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Jurassic Park (1993)

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  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Director: Steven Spielberg Writers: Michael Crichton & David Koepp, based on the novel by Michael Crichton Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, B.D. Wong, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards Scientists learn how to recreate living dinosaurs via recovered DNA fragments, and a rich entrepreneur uses this knowledge to construct a prehistoric amusement park on a remote island.  He brings in a team to evaluate his living attractions, and from that point forward everything that can go wrong does.  The lean, economical screenplay, by Michael Crichton and David Koepp, does just what it needs to--it moves us efficiently from thrill to thrill.  Only at the very end do the writers get sloppy with an eye roller of an ending reminiscent of the one at the end of Jaws.  In this movie, however, it's really the special effects that matter.  These dinosaurs live and breathe.  I rememb...
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The Night Strangler (The Kolchak Papers #2) (1974)

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HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 by Jeff Rice, adapted from a teleplay by Richard Matheson Carl Kolchak is back on the job, reporting on a series of strangling murders of young women, from whom small amounts of blood are removed.  Conceived as a sequel to the film The Night Stalker, which was the highest rated TV movie of its time, it was adapted by Jeff Rice from an original teleplay by Richard Matheson.  A lot of the book’s appeal comes from Kolchak’s hard-boiled first-person voice.  The ’70s journalism texture helps too—the pre-internet routine of phone calls, shoe-leather, and city politics.  It preserves the energy of the screen version; the voices of Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland rang out in my mind while reading the dialogue of Kolchak and editor Tony Vincenzo, especially during their frequent arguments.  Not everything holds up: the love story plays like an older-man fantasy. I like having Vincenzo back, but the re-introduction of several other familiar faces s...
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