There's evil goings on at the Silver Shamrock novelty factory, makers of the coolest Halloween masks ever. The owner has had it with all this trick or treat business and plots to put the dark ages back into Halloween and make it considerably less child-safe. Likin' it so far.

Two more days to Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween
Two more days to Hall-o-ween, Sil-veeeer Shamrock!

dA da da da dA da da, da da da, dA da da...

Yeah well they didn't say Michael Myers would be in it did they? This used to be one of the most reviled horror movies of all time, presumeably because people lined up to see Michael Myers and got Tom Atkins instead. But we all love Tom Atkins now, and this movie is finally getting its due as a minor Halloween classic. I guess this was originally supposed to be the start of a regular anthology franchise of Halloween movies, and as much as I like Mike I sort of hope that happened in some parallel universe, and bizarro me is watching John Carpenter's Halloween 13: Razor Blades In Candy or something.

I really like today's badguy, who-is-pure-e-vil by the way in case you just gotta have some Doctor Loomis. Instead of the usual snarling psycho, this Conal Cochran is quite affable and gentlemanly in his villainous pursuits, delivering lines like "in the old days the hills ran red with the blood of children and animals" in the same tone a kindly grandfather might reminisce about bobbing for apples as a lad.

Pretty damn dark too. How can you not like a movie to which the words "bloody mass slaughter of children" can be applied? The contrast with the happy jingle and little tykes in their masks having innocent Halloween fun is a perfect cold scratchy, and the shadowy image of trick-or-treaters silhouetted against a red sky is probably my all time favourite movie poster. I can just sit and look at this and imagine a whole night of Halloween spookyness, being a kid again and getting chased by a monster or something out there.

Yeah there's some candy corn in the trick or treat bag too. There's a tacked-on sex subplot (women can't resist that Tom Atkins 'stache), and I can think of about a million creepier things they could have found at the factory than robots for god's sake. The robot fight action scenes at the end are like someone turning on a blender for fifteen minutes while I'm trying to watch a movie.

In spite of its faults I still need to see this every couple Octobers with Jack-O-Lanterns lit and a pumpkin pie in the oven. It's true the movie isn't packed with great stuff happening every second, but it captures the atmosphere of Halloween night with something sinister going on, and to those who want to holler I'll point out that it has more relevance to Halloween than any of the Michael Myers episodes, as it's actually about the holiday and its dark pagan origins.

Look, Michael Myers and Doctor Loomis were doing other stuff; get over it. You've got like eight other movies with Michael freaking Myers. Any movie that shows me some bratty kid getting his face eaten off by a Halloween mask right on screen is okay in my book.

One more day to Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween, Hall-o-ween...

CATCHY AIN'T IT? Well, guess I'll go blow my brains out.