John Carpenter’s Halloween was first released to theaters in October 1978 and quickly became a classic. For almost 46 years, Halloween has been the ultimate Halloween horror movie and is considered by many to be the start of the modern slasher movement. Boasting a highly memorable and foreboding killer in the form of the mysterious Michael Myers, a young but no less talented Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and an incredible team behind the camera, this film has long been considered one of the essential slasher films by horror fans.

Release Date October 27, 1978 Runtime 1hr 31min Expand

What Is “Halloween” About?
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Halloween starts with a simple, but disturbing scene – on Halloween night, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers comes home from trick or treating, picks up a knife from the kitchen, and goes into his older sister’s room and stabs her to death. From the very moment the film starts, the tone is set by allowing the viewers to see all of this from Michael’s point of view. It isn’t until he exits the house and people run up to him to find out what happened that it’s revealed the killer from this opening scene is a child, shocking audiences through this chilling realization.

After the opening scene, the movie jumps to 15 years later, and viewers watch as Michael makes his escape from the sanitarium where he’s spent the last decade and a half. Back in his hometown, he starts to stalk Laurie Strode, a seemingly normal teenage girl going about her life. He first sees her when she goes to return the key to his old house, a house that her dad is currently trying to sell. Throughout her day, Laurie sees this mysterious figure lurking in the background, just on the periphery of her awareness, but she can’t quite make him out. And, whenever she takes a second look, he’s always gone. She tries telling her friends about him, but they brush her off.

That night is Halloween, and while other teens are out going to parties, Laurie and her best friend Annie are babysitting. Laurie is looking after Tommy Doyle, while Annie is watching a girl just across the street. Throughout the night, Michael kills Laurie’s friends one by one, all while Laurie only has the vague sense that something is wrong without knowing the full story. When Michael strangles Laurie’s friend Lynda while she’s on the phone with Laurie, she decides to go check on her friends and make sure that everything is alright.

This begins the climax of the film – Laurie in the Wallace house across the street from where she’s babysitting, discovering her friends’ bodies and the disturbing display that Michael has left behind. After she finds her friends, Michael goes after her and the rest of the movie is about whether she and the kids she’s looking after will survive. No matter how many times she seems to get the best of him, though, he keeps getting back up and continuing to go after her and the children. That is until, finally, Michael’s doctor from the sanitarium, Dr. Loomis catches up with them and shoots Michael six times. When he goes to check on the body, however, it isn’t there.

Related 10 Horror Movie Double Features To Watch This Halloween A good old-fashioned horror movie double feature is a great way to get into the Halloween spirit.

What Made This Movie Such a Classic?
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It’s also safe to say that Michael Myers himself has helped this movie remain a classic. His look was carefully crafted, using a Captain Kirk mask that the production designer, Tommy Lee Wallace, altered to create the terrifying blank face audiences would come to associate with the killer. The decision to have him be silent, to have him only lurking in the background for the first half of the movie as some sort of looming shadow, set him apart from many of the other slasher villains that would come after.

In addition, the incredible early performance from future scream queen and Hollywood darling, Jamie Lee Curtis was clearly important. It played no small part in making the movie something the fans would revisit over and over and that new viewers would fall in love with for years to come. In the end, it was all the amazing people who worked on the film – from the writers to the cinematographers, the production and costume designers, and the actors – and their clear passion for the project that turned it into something memorable and lasting. The late ’70s and ’80s had no shortage of horror movies and slashers, but only a select few are remembered, and even fewer are remembered fondly. Halloween, however, managed to be one of those few.

Does It Still Hold Up?
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46 years later and the landscape of horror, even slasher horror, has changed dramatically. This is perhaps no more obvious than in the ways that the Halloween franchise itself has changed. In the early 2000s, Rob Zombie made a remake of the first two films in the franchise, using his own much more bleak and gritty style to create something very removed from the original.

More recently, audiences saw a resurgence in the franchise with a new trilogy that was meant to sequel just the first two original movies – Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends. These films brought back Jamie Lee Curtis as an older Laurie who has clearly lived her entire life after that Halloween night in response to the trauma. She’s a survivalist, and she tried to teach her daughter to be one too, just in case Michael ever came back. This film is perhaps a bit more realistic than slashers used to be – attempting to show the kind of PTSD that might result from being a victim of someone like Michael, and the films themselves are much darker and more somber in tone than the originals.

Related Halloween: How to Watch Each Timeline Chronologically and by Release Date The Halloween movies can be a messy undertaking to piece together. Here is every film in the series split by timeline, in chronological order.

While a movie like the original Halloween from 1978 might not be made today, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold up. If viewers go into it wanting something more akin to the slashers of the 2010s and 2020s, then they might be disappointed. However, if viewers watch this movie expecting a fun, nostalgic take on horror with an incredible atmosphere and an amazing sense of tension, then they will have a great time.

The style of filmmaking and the types of movies that are being made are constantly changing, but that doesn’t mean that films from the past stop being effective or entertaining. Halloween is still a great movie for the Halloween season, still one of the most iconic slashers of the last 50 years, and still manages to leave viewers on the edge of their seats as they watch Michael stalk the poor, innocent teens of Haddonfield, Illinois.