Halloween has a lot to answer for.

Fifteen good years in Hollywood is as much as one can often expect.

Halloween, nearly thirty years later, is still the bomb. Put together with the skill, poise, and refinement of great furniture, a triumph of fluent minimalism that does an extraordinary amount with very little. Its strongest quality is that like Michael Myers himself, the film is gleefully vicious in humour but not sadistic. I was, this time, the teasingly black humour that is woven into the very structure of the film; observing with special care how cleverly Carpenter keeps from revealing his murderer is a child at the start, and how he tempts to droolers in audience with PJ Soles' tits but does not show them until she's being strangled.

I was reflecting especially on a distinct quality it borrows from the '50s monster flicks it pays tribute to is the way it contrasts the free-and-easy suburban evening, seeming enevloping in its friendliness even (or especially) with the walpurgis-lite mood of Halloween, with real danger; in that way it most clearly evokes the original The Blob & I Married A Monster From Outer Space, where teens inhabit the night fearlessly as their space, the time they can sneak out, make out, have their own lives unsupervised. And it's tapping into that real element and the atmosphere of mild paranoia that attends such escapades that makes such films work, and specifically made Halloween such a perfect model and crucial success. Yes, it did pinch, and to a certain extent de-intellectualize, work by Bava and Argento, but it replaced this with a network of references and ideas of its own.

Another take on the film I become more sure of is that it's a celebration of geek power, rather than puritanical morality. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and sidekick Willow both owe a lot to Jamie Lee's Laurie Strode. Laurie might not be getting laid, but that just means she's not so distracted that she doesn't pick up on the warning signs that combust around her. Nerds rule. The End.

A similar argument could be made about Halloween and how it chaged the horror genre as is often made about the impact of Star Wars and Jaws on mainstream American cinema. Without Halloween we may have been spared Jason vs Predator.

I liked The Prestige a lot more than the Illusionist - it was grittier and far more interesting

unless your name is Scorsese, Spielberg or Eastwood.

lets not forget the stinkbomb that was 1941.