Plot Summary: Haddonfield Illinois, Halloween night, 1963. The viewpoint is from the outside of an average looking suburban house looking in. Two teens are engaging in some Halloween night frolic. They head up stairs, seeking privacy. The girl's brother, Michael, is around there somewhere. A hand reaches into a drawer and pulls out a carving knife. Halloween night trickery? The young man leaves. Still from the viewpoint of the boy, we totter up the stairs. A Halloween mask is dawned. The bed is rumpled. The knife falls again and again. "Michael?" Uncomprehending parents unmask a stunned looking boy, still holding the long blood slicked dagger. Smith's grove, Illinois, October 30, 1978. A car arrives in the rain. It's a maximum security institution. When the new nurse asks her passenger, Dr. Loomis, what she should say to the patient. He responds, "You haven't anything to worry about. It hasn't said anything in fifteen years.' We learn he'll be given thorazine when he goes before the judge so that he'll be barely able to sit up.' The music returns. Something's wrong. The patients are out in the yard. Loomis runs to the gate. One of the patients is on the car. The nurse is thrown from the car and the patient escapes. "He's gone, he's gone from here--the evil is gone..' So begins John Carpenter's Halloween. Haddonfield. Halloween. Laurie is a bookish girl who is too shy and reserved to have a date on Halloween night. Her lot is to baby sit this night while her teenage friends look forward to sex and fun. Laurie and her charge pass by the boarded up Meyers' house, and she leaves keys there for her father's real estate clients. He's been trying vainly to sell the place. As Laurie retreats, we see there's someone lurking within. Elsewhere, Loomis is arguing with another doctor--Loomis knows that Meyers is headed for Haddonfield. He's warned the authorities there, but they pay little heed. The scene cuts to a pickup truck and mechanic--apparently this is how Michael got his outfit in which he applies his trade. There's a masked man outside while the class discusses Samuel's concept of fate. The kids are tormenting one of the kids. The bogey man will get him. And then the ragged breathing behind a mask accompanies it's point of view, following the boy. The teenage girls are chattering with one another. One of the girls calls out to a car, thinking it's a classmate, "Hey jerk, speed kills!" The car screeches to a halt. Laurie notes that her friend would get them all in trouble some day. The other girls have dates tonight. Laurie doesn't. Laurie sees the man in the mask again, but the others don't. Laurie comments that guys think she's too smart. She's looking out the window, at some sheets hung out. The music comes up, and Laurie is spooked by what she sees--is that a face in the sheets or her imagination. Laurie is scared, she can hardly pick up the phone. Loomis arrives. He goes to the cemetery to seek out the grave of his sister, Judith. The head stone is gone. Michael has returned. It's dark now. It watches Laurie arrive at the house for baby sitting. They arrive at the Meyers' house, and find a half eaten dog. He got hungry. The sheriff protests that a man wouldn't do that. Loomis replies that this isn't a man. Loomis had been told there's nothing left no reason or conscious. An eight year old with the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes. He spent eight years trying to get through to him, and then the next seven years trying to keep him locked up. Michael is twenty one. He's come of age. Tommy says he sees the bogeyman man outside. Laurie explains that Halloween night is when people try to scare each other. The bogeyman only comes out on Halloween night, and she's here to protect him. Annie is on the phone and spills something on herself she has to change. Michael sees her bare expanse of back as she changes. Annie is talking sexy. The door was locked, but now it's unlocked. Tommy sees the bogeyman man carrying a limp body. His complaints fall on deaf adult ears, and he is threatened with bed. Michael is waiting for some silent alarm waiting to trigger him off. Death has come to this little town. Two more teens talking sexy on Halloween night in Haddonfield. The fellow is out to fetch a beer. Soon his feet are straining, and then dangling limply. It stares at its accomplishment. Annie calls just as she is strangled. Laurie is a bit concerned that the call wasn't a prank. She goes over to investigate. Ahead of her is the quintessential chambre du corps mortes. Linda has been set up beneath the tombstone reading "Beloved daughter, Judith Meyers', Bobby has been set up to swing out when one closet door is opened, and Annie is crumpled in the other closet. Jamie Lee does her thing. She attempts to lock up the house, but to her horror finds a window open. The monster attacks, but the virginal Laurie somehow pierces it's neck with a knitting needle. The monster falls, apparently dead. Film's most memorable monster inter-mezzo follows in which Laurie explains to the kids that she has killed the bogeyman Tommy, however, notes that you can't kill the bogeyman man, and - he's back. Laurie is hidden in the closet, and blinds him with a coat hanger and stabs him with the butcher's knife. Michael lies apparently dead again. Six shots, and it falls to the ground below. The film closes with Loomis staring down at the now empty yard below.