Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no one day is more loved by the UTG staff than Halloween.

31 Days Of Halloween has been a recurring daily feature that we’ve run throughout the month of October. The hope and goal of this column has been to supply every UTG reader with a daily horror movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your Halloween festivities. We’ve be watching every film the day it’s been featured and we hope you’ve been following along at home. With October coming to a close and tomorrow being the big day, we hope you’ve enjoyed our recommendations for horror and Halloween themed films!

Day 31: Halloween (1978)

There is no film quite like John Carpenter’s slasher classic, Halloween. Though virtually every horror film released based in and around that subgenre has borrowed from it since its debut, not a single feature has been able to surpass the sheer genius that is this horror masterpiece. What exactly is it that sets Michael Meyers’ thirst for blood beyond the rest? You could ask a dozen people and probably receive a dozen separate answers. So instead of trying to summarize what makes this film essential for this magical day, let me tell you why it matters to me (hopefully without rambling for too long).

I cannot recall when horror first entered my life, but my mother tells me often that I would experience night terrors as a child that often included me screaming about the killers and monsters I saw on late night movies watched with my father. Nightmare On Elm Street was definitely the first of the genre to win my heart, but I still feel the same uneasy twist in my stomach that has been there since adolescence every time the score from Halloween begins to play, and I take that as my body’s way of reminding me to never underestimate how much a film can impact someone. Michael Meyers is relentless, and just like his endless pursuit of Jamie Lee Curtis, I think we all have something in our lives from time to time we feel we cannot escape. Watching Halloween takes me back to a time when fearing the boogeyman was all that mattered and in some weird way that makes me feel alright about getting older. It’s also scary as hell.

Don’t fret about streaming Halloween, just BUY IT.

Written by: James Shotwell (Twitter)

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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