Today is the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter’s Halloween. The film helped kick start the slasher film craze of the 1980s and had has 11 installments – nine sequels and a remake that had it’s own sequel.
On Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Meyers murders his older sister. Fifteen years later on October 30, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) arrives at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium where Michael is kept. Dr. Loomis notices that the inmates are loose. Michael Meyers has escaped and is on the loose.
It’s October 31, 1978 – Halloween and Meyers has returned to his hometown and begins stalking Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) throughout the day. Laurie is stuck babysitting Halloween night and while she’s watching young Tommy (Brian Andrews), Michael is murdering her friends.
Carpenter crafts a frightening film and the movie would set the standard for other slashers to come, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and the many many many imitations that followed. A reboot/sequel just hit theatres and is doing well but the original is still the best. Here’s my original post.
