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| Image: Halloween |
John Carpenter's much-imitated Halloween signaled the emergence of the stalk 'n' slash genre of 'deadly holiday' films that came to the fore in the 1980s. Carpenter opens his film with an unnerving point of view shot of the young, psychotic Michael Myers brutally stabbing his teenage sister on Halloween night. Fifteen years later, Michael escapes the institution where he has been confined and heads home to catch up with the family. Carpenter makes effective use of the sparse, atmospheric score (which he composed) and maximizes the creep-out factor of the ghoulish mask Mike wears throughout the film. Halloween also established the classic horror genre rule that if you're a sexually active teenager, you're marked for death; a trope which signalled that the sexual revolution was well and truly over.
