This film is perhaps one of the most terrifying, not because of the old 'cat jumping from the window sill' jump shock, or the painted white William Shatner mask, but because it plays in the very simple fear of someone being in your house at night. We've all woken up in the middle of the night and think we've heard something downstairs. We've all read those stories of people waking to finding someone in their bedroom. It's horrific. This film, through an original concept of 'the babysitter murders' plays on all of these primal nightmares we have. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is your typical 17 year old. She talks about boys, she worries about her appearance and she has to babysit for some extra money. Nothing strange in that, apart from the fact that that fifteen years earlier, her six year old brother murdered his elder sister and boyfriend one Halloween night. What she doesn't know is that he's escaped the mental asylum where he was locked away and is on his way home. This is perhaps the definitive slasher movie and yet, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre before it, doesn't feel the need to spray the screen with blood. For Carpenter, and fellow screenwriter Debra Hill, it's all about the tension. Michael Myers appears to enjoy scaring his victims as much as he does murdering them. Whereas Jason blunders about a forest, and Freddy is more concerned with writing his next one-liner, Michael, who doesn't talk and only rarely makes a noise, is a cold, concentrated machine. Through an excellent Donald Pleasance and his speeches on the killer to an eventual disappearance from Michael after being shot through a window, Myer's takes on another presence as The Shape, an undefeatable killing machine who created the template for many cinema slashers still to come.
