Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis (in her film debut), with P. J. Soles and Nancy Loomis in supporting roles). The movie is set mostly in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, and the plot centers on a mental patient, Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his teenage sister on Halloween night when he was a child). Fifteen years later, Michael escapes from the sanitarium and returns to Haddonfield to continue his killing spree. The movie is famous for its suspenseful and thrilling atmosphere, and it helped popularize the slasher genre in the 1980s). While not as gory and overtly violent as other horror movies, Halloween still has plenty of violent moments, including characters being stabbed and strangled, and a family dog being choked to death. The original Halloween is widely regarded as a classic and a masterpiece of horror, and it has influenced many other horror movies that followed).