

Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween Night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
Score
Carpenter's piano theme—literally just three notes of pure anxiety.
Direction
That opening POV shot: 4 minutes, one take, childhood ruined.
Acting
Jamie Lee Curtis invented the Final Girl and didn't even know it.

Director
John Carpenter
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The mask is a Captain Kirk Halloween mask painted white—cheaper than making one from scratch.
Halloween basically created the slasher formula: holiday setting, masked killer, final girl, body count. Every movie after it is either copying or subverting this.