Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho may have been the first slasher film, but it was John Carpenter's Halloween that invented the genre as most viewers know it, with an unfeeling, seemingly indestructible killer picking off sexually promiscuous suburban teens in a buildup to a dramatic final encounter. Unlike the slashers that followed it, though, including Halloween's many sequels, Carpenter's 1978 film told its story with a minimum of blood and gore, preferring sustained suspense and the power of suggestion. It was all the scarier for it.
Halloween
Tonight @ Times Cinema, 8:30 p.m.
