Though snobs might balk at the comparison, B-movie maven John Carpenter does have one thing in common with his idol, Howard Hawks: by never condescending to "low" genre material, he often sets the bar by which all future efforts in that genre are judged. Twenty-five years after its theatrical release, Carpenter's Halloween has acquired many reputations: horror-film masterpiece, indie blockbuster, moral parable, and schlock template. Rather than present any one interpretation as holy writ, Anchor Bay Entertainment's handsome double-disc 25th anniversary DVD covers them all, treating the movie milestone with a mix of cultish affection and intellectual respect.

In the disc's exhaustive biographical section, Carpenter claims to "hate pretentious movies," and his mien throughout the commentary track and accompanying documentary - self-deprecating yet utterly self-assured - reflects this attitude. Between these three supplements lies enough blunt insight on independent filmmaking to qualify as a Sundance seminar: Carpenter describes how to wheedle final-cut privileges from financiers (work for points, cap the budget, stay on schedule, stick to the script); co-writer/producer Debra Hill tempers romanticized hindsight with hard-headed economics (the distinctive long takes, for example, were mainly a strategy to minimize coverage setups within the production's punishing schedule); and executive producer Irwin Yablans, who originally pitched his idea to Carpenter as "The Babysitter Murders," extols the unsung virtues of a simple plot. (Halloween was sure to be a hit, he posits, because "everyone has either been a sitter or a baby!")

The bulk of Halloween's reputation, however, stems from its preternaturally precise mise en scene - and interviewees ranging from Curtis to Hill to cinematographer Dean Cundey, ASC wax beatific about Carpenter's compositional acumen. Indeed, it's difficult to cite a film within the last 30 years, horror or otherwise, that makes such insidiously effective use of the widescreen frame - whether in skulking Panaglide shots that draw viewers into The Shape's soulless stare; locked-down tableaux that isolate tiny flickers of evil against a sleepy suburban idyll; or those famous foreground-background juxtapositions that signal an unwitting character's looming doom. Especially notable is the film's purposeful avoidance of so-called "splatter" in favor of relentless suspense. Many filmmakers pompously cite Hitchcock as a visual influence on their work; Halloween is that rare instance wherein the comparison is not only worthy but indisputable (a fact to which the disc's rich, near-flawless transfer pays ample tribute).

Carpenter takes pains to spread the wealth, pointing out the varied contributions he culled from his crew throughout the 20-day shoot. For example, one of The Shape's signature moments - after skewering one victim to a kitchen wall, it stares at the hanging body with its head slightly cocked - was improvised by actor (and future B-film director) Nick Castle. Hill (who also directed some of the film's key transitional scenes) invented an even more dread-drenched image: The Shape, draped in a ghost-white bedsheet, silently regards a giggling, post-coital teen (P.J. Soles) through the eyeglasses of her just-murdered boyfriend. And Carpenter credits Cundey with an ingenious lighting effect that "mimics the way your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness in a room": as Laurie (Curtis) collapses into a corner after finding her friends dead, Cundey slowly raises a small dimmer lamp on the shadow next to her, faintly exposing the ashen face of The Shape just before it strikes.

Additional supplements - radio spots, an international poster gallery, a 10-minute featurette that breathlessly revisits some of the film's key locations - sound more intriguing than they actually are. But the filmmaker biographies are surprisingly non-hagiographic, and computer users can enjoy an interactive peek at Halloween's original screenplay. Nearly as long as the film itself, "Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest" outstays its welcome by about 20 minutes, but contains encyclopedic detail on the film's storied lore - not to mention such priceless bits as Carpenter rationalizing his role in Halloween's lackluster sequels. ("Yeah, I ho'd right out," he admits.) The commentary track combines the director's comments with separately recorded notes by Hill and Curtis, making for occasionally contradictory interpretations of the action, but this "flaw" actually serves as a fascinating illustration of Halloween's pervasive influence over a varied swath of cinematic and sociological spheres. Whether taken as an object lesson in low-budget sleight-of-hand, a cultural document hailing the birth of a genre, or just one hell of a scary movie, Halloween will still seem fresh 25 years from now.

- John Pavlus