I wrote and first published the following review on April 23, 1999. I gave it the title "A Timeless Work of Art". It suffered a major rewriting for this republication; the original text was poorly written, and some of it did not make much sense . I tried to express the same ideas of the original text, as much as possible.
First of all, let me state that this is a stunningly good movie in every imaginable aspect you could pick, and one of the high points of all human art in all human times. I'd like to pinpoint an overlooked aspect in it: the characters' ethical standards as might be revealed by an analysis of their deeds. Take, for instance, Tootie. Is this lovely little girl in fact a murderer, a sadist and a morbid soul? The film surely shows those possible aspects of her personality in a complacent way: the trolley accident she causes is not shown, we only hear of it. And the other characters do things that might make them as well be seen as vile creatures: take Esther and the ball carnet filled with the names of the local freaks. It is only too emblematic that Halloween is their celebration of preference.
There is too much to be said about this masterpiece in too narrow a space.
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