"Actor: Kyle Richards"

• Halloween | UMD | (17/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Halloween is as pure and undiluted as its title. In the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a teenage baby sitter tries to survive a Halloween night of relentless terror, during which a knife-wielding maniac goes after the town's hormonally charged youths. Director John Carpenter takes this simple situation and orchestrates a superbly mounted symphony of horrors. It's a movie much scarier for its dark spaces and ominous camera movements than for its explicit bloodletting (which is actually minimal). Composed by Carpenter himself, the movie's freaky music sets the tone; and his script (cowritten with Debra Hill) is laced with references to other horror pictures, especially Psycho. The baby sitter is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, the real-life daughter of Psycho victim Janet Leigh; and the obsessed policeman played by Donald Pleasence is named Sam Loomis, after John Gavin's character in Psycho. In the end, though, Halloween stands on its own as an uncannily frightening experience--it's one of those movies that had audiences literally jumping out of their seats and shouting at the screen. ("No! Don't drop that knife!") Produced on a low budget, the picture turned a monster profit, and spawned many sequels, none of which approached the 1978 original. Curtis returned for two more instalments: 1981's dismal Halloween II, which picked up the story the day after the unfortunate events, and 1998's occasionally gripping Halloween H20, which proved the former baby sitter was still haunted after 20 years. --Robert Horton

• House / Halloween | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  House (Dir. Steve Miner 1986): In his obsessive search for his missing child Vietnam veteran Roger Cobb returns to his Aunt's creepy house where his child disappeared. Evil zombies force Roger to relive his nightmares and Roger must battle these spirits in order to save his life and that of his child who is somewhere inside the house... Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (Dir. Dwight H. Little 1988): Psychotic slasher Michael Myers has spent the ten years since his 1978 attack on Laurie Strode in a coma but while being transported from a maximum security institution revives and makes his escape. He returns once again to his former home town of Haddonfield but upon learning that Laurie has reputedly died in a car crash sets his sights instead on his niece Jaime (Danielle Harris). Only one man can stop Michael in his bloody crusade - psychiatrist Doctor Loomis (Donald Pleasence).

• Curfew | DVD | (11/11/2002) from £11.98   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Brothers Ray Don (Wendell Wellman) and Bobby Joe Perkins (John Putch) have long memories. Seven years ago they were sent to prison for the brutal murder of a young girl. Now they've escaped from Death Row and they're determined to avenge themselves on the men who sent them there: the psychiatrist Dr. Franklin Judge Collins and the D.A. Walter Davenport.