Halloween (1978, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, PJ Soles)
The Night HE Came Home!
Quick Plot: 15 years after murdering his sister and her boyfriend, Michael Myers escapes Smith’s Grove Sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield to terrorize a group of babysitters on Halloween.
Scariest Scene: Just as Laurie Strode thinks she has finally killed the bogeyman, the audience sees him slowly sit straight up, in the background. The haunting score and use of lighting on that mask, makes for the most suspenseful end-sequences in horror movie history.
Final Say: Halloween erroneously gets lumped into the “slasher” genre. There is virtually no blood in the film, with nearly all of the scares coming from Carpenter’s use of suspense and impending terror, rather than gore.
Fun Fact: Nearly everyone knows, by now, that the Michael Myers mask was based on an old William Shatner mask. But did you know that the actor who played Michael Myers underneath the mask (Nick Castle), went on to direct such movies as The Last Starfighter and The Boy Who Could Fly?