John Carpenter’s Halloween was released in 1978.
The film was directed and co-written by Carpenter, with Debra Hill as co-writer and producer. It follows Michael Myers after his escape from a psychiatric hospital and his return to the fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield on Halloween night.
Halloween became one of the defining films of the slasher genre. Its restrained music, masked killer, suburban setting, and suspense-focused filmmaking strongly influenced later horror movies. Jamie Lee Curtis made her film debut as Laurie Strode.
The film is sometimes confused with the 2007 remake directed by Rob Zombie, which has the same title. That later version is a separate production and was released nearly three decades after Carpenter’s original. The original’s 1978 release date is therefore the key identifying fact.