Mark Walker at 2013-04-06 16:29:51:
Me! It is the grandaddy of the "slasher" horrors and one of a few, truly unsettling horror films, not least because, despite some supernatural overtones, this is very much taking place in the real world.
However, I do think that films like this and the truly terrifying Texas Chainsaw Massacre, are victims of their own success and may have lost some of their power with current generations of horror fans. And this is purely because they are so good. Everything that came after them tried to copy them and follow the formula (some things never change). So trying to to introduce them to a new audience, the shocks are lessened as we are already expecting them. How many films after Halloween used a first person POV for their killer? Or how many involve a boogeyman that keeps coming back after being shot....or who disappears after you think you have won?
So it is a shame that, I think, a lot of these older, classic horrors (and I am sure it is the same for other genres) are probably now seen as derivative and of lower quality that some of the more glossy, bloody and less imaginative current crop.
So we need to get out and educate the world about the leaders in horror and help people understand how the horror genre would be a sorry place without them!