Halloween (film)

• Release Date: 1978
• Director(s): John Carpenter
• Writer(s): John Carpenter; Debra Hill
• Principal Actors and Roles: Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode); Donald Pleasence (Dr. Sam Loomis); Sandy Johnson (Judith Margaret Myers); Nancy Kyes (Annie Brackett); Tony Moran (Michael Myers)

Halloween (1978) is a classic horror film directed by American filmmaker John Carpenter, who is also known for Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982). Halloween was an early, noteworthy film in the slasher genre, and it became a model for many later horror movies in addition to spawning its own franchise with multiple sequels and content in other media. Halloween is an original story whose screenplay is credited to Carpenter and his producer Debra Hill. Carpenter not only wrote and directed the film, but also composed the score.

Plot

The film is set in the fictional small town of Haddonfield in Illinois. On the night of Halloween in 1963, a young boy named Michael Myers wanders through his house dressed in a clown costume and mask. He searches for his older sister, who is babysitting him while their parents are out. However, rather than watching her younger brother, the teenager has been engaging in sexual activity with her boyfriend. Young Myers finds a large kitchen knife and kills his sister with it. This initial sequence is filmed from the boy’s point of view, and the identity of the killer is not revealed until the parents find him standing outside of their home with the bloody knife in his hands.

Myers is institutionalized, and the story picks up fifteen years later in 1978 on the night before Halloween. Now a young adult, Myers escapes from the facility where he has lived since he was a child. His doctor, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), begins to pursue him, fearing Myers intends to kill again. Loomis surmises that his patient will likely return to his hometown.

In Haddonfield the next day, three high school girls discuss their plans for that Halloween night. When one of the teenagers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), notices a strange man following them, she grows nervous. However, her friends Lynda and Annie do not take the threat seriously. The man is Myers, who is wearing a blue jumpsuit and a blank-faced mask that he never takes off. As a result of his faceless appearance, Carpenter dubbed the character The Shape in the film’s credits.

That evening, the three friends are babysitting in different houses on the same street. After night falls, Myers begins to stalk his victims. He kills Annie, Lynda, and Lynda’s boyfriend Bob one-by-one. He uses different methods to commit the crimes, including stabbing one of his victims with a kitchen knife. Laurie is the only teenager who remains out of harm’s way for most of the evening. She is babysitting a boy named Tommy Doyle and looking after her friend Annie’s charge Lindsay Wallace at the Doyle’s home. Tommy spies Myers carrying the corpse of Annie, his first victim of the night, on the street outside. He warns Laurie that the two of them may be in danger from the bogeyman, but Laurie does not believe his story.

Later, Laurie receives a phone call from Lynda as Myers strangles the girl to death with a telephone cord. Not understanding what is happening and becoming concerned, she puts the children to bed. Then Laurie leaves the house to find her two friends. Entering the Wallace house, she discovers the bodies of Annie, Lynda, and Bob, which Myers has arranged. The killer attacks her, but she escapes.

Myers follows Laurie when she runs back to the Doyle home. After several struggles, she stabs him and believes he’s dead when he collapses to the floor. Laurie tells the children, who have been hiding in a closet, to go find help. As they run screaming from the house, Myers stands up, attacks Laurie again, and tries to strangle her to death.

Dr. Loomis, who had been searching for Myers, enters the house as the screaming children exit. Finding Myers strangling Laurie on the second floor, he shoots his patient. Myers tumbles off a balcony and falls to the ground below. Laurie is safe. However, when Loomis glances over the balcony, he finds Myers has disappeared in spite of his seemingly mortal injuries.

Significance

Halloween was a box office hit and became one of the most profitable independently produced films in history. As a result of its success, a number of movie sequels followed. The first, Halloween II, was released in 1981, with Carpenter and Hill producing while Rick Rosenthal directed. It continues the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, the killer who pursued her in the first movie. This film added to the backstory of the original film’s plot by revealing that Laurie was Myers’ younger sister. After he was placed in an institution, the infant Laurie was adopted by the Strode family, and she was never told the story of her birth parents or Myers, her older, biological brother. In Halloween II, she learns the truth about her connection to the killer.

The next film in the series, Halloween III, focused on a different storyline, one that did not include any of the characters or plot elements of the first two movies, as Carpenter and Hill envisioned an anthology series united only by a Halloween night setting. It was a financial failure at the box office. As a result, subsequent sequels prominently restored Myers as a prominent character: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), and Halloween: Resurrection (2002). Donald Pleasence reprised his role for the first three of these sequels, while Jamie Lee Curtis reprised hers in the final two. These films received largely negative critical response, but some eventually earned a degree of cult-classic following. Various novelizations, comic books, and other media and merchandise were also released that expanded the franchise over the years.

Halloween was later remade by director and musician Rob Zombie; the new version was released in 2007. Unlike Carpenter’s film, the remake focused on Michael Myer’s progression from childhood to adult killer. It spawned a 2009 sequel that also was directed by Zombie.

In 2018 a new film called Halloween was released, directed by David Gordon Green. It was positioned as a direct sequel to the 1978 film, ignoring all developments in the other installments and effectively rebooting the franchise. Curtis again portrays Laurie Strode, now an adult and still haunted by her encounter with Myers—who escapes after forty years in a psychiatric hospital, setting up another showdown. The film received an enthusiastic response from critics, with many calling it true to the spirit of the original, and it was also a major box-office hit, earning over $255 million worldwide. Capitalizing on this success, two further Green-directed sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, were soon announced. (Halloween Kills was originally set for release in 2020 but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.) Following the delays, Halloween Kills was released in 2021 and functions as a direct sequel to the 2018 film, while Halloween Ends was released in 2022 and concludes the story of Myers and Strode. Curtis returned for both films.

Meanwhile, several elements in the original Halloween became common tropes, or themes, in the slasher genre, which includes Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Examples of these tropes are an unstoppable killer, the death of sexually promiscuous characters, and a virginal heroine who becomes the sole survivor. Some critics have faulted this genre for a reliance on sadism, extreme violence, and misogyny.

Halloween also launched Curtis's career as a major movie star. Initially she played similar parts in other slasher films, including Prom Night (1980) and Terror Train (1980), becoming the face of these types of movies before branching out into other genres. Notably, Curtis was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho (1960), directed by famed filmmaker directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which is considered the prototype of the slasher film.

In the years following Halloween’s release, Carpenter directed other horror movies, including The Fog (1980) and Christine (1983). He also created works in other genres, such as the science fiction film Starman (1984) and the action/adventure movie Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Carpenter left an indelible stamp on the horror genre with Halloween, which has become a classic and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2006.

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