Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, John Michael Graham, Brian Andrews, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Tony Moran, Nick Castle, Will Sandin, Sandy Johnson, David Kyle
In 1963, in Haddonfield, Illinois, children chant about goblins and pumpkins on Halloween night. Inside a two-story house, a teenage girl (Johnson) and boy (Kyle) go upstairs to her bedroom and begin to make love. Someone watches them from below through the window. Sometime later, when the girl’s boyfriend leaves the house, she shuts the door and goes back to her room, but someone else is already inside, wielding a large kitchen knife. The girl is brushing her hair when someone creeps behind her, knife in hand. Sensing a presence, she turns around and sees her six year-old brother, Michael (Sandin). He lunges toward her and plunges the knife repeatedly into her chest. Fifteen years later, Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasance) and a nurse (Stephens) approach the Smith’s Grove-Warren County Sanitarium in a station wagon. They are there to pick up Michael Myers, now 21, Dr. Loomis’ psychiatric patient, and take him to court for a required yearly review of his commitment. It is dark when they reach the mental institution. They see unattended patients walking about on a field, in the rain. The nurse stops the vehicle and, sensing something wrong, Dr. Loomis walks out to the facility’s gate. Suddenly, a white shape jumps on top of the station wagon and smashes a window. The terrified nurse crawls out of the vehicle and the shape leaps inside and quickly drives off. Dr. Loomis rushes over, shaken. “The evil’s gone,” he says. The next morning, Halloween day, 17 year-old Laurie Strode (Curtis) walks to school in Haddonfield, carrying many books. She detours on an errand for her father, a realtor, and places a set of house keys under the mat of the Myers house. Someone watches her from inside the run down house. Driving the stolen station wagon, Michael (Moran/Castle) has returned to Haddonfield. He follows Laurie as she goes to school. Laurie catches a glimpse of him, but her friends do not see anyone and tell her she’s imagining things. After school, children run about, beginning their trick or treat routines. Laurie and her teenage friends, Annie Brackett (Loomis) and Lynda (Soles), make plans for the night. Dr. Loomis arrives in Haddonfield in pursuit of Michael. He tells Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Cyphers), Annie’s father, that Michael Myers is insane, evil and extremely dangerous. Michael must be stopped or he will kill again. That night, Laurie and Annie have babysitting jobs across the street from each other. Lynda has a date with her boyfriend Bob (Graham). The two arrange to sneak into a bedroom in one of the houses, while the parents are away. Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett search the dark streets of Haddonfield for Michael, while Michael stalks Laurie and her friends. Tommy Doyle (Andrews), the boy Laurie is babysitting, sees a shape outside he calls the bogeyman, but when Laurie peers through a window she sees no one. As Tommy and Lindsey Wallace (Richards), the young girl Annie is entrusted with, settle down to watch scary movies, Michael Myers begins to kill. The bogeyman has come to Haddonfield, and he poses a deadly threat to Laurie and her friends. Screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Music by John Carpenter.
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