'Halloween': A Cut Above the Rest

33 years later, the 1978 "Halloween" still stands tall as a testament to talent, ingenuity, and passion, as a mostly quite young film crew set about to make a horror movie that continues to be hailed as a classic. While there's likely to be a fair amount of information contained herein that die hard fans already know, 'A Cut Above the Rest' does work nicely as a primer on all things "Halloween". Both on screen and off screen talent appear to offer their thoughts, including director / co-writer / composer John Carpenter, co-writer / producer Debra Hill, executive producer / original idea man Irwin Yablans, his business partner at the time Joseph Wolf, financial backer Moustapha Akkad, cinematographer Dean Cundey, production designer / co-editor Tommy Lee Wallace, and actors Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, and Nick Castle, a.k.a. The Shape himself, as well as Fangoria Magazine's Tony Timpone. The documentary does get a little bogged down at times in showing clips of the movie, but the interviews are quite wonderful to see. The documentary goes through a logical progression of events - from conception to execution to distribution to aftermath, with the movie becoming a marvelous success basically by word of mouth. Topics discussed include the logistics of shooting certain scenes - like that now legendary opening set piece, the challenge of making various California locations, in the spring, look like the Midwest in the autumn, the hiring of key players Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis, Carpenter's composition of his now iconic score, and the incredible legacy of the movie - not just its own succession of sequels (some of which get mentioned briefly) but the onslaught of slasher movies to come, with some of those choosing to centre around a national holiday as well. The most delightful element of this thing, however, is seeing plenty of vintage stills and 'making of' footage from the shoot, which will be of great interest to any fan. If they haven't already seen 'A Cut Above the Rest', they should either pick up the 25th anniversary two disc DVD release or the more recent Blu- ray to check it out; they won't be disappointed. 10 out of 10.

This is a documentary on the making of the 1978 horror classic "Halloween". It's primarily Debra Hill and John Carpenter discussing it. There are also the producers, the cinematographer and two of the actresses in it (Jamie Lee Curtis and P.J. Soles) talking. If you're a Halloween fan (like me) you'll find nothing new here. All of this has been discussed before. Even worse this is LOADED with clips from the movie--far too much. Again and again and AGAIN they show long clips from the movie when short ones would have worked as well. Sometimes the clips are used to illustrate a point but more often than not they seemed to be thrown in at random. It brings this to a screeching halt and frankly gets boring and annoying. The only good parts are photos from the set and Carpenter directing Donald Pleasance. It's too bad. "Halloween" is a true classic and deserves much better than this.

Halloween is a horror classic, with a great cast, perfect villain, and one of the most recognized horror scores in history. This documentary starts from the bare beginning, giving the development of the entire project. Not one detail seems to be left out. It's not too long nor too short. It gives great incite on the film explaining all the little things us fan-boys wanna know, such as wtf is Michael Myers mask from, and tiny things like how certain scenes were set up and constructed. I can't really find anything to nit-pick about this doc. So I'll keep this short saying it's worth watching and I don't think there's a version of the film without this doc. 10/10