What's it about? After killing his sister a young boy by the name of Michael Meyers is sent to an institution for the criminally insane. Fourteen years later, however, he manages to escape, and returns to the sleepy town where he committed his first murder. Here he begins to stalk Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends, killing them off one by one.What makes it groundbreaking? Other slasher films might have come before Halloween - notably Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - but John Carpenter's 1978 entry into the canon not only mastered some of the tropes from these earlier films but developed many more of its own which would go on to influence literally hundreds of movies. Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street are just two of the seminal horror movies of the 1980s which owe a debt to Carpenter's groundbreaking first entry into the Halloween franchise.
