Halloween (1978) movie poster

Halloween (1978)

"The night he came home!"
ThumbScore
👍 89%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 94%
HorrorThriller

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Where to Watch

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Director
Runtime
1h 31m
Rated
R
Country
United States of America
Language
English
TMDB Rating
7.6/10 (6,083 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
97%
Metacritic
91

Cast

Donald Pleasence as Loomis · 79% avg
Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie · 73% avg
Nancy Kyes as Annie
P. J. Soles as Lynda
Charles Cyphers as Brackett · 82% avg
Kyle Richards as Lindsey · 74% avg
Brian Andrews as Tommy
John Michael Graham as Bob

Is Halloween good?

Yes. 89% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 94%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#50 / 1168 · Horror
Rank in its year
#2 / 21 · 1978
Rank among its director's films
#3 / 18 · John Carpenter

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

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. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed by John Carpenter, the film that essentially created the slasher genre and one of the most influential horror films ever made. The film follows Michael Myers, who as a six-year-old boy murdered his older sister on Halloween night 1963 and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for 15 years. On October 30, 1978, the adult Michael, now a silent, masked figure of seemingly supernatural endurance, escapes and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, stalking teenager Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut, and her friends on Halloween night.

John Carpenter's direction was a masterclass in sustained, almost unbearable tension built through the simplest filmmaking techniques — slow tracking shots from Michael's point of view, the masked shape appearing and disappearing in the background of ordinary suburban scenes, and the relentless, iconic synthesizer theme that Carpenter composed himself. Halloween was made for approximately $325,000 and earned $70 million worldwide, one of the most profitable independent films in history. The film launched Jamie Lee Curtis as a star, created the "final girl" archetype, and established the template that Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and decades of slasher films would follow.

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