On October 31, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers stabbed his older sister to death after watching her have sex with her boyfriend. Locked up in an institution, Michael sits silently for fifteen years, until he makes his escape the night before Halloween. Wearing an eerie white mask, Michael returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, and starts wreaking bloody, stabby havoc on the neighbourhood teenagers, while his psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (a lightly crazed Donald Pleasance) tries to hunt him down and shy but resilient babysitter Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) fights desperately to live through the night. Though Bob Clark's shot-in-Toronto Black Christmas is generally agreed to have beaten it to the punch, John Carpenter's brilliantly directed low-budget shocker set the standard for the "classic" stalker flick and begat a legion of imitators, as well as becoming one of the most financially successful independent films of all time.