Halloween (1978) Director: John Carpenter Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, PJ Soles, Nancy Loomis "I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil." (Dr Loomis, Halloween ) There are a sacred handful of films that will forever be considered horror classics, films that revolutionised the genre and influenced the creation of countless others that followed in its wake. Look inside the wallets of Night Of The Living Dead , Psycho , The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and you'll find they're all card-carrying members of this elite club, but John Carpenter's Halloween was the one who went to the printing shop and had the cards designed. Shite metaphors aside, the influence Halloween had on horror is one that continues to this day, largely because it was the first film to successfully introduce the slasher genre to the mainstream public. Woody Allen wasn't very inconspicuous when he tried to be a ghost While it's often wrongly credited as the first ever slasher movie (the likes of Black Christmas , The Driller Killer and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came before it), there's no denying that Halloween was the first to nail it and the one that would inspire the endless stream of low-budget slashers that followed it (a stream that would flow right through to the present day). Its simple premise -- a babysitter