The Night HE Came Home; John Carpenter’s “Halloween” slashed its way into theaters on this day in 1978! The seminal slasher story popularized the tropes we now associate with the genre and opened the crypt door for a whole generation of masked madmen movies. John Carpenter’s direction and score made him a Ho-rror legend, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode set the standard for all future final girls. Still scary after all these years, “Halloween” proves that you can’t kill the Boogeyman.