Halloween Triple Bill: Totally Killer (2023 Nahnatchka Khan) / Dead of Night (1945 Cavalcanti, Dearden Crichton, Hamer) / Halloween (1978 John Carpenter)

Totally Killer is a reasonably imaginative time travel horror film with knowing references to others of the genre, mainly Halloween, a very influential film in many ways. But more on that later. The script (David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, Jen D'Angelo) doesn't make the most of its contemporary commentary on the 1980s - it often isn't funny. And the killer(s) is one of those post-Scream ones who is not only impossibly invulnerable but fast - at least Michael Myers was normal speed.

Dead of Night. Moments to love. The way Anthony Baird slowly walks up to the the hospital window, all sound having disappeared. That slow track in on Ralph Michael as he tells Googie Withers he must be going mad. Sally Ann Howes' mother bursting in with the film's funniest line. Googie seeing the haunted room. Douglas Slocombe's eerie lake. That final look of Michael Redgrave - totally deranged. Georges Auric - demented brass.

It's quite funny how sanguine and stiff-lipped everyone is about their and the others' ghost stories.

"Milk and sugar, Mr Craig?" I love his expression.

But the line that stuck in my head this time was Basil Radford's - "Must count the cups, darling. Yes, always count the cups before going to bed."

Halloween started the trend for masked serial killers and invincible ones, and should be commended for keeping so much of the action in daylight and for its incredibly steady Panaflex camera - was it superior to Steadicam? And John Carpenter's brilliant score.