Halloween (1978)

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 film was the first installment in what has become the Halloween franchise. The plot is set in the fictional Midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois. On Halloween night in 1963, a six-year-old Michael Myers dressed in a clown costume murders his older sister by stabbing her with a kitchen knife. Fifteen years later, Michael Myers, age 21, escapes from a psychiatric hospital, returns home, and stalks Laurie Strode and her friends. Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis suspects Michael's intentions, and follows him to Haddonfield to try to prevent him from killing.

Halloween was produced on a budget of $300,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, and $70 million worldwide, equivalent to $250 million as of 2014, becoming one of the most profitable independent films. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Halloween had many imitators and originated several clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s. Unlike many of its imitators, Halloween contains little graphic violence and gore. In 2006, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Some critics have suggested that Halloween may encourage sadism and misogyny by audiences identifying with its villain. Other critics have suggested the film is a social critique of the immorality of youth and teenagers in 1970s America, with many of Myers' victims being sexually promiscuous substance abusers, while the lone heroine is depicted as innocent and pure, hence her survival. Nevertheless, Carpenter dismisses such analyses. Several of Halloween‍ '​s techniques and plot elements, although not founded in this film, have nonetheless become standard slasher movie tropes. Halloween spawned seven sequels and was rebooted by Rob Zombie in 2007. The first sequel to the original movie, Halloween II was released in 1981, three years after its predecessor.

Synopsis

On the night of October 31, 1963, in Haddonfield, Illinois, 6-year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) murders his older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) by stabbing her with a kitchen knife. Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Michael escapes Warren County Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where he had been committed since the murder. He steals the car that was to take him to a court hearing, the intention of which was for him to never be released.

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