LIVE BLOG OF ORIGINAL HALLOWEEN (30TH ANNIVERSARY)



Great opening titles with the ultra-slow zoom in on the Jack O' Lantern flickering like it was caught in a '70s energy crisis.

"Haddonfield, Illinois Halloween Night, 1963"
Didn't one of the characters in When Harry Met Sally (maybe Carrie Fischer?) say they were from Haddonfield (NJ) during that scene at the double dinner date? What is with towns named Haddonfield giving birth to unspeakable creatures? (I have a wagon wheel coffee table.)

Wow - they weren't upstairs very long - what happened? That guy's going to be talking to therapists the rest of his life about how premature ejaculation resulted in a murder.

It's nice when a boy greets his parents upon their return home at night. (Something we've lost since '63 , apparently.)

Jump forward to present day ('78): Donald Pleasance and an actress dressed like a nurse smoking and driving.

Pleasance is focused - he's gunning for a Best Supporting Actor nom here and he has an inner intensity that can only come from the knowledge that he's not going to get it.

"The evil is gone!"

Is there anywhere better than the Midwest (actually southern California in these scenes) for Halloween? I think not.

Jamie Lee Curtis' first appearance.

Pleasance is jacked up!

The heavy-breathing (anyone see that Star Wars villain before filming this?) creepy escapee guy is driving around in a car that separates the driver from the back with a wire-mesh cage, like an L.A. taxi. Except heavy-breathing creepy escapee guy (HBCEG) is friendlier than most L.A. cabbies.

Jamie Lee ("Laurie") walks home with her friends, P.J. Soles and "Annie". The girls are carrying a lot of loose books home. Apparently, bags and knapsacks had yet to be invented.

Kids are trick-or-treating at 3:30/4:00 in the afternoon? WTF?

This movie is a bit Hitchcockian and a little like Antonioni - in the sense of challenging what characters (and viewers) see is what they "really" see.

Although this is Jamie Lee's most feminine movie, she's already got a bit of a mannish vibe going on.

Let's go visit the grave site - surely nothing will be amiss here...

Great shot and music choice with the girls in the car.
No additional cowbell needed.

The town cop (and dad of one girl) fails to notice that the girls' car smells like a Cheech & Chong tour bus.

Hardware store break-in: " Probably kids. All they took was Halloween masks, some rope, and knives."

Yeah, probably. But there's one kid whose Captain Kirk costume has been ruined.

The light just jumped about 2 hours in one cut: from almost sunset to pitch black.

Visit to the now-reputedly-haunted house from the prologue. Someone's been eating a dog. Pleasance: "This isn't a man!"

They're watching "The Thing" - which John Carpenter would remake a few years later.

Annie is in the garage doing laundry... "Paul, is this one of your cheap tricks? Oh, guess not..."
Annie, it's just the dream police, they live inside of your head.

Why aren't these kids trick-or-treating? Were they in the 3:30 group and have since showered and changed?

53 minutes in...(SPOILER ALERT!) someone's finally going to bite it. Why is there condensation on the windshield? Maybe because Darth Vader is meditating in the back seat.

Donald Pleasance is hanging out in front of the old haunted house like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. He likes to scare kids: "Lonnie! Get your ass away from there!"

Now we have the skeptical sheriff dismissing the warnings: "More fancy talk." They don't like the fancy talk in small town Illinois.

The bed sheet ghost costume with Bob's glasses is an iconic image from the film. Who ya gonna call?

Jamie Lee's going over to the house where bad things await. DON'T GO IN THERE JAMIE!

Ah, we're in the initial mode of "Alright you guys - joke's over!" "C'mon you guys - cut it out."

Don't go upstairs, Jamie - what are you doing?

The orange-ish lit space under a door - an enduring Hollywood favorite.

Under attack, Jamie runs door-to-door looking for help or collecting for UNICEF. Maybe people think it's just Halloween pranksters...oh, the irony!

The phone lines are dead...ah, the world before cells.

Putting the knife down and relaxing: worst idea in movie history.

Jamie's in the closet (literally, not figuratively - we think) - looking for something to wear in The Fog.

Pleasance - in a fit of rage knowing he will never be recognized for his supurb acting work - shoots HBCEG, aka The Boogeyman, but yet again no one seems to want to finish him off by further shots or, I dunno, decapitation. This guy makes Rasputin look like a quitter.

Classic ending with Carpenter's musical score and visually revisiting many of the main scenes' houses and locales.

This super-low-budget marvel was followed by about a dozen sequels that had all the charm of Dane Cook wise-cracking his way through a death camp.

Fifteen out of eighty-six football players failed street drug tests recently taken at the University of North Texas.
The 17% drug-using figure is believed to be the lowest college rate ever recorded.

Bud Selig wanted to call Game 5 of the World Series a tie Monday night, but then relented and said whoever wins the completed game Tuesday gets to host the All-Star Game next year.

The Sarah Palin hockey curse continued as she dropped the first puck for the St. Louis Blues 4-0 home ice loss to the L.A. Kings and Blues goalie Manny Legace injured himself stumbling on the ceremonial carpet rolled out for the V.P. candidate.
It's becoming the worst sports omen by a politician since 1984 when Walter Mondale threw out the season-opening pitches for the San Francisco Giants and Milwaukee Brewers.

News outlets said the New York Knicks' Isiah Thomas was rushed to hospital after overdosing on sleeping pills.
The report was incorrect: turns out he had just been reviewing tape of Knicks games.

A photo of Columbus Blue Jacket Mike Commodore lying in bed wearing only boxer briefs and covered in $3000 cash surfaced on the Internet - the same day NHL officials were in the Ohio capitol advising players on how to steer clear of embarrassing situations.
Commodore's defense should have been pointing out there wasn't a woman in the photo with him.
Unlike the NHL, he wasn't expanding into inappropriate southern places.

VP candidate Sarah Palin will drop the ceremonial first puck Friday night before the St. Louis Blues game against the LA Kings.
Do the Blues really want to to do this after the Philadelphia Flyers have gone winless since Sarah P did the same for their opener?
Demand for tickets for a Palin rally Friday morning in Springfield, MO have caused the event to move from a university arena to a Bass Pro Shops parking lot.
So the hockey rinks there hold fewer people than a fishing store parking lot?

A survey of NBA GMs revealed the LA Lakers as their pick to win the league championship.
Joe Biden predicts it will be the Seattle Supersonics.

World Boxing Council president Jose Sulaiman denounced mixed martial arts and its fans,
saying it had sullied the name of his sport and that "boxing fans have class".
Sounds like he's nostalgic for those innocent days of yesteryear featuring Don King, Bob Arum and Mike Tyson.

Just a few hours after losing to Ohio State 45-7 Saturday night, members of the Michigan State football team reportedly got into a brawl with the Spartans hockey team, sending one skater to the hospital.
Whatever happened to "leaving it all on the field"?

Controversy over Brett Favre allegedly having phoned Detroit Lions coaches last month to offer insight into the Green Bay Packers offense prior to their matchup.
This begs the question: who has been calling the Lions opponent every week?

Tampa Bay Rays upper management looks like they probably got ID'd when purchasing the champagne for their pennant celebration.

Penn State beat Michigan for the first time since 1996.
This was so long ago, some of UM's latest recruits were just getting out of diapers - and Joe Paterno was just getting into his.

Michael Lewis' nonfiction bestseller "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" is being developed as a motion picture possibly starring Brad Pitt.
What's next: is Bill James' agent shopping around old Baseball Abstracts?

The Chicago Blackhawks fired coach Denis Savard after just 4 games of the new NHL season.
From a season-time frame perspective, this is the equivalent of an NFL coach getting fired during the second half of the opener.
Or less time than it takes Al Davis to wash a track suit.

Barack Obama has taken out billboard ads inside EA Sports online video games.
John McCain is firing back during the World Series with scoreboard and outfield ads in Yankee Stadium.

Researchers say bullying in the workplace has become such a big problem in Canada they have launched a website to help people fight back.
The first few people to join were members of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Bad news for Kwame Brown: the NBA announced it is eliminating 80 jobs in the U.S.

Have you seen a blocked punt more all over it than the Cardinals-Cowboys in OT Sunday?
I've had shoe shines with less contact.

On a wild day in college football, Nos. 1, 3 and 4 fell.
It was like the dream scenario that never materialized for Robert Wagner in the Austin Powers movies.

O.J. Simpson's lawyers cited judicial errors and insufficient evidence Friday in seeking a new trial.
Simpson's appeal for a new trial alleges prosecutors improperly allowed the removal of two prospective jurors.
The part of the juror screening questionnaire I love is this gem: "Are you aware of any previous O.J. Simpson trials?"
This ensures that his jury will be made up of cavemen, theoretical particle physics researchers and citizens of North Korea.

Evander Holyfield has been offered a title fight in Germany with WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev in December.
What - was Kimbo Slice unavailable?

Barry Bonds was the honorary chair of Tuesday night's annual lighting of the Macy's Christmas tree in San Francisco.
Next month, Mark McGwire will lead the traditional Easter Egg hunt of pills on the BALCO's front lawn.

Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin will drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff at the Philadelphia Flyers season opener Saturday night.
Hope she does better than her previous experience refereeing hockey players.

A California woman has been charged with stalking LA Lakers forward Luke Walton.
She has done what no New York Knick has been able to: closely shadow an NBA player.

A Toronto investment firm executive is the #1 suspect in a series of local bank robberies.
It's the region's biggest recent financial crime outside of the Maple Leafs and their season ticket holders.

Notre Dame may be unranked after 4-1 for the first time ever, but coach Charlie Weis was ranked #1 by South Bend/Goshen, IN buffet restaurant owners in their annual "Most Feared Customer" poll.

In an EliteXC MMA bout on CBS Saturday night, Seth Petruzelli TKO'd Kimbo Slice at 14 seconds of the 1st Round.
It's believed to be the fastest collapse on prime-time network TV since the Couric-Palin interview and the Caveman sitcom.

The entire University of Wisconsin band has been suspended from the Badgers big showdown game with Ohio State Saturday night for "inappropriate alcohol use, hazing and sexualized behavior".
There goes a whole week of prepping for their planned halftime show: a tribute to Motley Crue.

The Vancouver Canucks named Roberto Luongo their new captain, despite the NHL not having had a goalie as captain in over 60 years and it being against league rules.
(No, Canucks fans, "Captain Kirk" doesn't count.)
The Canucks are really thinking outside the box: their zamboni driver is running for Transportation Minister.

Investigators ruled that no Chinese gymnasts were underage in Beijing and no medals would be lost.
Lance Armstrong immediately praised the probe and asked that they monitor his 2009 Tour de France campaign.