Halloween (1978 film)

Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The plot centers around a mental patient Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his babysitting teenage sister on Halloween night when he was six years old. Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown, where he stalks a female babysitter and her friends, while under pursuit by his psychiatrist.
Filming took place in Southern California in May 1978, before premiering in October, where it grossed $70 million, becoming one of the most profitable independent films of all time. Primarily praised for Carpenter's direction and score, many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974).
Halloween is now considered one of the greatest and most influential horror films ever made. It spawned a film franchise comprising eleven films which helped construct an extensive backstory for its antagonist Michael Myers, sometimes narratively diverging entirely from previous installments. A direct sequel of the film was released in 1981. A remake was released in 2007, which was followed by a sequel in 2009. An eleventh installment, which serves as a direct sequel to the original film that retcons all previous sequels, was released in 2018; this was followed by two direct sequels: Halloween Kills (2021) and the upcoming Halloween Ends (2022). Additionally, a novelization, a video game and comic book series have been based on the film. In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Category:Films