John Carpenter's Halloween was one of the first and the flat-out best of that ghetto of the horror film genre, the slasher movie. It is also arguably the best horror film ever made, and it is also a great movie on any scale. It causes an agonizing tension that starts in the first frames and doesn't let up until the credits roll. Or even further, since you have to consider the prospect of sleeping in a dark room at some point after you see it.

It starts out on Halloween night in 1963. We see everything from the point of view of a young boy named Michael Myers, who witnesses his sister having sex with her boyfriend. In a justly famous seemingly unbroken tracking shot, we (because we're forced by the first-person camera to identify with the boy) walk into the house, pick up a butcher knife, and stab the sister to death as she screams; the camera sometimes looks admirably up at the hand—cowriter and producer Debra Hill's hand—holding the knife, plunging in again and again, in an undeniable linkage between sex and death.

Fifteen years later, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is traveling to the asylum where Michael's been held since the murder. The state is considering releasing him, and Loomis, who has worked with him since the murder, must tell them that they would be unleashing someone who is "purely and simply evil" on the world. But Michael can't wait for parole; he has broken out of prison in advance of Loomis's arrival, and he drives away in a stolen car.

Now you wonder how someone who's been in prison since he was six can drive; Loomis is happy to tell you that it's evil that taught him. We nod at Loomis in bewildered understanding. Pleasance delivers each and every one of his lines with an urgency that seems a little crazy; you believe him when he says that he has spent the last seven years making sure that Michael is never released. His single-minded dedication to his patient reminds one of Ahab and Moby Dick... only if the whale had a William Shatner mask and a butcher knife.

Michael travels to his hometown and quickly sets his sight on the bookish Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends (Nancy Loomis and P.J. Soles). Why does he pick her? It's possibly because he saw her at the door of his long-abandoned house, but it's more likely that it's the incomprehensible evil that Loomis talks about. Michael Myers is one of the great screen villains. He's a blank slate, devoid of personality or motives or explanation. He doesn't take any obvious pleasure in killing; he doesn't seem to have any emotions at all. The dorky William Shatner mask, painted white and too loose to conform to a face, seems to smile vacuously; it happily informs us that there's no one at home inside. Just evil. When we finally see his face, the shock is that it's not some monster, but a regular-looking guy.

There are some homages to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and I don't think Carpenter was brash in inviting comparison between the two films. I have to admit that I think Carpenter is more successful than was Hitchcock. The name "Sam Loomis" was taken from Psycho, and the name of the young kid, Tommy Doyle, was taken from Rear Window; also, the first murder scene is a blatant homage to Hitchcock's film, in that you never see the knife go in. That's noticeable throughout the film: it's not a blood and gore fest like its successors and imitators. Because it was so new, it didn't need to throw fake blood at the screen to please a jaded teenage audience.

There's not a wasted second, not a wasted frame, in the entire film. Carpenter and company play the audience like a piano; we're dragged, full of trepidation but also morbid curiosity, into the dark to the tune of the jarring, creepy theme music, which Carpenter composed. This is currently #73 on my list of the top 100 films of all time. Not bad for a low-budget slasher film.