Plot info:
On Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers stabs his seventeen-year-old sister Judith with a kitchen knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. He is sent to Smith's Grove-Warren County Sanitarium in Illinois and placed under the care of psychiatrist Sam Loomis. After years of treatment, Loomis begins to suspect that there is more to Myers than meets the eye and plans to have him committed indefinitely. Loomis, sensing that a tremendous amount of rage and emotion stir behind Myers's blank stare, describes Myers as evil. Myers escapes from Smith's Grove while being transferred and returns to Haddonfield. Loomis pursues Myers.
In Haddonfield, Myers stalks Laurie Strode (his younger sister, though this is not revealed until Halloween II). Laurie glimpses a man in a white mask (Michael Myers) from her classroom window, behind a bush while she walks home, and in the clothesline from her bedroom window.
Later in the evening, Laurie meets her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where she is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). After arranging to pick up her boyfriend, Annie sends Lindsey to stay with Laurie at the Doyle house but is murdered by Myers (who had followed them). Tommy sees him carrying Annie's body into the Wallace house and thinks Myers is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses the boy's terror and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Myers later murders Laurie's other friend Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles) and Lynda's boyfriend Robert "Bob" Simms (John Michael Graham) in the empty Wallace house.
Laurie worries after receiving a strange phone call from Lynda at the Wallace house. She walks across the street and discovers the three bodies and Judith Myers's missing tombstone. She is attacked by Myers but escapes back to the Doyle house. Laurie stabs Myers with a knitting needle, a clothes hanger and a knife, but he continues to pursue her. Eventually, Loomis spots Tommy and Lindsey running from the house and finds Myers in the upstairs hallway. Loomis rescues Laurie, shooting Myers six times and causing him to fall from the house's second-story balcony. Upon looking out the window for Myers' body, however, Loomis discovers that he is nowhere to be found.
Popular Culture:
Halloween had a tremendous impact on cinema due to its commercial success. It has influenced many other films, most notably of the horror genre since its release. Although a Canadian horror film directed by Bob Clark titled Black Christmas (1974) preempted the stylistic techniques made famous in Halloween, the latter is generally credited by film historians and critics for initiating the slasher film craze of the 1980s and 1990s. (First-person camera perspectives, unexceptional settings, and female heroines define the slasher film genre). Riding the wave of success generated by Halloween, several films that were already in production when the film premiered, but with similar stylistic elements and themes, became popular with audiences. The Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, and countless other slasher films, owe much of their success (if not inspiration) to Halloween
The unintended theme of "survival of the virgins" seen in Halloween became a major trope that surfaced in other slasher films. Characters in subsequent horror films who practice illicit sex and substance abuse generally meet a gruesome end at the hands of the killer. On the other hand, characters portrayed as chaste and temperate tend to confront and defeat the killer in the end. The 1981 horror movie spoof Student Bodies was the first mainstream film to mock this plot device; the killer's victims are invariably slain when about to have sex. Director Wes Craven's dark comedy Scream (1996) details the "rules" for surviving a horror movie using Halloween as the primary example: no sex, no alcohol or illicit drugs, and never say "I'll be right back." Keenen Ivory Wayans's horror movie parody Scary Movie (2000) likewise lampoons this prominent slasher film trope.
Halloween spawned seven sequels, and a remake — titled Halloween and directed by Rob Zombie — released in 2007. Of these films, only Halloween II (1981) was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Halloween II begins exactly where Halloween ends and was intended to finish the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. Carpenter did not direct any of the subsequent films in the Halloween series, although he did produce Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), the plot of which is unrelated to the other films in the series.
The sequels feature more explicit violence and gore, and are generally dismissed by mainstream film critics. They were filmed on larger budgets than the original: in contrast to Halloween's modest budget of $325,000, Halloween II's budget was around $2.5 million, while the most recently released sequel, Halloween: Resurrection (2002), boasted a budget of $25 million. Financier Moustapha Akkad continued to work closely with the Halloween franchise, acting as executive producer of every sequel in the series until his death in the 2005 Amman bombings.
With the exception of Halloween III, the sequels further develop the character of Michael Myers and the Samhain theme. Even without considering the third film, the Halloween series is plagued with storyline continuity issues, most likely stemming from the different writers and directors involved in each film.
Carpenter himself dismisses the notion that Halloween is a morality play, regarding it as merely a horror movie. According to Carpenter, critics "completely missed the point there." He explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."
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