In 1978 the trentenne Carpenter, director with behind two films that had been noted more from the workers who from the big public, and above all from the independent productions for the very low budgets used, realizes his third feature film Hallowenn, which will consecrate director of Worship for the horrorific thriller genre, which until then had been a prerogative of the unreachable Hitchcock. And to the latter, the director is linked, in particular with Psyco, although the history and environmental context is different, for the definition of the character psychopathy and the choice of the protagonist, a very young Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh , the protagonist Hitchcockiana Marion Crane who will be massacred in the famous scene of the shower. Another reference to the film is also the crime weapon: a huge cooking knit it that characterizes the "slasher" horror subgenere where you use sharp blades.
- The screenplay of the film was written together with Debra Hill, which among other things was responsible for choosing Misconuted Lee Curtis, convincing Carpenter for the curiosity that the public would have had in seeing Leigh's daughter. You also have an important role for the definition of female characters, co-protagonists of Curtis, in the use of post-adolescent language and attitudes that characterized the 70s where history takes place.
- Interesting was also the use by the director of an innovative MDP mobile that anticipating the invention of Steadycam, used by little Li by Kubrick for Shining, allowed the numerous resumptions in subjective, the sequence plans and the trolleys.
- The soundtrack based on the 5/4 joke, the usual composed by the same director, was more than ever important for the success of the film.
- a 'last curiosity (although the importance of the film, whose subject was replicated by other directors numerous times, would deserve further and more in-depth observations) is the tribute that the director does to Howad Hawks with the small protagonists of his film , in the scene where they see the 1951 TV The Thing. Among other things, the director will make a remake in 1982.
- At the exit of the film the success that the public gave him immediate and exponential, to the point that in front of the usual one of a very low budget of just $ 300,000, the receipts arrived at $ 45 million!