Michael Myers, having murdered his sister as a child, escapes a mental institution fifteen years later and returns to his quiet Illinois hometown to stalk babysitter Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night, while his former psychiatrist tries to track him down before it's too late. John Carpenter's low-budget slasher, released here in a striking Japanese poster, essentially defined the template for the entire slasher genre that followed and made a star out of both Jamie Lee Curtis and Carpenter's minimalist synth score.