It only makes sense, when talking about Halloween and movies, to talk about the holiday’s namesake, Halloween. It is one of the genre’s turning points. Halloween became the first mainstream, box office success of horror movies.

The formula was so good, it was used over and over for not only it’s own sequels, but an entire slew of slasher flicks for years to come. One dark and stormy night… a great, scary start if you ask me… Mike Myers, locked away in a mental institution for killing his sister on Halloween night when he was just a young kid, escapes from a mental institution. The movie follows his movements as he returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, dons a plain mask, and begins to kill a string of people. Of course, many of the people he kills are teenagers who decide to have sex spawning the notion that virgins will not be killed (as spoken in the first Scream movies). Eventually, his psychiatric doctor, Dr. Sam Loomis played by Donald Pleasence, a classic British actor with over 200 screen credits, brings him down… supposedly. This film started the trend of scary serial killers who can never truly die. They just go into hiding until they can recuperate and come back after those pesky teens.

Of course, the person who really sparks Myers interest is teenager Laurie, played by Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of actor Tony Curtis and scream-queen Janet Leigh, the unfortunate young lady to meet her demise in the shower of the original Psycho movie). This is Jamie Lee’s first major role and the movie that really put her on the map. It also began a short list of other scary movies for her including: The Fog, Prom Night, and other movies in the Halloween series.

Director and writer John Carpenter employs several great horror movie techniques which keep us on the edge of our seat: a lot of voyeuristic shots giving the creepy stalker feeling, background music simplistic yet eerie, inventive, new ways to die, and dark and shadowy scenes. But probably the one thing that keeps us on the edge is the killer. Mike Myers, and the many serial killers of horror movies to come, is a tall, dark, and imposing individual. And we never truly see his face. This simple technique just makes us more interested in this individual and keeps us wondering about him. It also makes him more mysterious and, intentionally, scary.

The odd and completely mind-boggling question for the whole series is… what happened with Halloween 3? The Halloween series has had ten movies including two official remakes of the first two films, yet number three has nothing to do with Mike Myers! Besides the fact that they get away from the successful formula of the first two, the third movie was very poorly written and with cheesy effects. If you decide to watch the others, don’t even bother with this one.

Halloween is a film which keeps us coming back for more. From the popular actors to the tried and true horror format we want to experience that fright again and again. Indeed, it’s a horror classic!

(Sequels: Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Halloweeon: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Halloween Resurrection, Halloween (2007 remake), Halloween II (2009 remake) )