Not many movies stand the test of time. Even fewer horror movies do. Horror movies are notoriously cheap on production and quality, and viewed ten or twenty years later, they're often more campy than chilling. You could actually get a bunch of friends your age together at Halloween, sit down with a lot of beverages (I'm a teetollar but you go ahead and have yourself a cold one) and crisp snacks, and spend a whole night howling and slapping your thighs while watching some of those old howlers.

At some point, you'll call it a night (or morning of All Saints Day) and stand around the messed-up living room, going, 'How the hell did we ever find these things scary?' Call it the 20-year curse of low-budget horror movies, or call it just a nightmare on horror film production street, it's an unremmiting law of the genre that these flicks offer diminishing returns as time goes by.

But a few horror movies manage to beat the rap. They still manage to work the same cruel magic on you, still manage to make you jump in your seat (watch out, oh crap, you got brewskie all over Marie's new couch covers, damnit, Tim!), wince a time or two, drop your jaw and mouth-breathe in anticipation, and even, at their finest moments, scare the bejeesus out of you.

One of those rarities happens to be John Carpenter's Halloween movies. Not the whole 8-movie series, or hmm, is it 9?, but just three choice ones that I think still stand the test of time, and can give you a jump or two on that beer-stained couch.

We all know the basic drill: On Halloween night in 1963, six year old Michael Myers brutally murdered his sister in the small town of Haddonfield Illinois. Now, 15 years later, on Halloween night 1978, he's escaped from a mental institution and decides to swing by the old home town to visit the old house, maybe stick a few trick or treaters while he's around, just for old time's sake.

His old doc, Dr. Sam Loomis (played by Donald Pleasance back when he still had some turf on his roof, comes to warn Haddonfield Police that Michael might like to offer a more violent variation of the old trick-or-treat game, but of course, in the finest tradition of classic horror films, nobody takes him too seriously him until it's too late--way too late, halfway through the sequel in fact!