Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter preempts the first- and third-person perspective sandbox video games with his original Halloween, a 1978 movie in which the camera hangs back behind the residents of Haddonfield and follows them as they wander in and out of homes and up and down streets, like we are watching Carpenter's playthrough of Silent Hill, starting in the opening scene with Michael as a child in Halloween costume navigating a circuitous path into a home to start his long career of killing; then, fifteen years later, we follow Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie as she wanders around the township with student books in hand, friends in tow, unaware that murderous Michael, now 21, has escaped an asylum and is himself wandering around with a camera hanging just behind his shoulder - the net effect, not just dread for the minute all this peaceful ambling turns murderous and chaotic, is a sense by movie's end you have almost revealed the whole map of the township.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Cat and the Canary (1978)

This 1978 movie adaptation of John Willard's 1922 play, about house guests and a deranged killer gathered in a mansion for a will reading, eventually finds its feet and for the last half at least becomes the comedy-thriller it wants to be (it wants to be a scene-by-scene remake of the 1939 movie - look at Michael Callan in the lead doing his best Bob Hope impersonation) but it is as though at the outset the makers were intending some kind of update - the opening shot suggests a psycho thriller and sets the wrong tone altogether and early scenes (the hi-tech announcement at the dinner party, for example) are humourless and go on forever - how many times do we need to see the home-help moving in and out of the old footage? - and weak performances - Edward Fox barely registers - and the 70s aesthetics further detract from the fun.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

The second film adaptation of Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers (after the first in 1956) is this terrifically creepy and frequently startling 1978 version with Donald Sutherland,  Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, and Brooke Adams playing Public Health inspectors and friends who investigate when, seemingly overnight, San Francisco (its mud bath bathhouses, its bookshops, its restaurants, workplaces and streets) become overrun with people who, according to their loved ones, aren't really them at all!

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Medusa Touch (1978)

There's a murder attempt in the opening scene - a man watching a news story about astronauts is bludgeoned - and then, as the victim lies in hospital, an investigation is launched which reveals in flashbacks from the man's life the queer paranormal context of the crime, in this gripping 1978 film, part science-fiction, part police procedural, and part supernatural thriller with Richard Burton beautifully playing the tortured central character both sympathetic and terrifying, like a grown-up Damien.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile (1978)

Agatha Christie wrote Death On The Nile while staying in Aswan, Egypt at the Old Cataract Hotel overlooking the Nile, in the 30s, so watching this film version of her book with its rich period detail - cream linen suits, cloche hats, pearls, pith helmets, cravats, stockings, against the dust and dry of Egyptian ruins or in the colonial opulence of saloon bars and cigar lounges - it is easy to imagine Christie is in it or that the film depicts a moment in her life, and beneath the stiff social propriety of the British characters aboard The Karnak, a river paddle boat to Cairo, runs a terrific thread of suspense as someone kills off several of those aboard; it is up to Peter Ustinov's Hercule Poirot to determine who the murderer is among characters played by the likes of Mia Farrow, David Niven, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith and Angela Lansbury.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Flight of the Navigator (1978)

A boy's eight year disappearance turns out to have been spent flying around space in a silver almond talking to a goofy Paul Reubens-voiced spaghetti strainer, in this kids sci-fi from Disney, the third act of which plays out just a smidge too much like a geography lesson.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Superman (1978)

Grandly staged with big name stars including Marlon Brando and Terence Stamp, and with big special effects, this first big budget superhero movie is an enduring best, unhurriedly telling the origins of the all-American Superman and how he saves the world from a trio of galactic invaders under the command of General Zod.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS