a new set of mechanics clothes (from Phelps garage for those keeping track of their "Halloween" trivia), a pale white mask and the tombstone that marked the graveyard where his sister Judith's body was buried. Then its time to meet the new unfortunate victims of Mr. Myers' insane thirst for killing, which writer/director Carpenter never explains or sets-up as anything more than pure evil taking place on the evening of Halloween. There's braniac Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her motion picture debut), her best friends Linda (P.J. Soles, AKA Norma from Brian DePalma's "Carrie") & Lindsey (Kyle Richards) and their boyfriends Bob (John Graham) and Tommy (Brian Andrews).

[ED.: FYI, Writers/producers Carpenter and Debra Hill would only introduce the 'Laurie is Michael's sister' plot gimmick in the sequel. So the original "Halloween" is best enjoyed if one assumes everyone who is a victim just happened to stumble upon Michael Myers' path by accident. Or you're free to watch it already knowing how the sequels twisted the story to their own advantage. It's all up to you, mmkay?].

The acting is unremarkable and plain from all involved. Jamie Lee Curtis had yet to blossom into the scream queen of teen slasher flicks that she eventually became. The simplicity of the performances works well with Carpenter's ever-present score, well-framed camera angles and cinematographer Dean Cundey's masterful use of darkness and shadows to conceal from the audience the spot from which Myers is going to pop-up and do his deadly bogeyman deeds. The film's tension and sudden outbursts of brutality (much of it concealed by the darkness of the night, and some of it even aimed at helpless dogs) are made more shocking and unbearable by how restrained and realistically everyone plays their parts. Unlike today's contemporary horror flicks that openly 'wink' at the audience to remind them that it is just a movie, "Halloween" plays it straight from beginning to end. Evil wins in "Halloween" by not dying and always hanging around every corner that its victims know so well in an ending that would have been more effective had the sequels not messed it up so much by now. The 70's era evoked by the fashions and forgotten traditions seen here (does anybody still watch old b&w horror movies on October 31st anymore?) also contribute in keeping "Halloween" a fresh viewing experience while also safely keeping it stuck in a time capsule of sorts.

Simply put, John Carpenter's "Halloween" is still a classic worth revisiting the way it was meant to be experienced: in a dark room with a 16X9 widescreen TV set and the sound system cranked to the max as its hooked-up to your DVD (PlayStation 2?) player. One can watch "Halloween" and not be horrified by how outdated it looks while also being reminded that today's filmmakers rarely make horror movies like this anymore (with notable exceptions like M.Night Shayamalan's "The Sixth Sense"). One can't say the same about "The Order" or "House of 1,000 Corpses," can they?