This weeks "I'm sure some Hollywood studio idiot has considered this as an actual film title" battle is between the psycho killer big boys (with respectful nods to Night of The Hunter & Peeping Tom).

PSYCHO
Directorial genius Alfred Hitchcock's story of a nutter with a knife and a mother "problem". Starring the Boston Strangler's wife. Features some of the best film music ever.

HALLOWEEN
Occaisional directorial genius John Carpenter's story of a nutter with a knife and a sister "problem". Starring the Boston Strangler's daughter. Features some of the best film music ever.

Vote, vote, vote!

Psycho for me, as much as I like Halloween, I've always found Psycho to be a far more interesting, disturbing and entertaining film. I think it's the 'indestructible' nature of Michael in the Halloween films; you don't think that someone like that could possibly exist, whereas Norman Bates is a realistic person who could (and indeed has) existed, and that is genuinely scary.

Hmmm, neither are my favourite horror films. Despite my love of Jamie Lee I'm going for 'Psycho' because, well it's better 'innit? I first saw 'Halloween' as a child and remember being a bit bored to be honest, I suppose it was just too slow paced and predictable for me. Of course I didn't know it had defined the slasher genre (which it did) I was just a kid looking for scares - and that's ultimately how horror films should be judged.

Man with wigs are creepy, but Michael is the godfather of killing big breasted premarital coitus making girls. (But Jason Vorhees is cooler.)

Oh dear!

Tough one! I'll go for Halloween. It was the perennial favourite in high school - some good times!

Don't frickin' Oh-dear me! What do you want? He IS cooler?! What?

Oh dear, oh dear!

WHAT?!

Throw me a frickin bone.

Tough one, but I'm going to go with Halloween because it's a young, dumb and full of come up-front slashtastic bloodletting fest.

Y'get meh?

*bone-throwing*



(fits the chocolate-dog)

Well, if you are talking about a man in a hockey mask and overalls looking cooler than a man in overalls and a William Shatner mask, maybe. Cooler than a man who looks like a badly advised tranny...probably.

But film wise...not a single Friday 13th is close to being as half as good as either Halloween or Psycho (Jason X is close though)

Never seen either of 'em . . .

Psycho, My 2nd favorite Hitchcock, mainly due to the way it creeped me out the first time I saw it, Holloween is very enjoyable but if I was gonna watch onenow Psycho would go straight on.

Oh come on! Really, really hard.

While I want to pick Psycho since it's older (ie more classic), Halloween is just so cool. I can't watch Halloween without at least once saying how great a movie it is. I could toss a coin.....but I will go with Psycho since it is the first slasher picture (& Carpenter borrowed the holiday slasher film idea from Bob Clark anyway).

That he did. And I'm a total Carpenter geek, but Black Christmas came first...

Psycho it is, by the thinnest of cracks on Ma Bates's shrivelled face.

To be honest i prefer halloween.

Psycho by a long stretch for me. Thought Halloween was a weak Carpenter effort, never did like his slasher/horror films much.

So what is your fav Hitchcock, by the way?

I think, the first Friday can match Halliween (and even Psycho) in means of suspense and creep-factor. On a lower production-level thought. But that the Fridays are the ugly, nasty cousin to the Halloweens makes it more fun for me. Fritday doesn't take itself s oseriously. And so it's the nasty one, it has a lot more guts-and-gore. And since Halloween and Friday are cousin, Psycho is their (sex-changed?) mother and Black Christmas the alcoholic father.

And Stepfather is maybe the stepfather?

I've not seen Halloween - and so shall have to rent it before I cast a ballot. Psycho was excellent. I saw it for the first time in 1997, and I was amazed that in spite of its age, and the fact that the music and the shower scene are pop culture staples, that it still managed to creep me out.

The first Friday the 13th is no doubt a classic, but it's just not of the same caliber as Halloween. I consider Friday the 13th a B-movie, while Halloween should be a univeral classic that everyone should see. Jason movie are very genre specific.

EVERYTHING Carpenter does (or better to say did) is a B-Movie (with great score). Even Welles Touch of evil was produced as a b-movie and don'T tell that is is not a must-see. besides almost everything Spielberg does is the biggest production of all times, when it's produced and most of it is shite (especially Saving Private Ryan). And then there are people like Peter Jackson who produces and directs only movies with a playtime of 3 hours and cost over $ 200.000.000 (Kong costs $ 207.000.000 by the way). AND we may not forget his past with things like Dead Alive & co. and those are must-sees AND they got a really low production-level. (Even for Films produced in New Zealand these days.)

No doubt, both are absolute classic films...films that are so well made that they elevated themselves beyond the psychopath/slasher genre they were key in creating. By no means were they the first (Night Of The Hunter, Peeping Tom, Blood Feast all could be seen as influences) but they are the best.

My vote went to Halloween. Maybe because I saw it before Psycho. But mainly because it was the first film I saw as a kid which got me interested in "why" a film was good. I could tell it was simple, but I wanted to know why it worked.

Both are "directors" films - in anyone elses hands they would have been crap. But I love Halloween not just for the thrill it gave me watching it, but the way it used both lighting and music brilliantly to crank up the tension.

The film scared me shitless at the time. Suppose it was empathy thing. Not much chance as a youngster that I was going to rent a room in a secluded motel and get stabbed by a man in a dress. But a mad stranger could easily terrorise you in your own home or neighbourhood.

Also, I think Halloween is more influential than Psycho. Look how many psycho/slasher films followed in the 18 years after Psycho, then look how many followed in the 18 after Halloween. It may be because Hitchcock was so good that nobody thought they could or would dare follow in his footsteps. But, Halloween did make distributors (and studios) realise that low budget horror could be a money maker - Halloween was the biggest grossing indie at the time, by a long shot, and it could be said that it opened the floodgates not just for horror films, but independent film as well. Also, it was the first time the steadicam was utilised to great effect.

Both were films made by men that knew how to work an audience, and both were made by men that realised that blood did not equal horror. Halloween, just pips it for me.

I voted Psycho as its just so well-constructed. Imagine seeing it when it was released and having no knowledge of all that has since being subject to parody - how the first half-an-hour is played like a crime thriller and as she arrives at the motel it becomes more sinister. Then the shower scene! The silence after her death! The attack on the detective at the top of the stairs. The final shots!

Okay, both films have great music, camera work, etc., but I never found Halloween particularly creepy or scary and I don't really like Jamie Lee Curtis in it or Michael Myers as a bogeyman (Shatner mask or no).

Plus Psycho was the first American film to feature a shot inside a toilet bowl as it was flushing. Yes!

If we're asking favourite Hitchcock, then favourite Carpenter? Personally, Dark Star is brilliant, The Thing's brilliantly twisted, but Big Trouble in Little China will always have a special place for me.

I really have to agree on everything you said, Sostie, especially those points above. These are the things that go through my mind too. Like I said, I basically would have to flip a coin to determine which one is my favorite of these two.

Vertigo.

Mine will be Halloween, probably; and Assault on precinct 13 and the Thing as a all time fav.

A very tough choice for me. Both excellent films. Both groundbreaking.
In the end I opted for Halloween. Purely because it was the cheap independant film that made John Carpenter, where as Hitchcock was already an incredibly successful director when he did Psycho.

i went for psycho as, iam ashamed to say i have never seen a halloween film

Of course Hitch was good, but they did three followings to the original Psycho, so they haven't been to scared by his reputation. And there would have been another part, when Norman Bates (what the fuck is his real name?) wouldn't have died.

And Psycho was also a real low-budget success. Hitch wanted to create a nasty b-movie-style shocker. That's why he did it in black and white and with only two or three weeks on the shooting schedule. So he could do a sleezy movie and besides break with every convention (killing the leading role after half the movie, the toilet etc.etc.).

By the way:

Who is the MAN?

I know! When I say the films that followed Halloween I'm not talking about the sequels...I'm talking about the genre.
There was 18 years between Psycho & Halloween (thats why I picked that number from out of the blue). What I was saying that Halloween may have been more of an influence in that more stalk'n'slash films followed that than did Psycho. The Psycho sequels were made after the success of the wave of films that followed Halloween. They were made then probably because a) the imitators that followed Halloween showed there was a market for such films, b) lazy studios who thought a quick buck could be made from sequels and c) the video boom.

d) the rights for the story/characters got avaiaable again?

And I don't think, there could have been a genre after the (exact) pattern of Psycho, coz it wants to break the genre-conventions, so it would be illogical to create something, that would work this way and be a genre for itself.

With nothing to do on Saturday night, I decided to get into the spirit of things, and so I rented Halloween and watched it for the first time. It was a decidedly underwhelming experience. It wasn't the least bit frightening at all. And while I know that horror films - and slasher films in particular - have come a long way since then, I expected at least a couple of thrills from a movie that's frequently touted as "the daddy" of it's genre. Psycho at least managed to creep me out, so it gets my vote.

*fashism* OUT! *fashism*

Both shite. Psycho the better of the two, but still, both shite.