10 Scariest Horror Movie Opening Credits

3. Halloween (1978)

Halloween Opening Credits
Universal Pictures

John Carpenter deservedly holds the title of Horror Master, having crafted a selection of seminal genre outings in the 1970s and '80s - starting with 1978's Halloween. Many of Carpenter's other works took years (sadly) to develop cult success, but the writer, director and composer's propulsive 1978 debut has always been iconic.

Halloween's opening first half is most praised for its shocking introductory scene, in which Carpenter places us in the perspective of a masked killer stalking, and then murdering, a woman at home alone - only to reveal that this was just a six-year-old child the entire time. That scene of a young Michael Myers is rightly immortal. Still, it is also punctuated by one of the all-time great opening title sequences, in which Carpenter's ghostly and enduring theme plays against a black backdrop, as an ominous pumpkin fades in, and amber credits follow.

The opening credits of Halloween are simple but extremely effective, taking the playful spookiness of the Halloween season and imbuing it with a dread that transcends campfire horror or spooky bedtime tales. It's a formula that the sequels iterated on to great effect. For all its faults, the original Halloween 2 places a great, electronic twist on the original theme and opening credits from its predecessor, peeling back a pumpkin to reveal a skull. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch introduces an electronic jack o'lantern, while the Blumhouse requels benefit from separate Carpenter compositions and a pumpkin (or pumpkins) to match each entry's theme.

There's no beating Carpenter's chilling original, though.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.