10 Best Slasher Films Of All Time

What little plot Halloween has was supplied by producer Irwin Yablans, who came up with the concept of an escaped homicidal who murders babysitters on Halloween, a setting that would give the movie its title, release date and gimmick advertising strategy. But John Carpenter’s film isn’t about plot; like the Italian giallo films to which it owes a debt, it’s all about the mastery of cinematic technique.

From its opening tracking shot, inspired by Orson Welles Touch Of Evil, Halloween has more on its mind than appealing to the lowest common denominator. The use of Panavision, unusual in a cheap horror movie, made the suburbs, usually the bastion of middle-class security, seem sinister, while every empty space became a potential hiding place for the film’s masked assailant. Carpenter knows that it’s all a game, so he delays the anticipated shock by revealing nothing when there should be something and orchestrates some terrific knee jerk scares by having his bogeyman emerge from the darkness.

Despite its limited budget and shooting schedule (and being shot during a Californian summer), Halloween has a terrifically eerie mood that few other horror pictures can match. The speed of the narrative glosses over all the logic loopholes (despite having been incarcerated since the age of six, Michael Myers has no problem commandeering a car at a moment’s notice) and Carpenter manages to scare his audience without being inordinately nasty. By no means an unsophisticated filmmaker, he exhibits all the taste and judgment that his imitators lack.