Today in 1978: Halloween premiered in theaters.
A classic of the horror genre, John Carpenter’s Halloween follows Laurie Strode, a teenager whose Halloween babysitting job is interrupted by the appearance of Michael “The Shape” Myers, a psychopath who silently sets about killing everyone who gets in his path. Originally titled The Babysitter Murders, producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad wanted it to be centered around Halloween. Other than some pumpkin carving, some kids trick-or-treating in the background, and the date, the plot has very little to do with Halloween.
Halloween is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is the closest I have ever come to getting scared by a movie. I tried to watch it by myself at night when I was 12 years old, and had to wait until the morning to watch it. In college, I got my first internship when I spent the entire interview talking about how it is a perfect movie. In 2006, Halloween was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Halloween has spawned an enormous franchise which consists of eleven films, including a remake and a sequel to the remake; and a new sequel to the original which ignores all the other Halloween films in between. Two sequels to this recent film are currently in production.