John Carpenter practically patented the slasher genre with this simple but horribly effective low-budget suburban horror, in the process launching Jamie Lee Curtis - daughter of Psycho's Janet Leigh - as a new scream queen. Michael Myers is the six-year-old boy who murders his sister on Halloween and is institutionalised. Fifteen years later he escapes and returns to Haddonfield, Illinois, disguised by a white mask, to cause murderous mayhem, despite the intervention of his equally spooky psychiatrist (Donald Pleasence, in a career-reviving turn). The film is expertly plotted, beginning in broad daylight and building to a series of bloody crescendos as licentious babysitters and boyfriends are picked off. Can dateless Curtis avoid Myers's attentions? Its power to grip and jolt has never diminished, thanks in part to Carpenter's own pulsating score.

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.