The Night He Came Home (It Was A Friday)

We are all painfully aware that Halloween is my favorite film of all time. You've read me mention it on Doomed Moviethon, you've heard me go on about it on Hello! This Is The Doomed Show, and you got that restraining order on me when I threw rocks at your window late at night because I wanted to talk about it. Well good news! I'm talking about it again and since it's the internet your court documents can't stop me!

So I preordered the 35th Anniversary bluray. Other than a marketing deal I'm not sure why 35 years is significant. Yes there's a 25th Anniversary dvd but is there a 15th Anniversary VHS tape? Will there be a 45th Anniversary download? A 55th Anniversary brain implant? No silly, there will be a 50th Anniversary brain implant.

I'm just one year younger than Halloween so all this __th Anniversary talk can get depressing. I am (barely) a child of the 70's.

Back during the summer I had some people over for a viewing of Halloween. Of the folks present (other than Elizabeth and I) only one had seen it before. We watched the 2007 Anchor Bay bluray and it was one of my best experiences watching the film. Everyone really seemed to get into it.

The 2007 bluray is, up to that point, the best Halloween has ever looked in my opinion. It looks so good I had overlooked the fans' concerns about the colors being brightened and the blue hue being diminished. Usually I am a purist when it comes to these things. Code Red's release of Madman completely removed the blue hue that gives Madman a lot of its atmosphere. But I can't stress enough how sharp the 2007 bluray of Halloween looks. Detail is unbelievable. You can count the leaves on trees in the background.

When I heard there was going to be a 35th Anniversary release I preordered. It didn't matter to me if it was even the same transfer with a different cover. I am borderline obsessive about Halloween. Anchor Bay actually encourages this because they release Halloween all the time. I don't mind, they do run a business and I don't buy their yearly release of Evil Dead II. So we are square.

Across the street neighbor and friend Heather attended our little soiree so when the new disc arrived I invited her to come over and she said she couldn't wait to see it again. Now Heather is new to the world of horror and before we started showing her horror films she professed she didn't like them. So her response made me very happy. I think I'm doing something right.

So how did it go? Ths colors in the daylight scenes are muted to look more like autumn. The nighttime scenes are darker and the blue hues are more in force. And the picture is still very sharp. Heather seemed to enjoy it as much as she did the first time and I still love it after 296 viewings. It was a great experience. This is the version I will return to when I watch it on bluray. Highly recommended.