Influence
Carpenter’s Halloween is a widely influential film within the horror genre; it was largely responsible for the popularization of slasher films in the 1980s. Halloween popularized many tropes that have become completely synonymous with the slasher genre. Halloween helped to popularize the final girl trope, killing off characters who are substance abusers or sexually promiscuous, as well as the use of a theme song for the killer. Carpenter also shot many scenes from the perspective of the killer in order to build tension. These elements have become so established that many historians argue that Halloween is responsible for the new wave of horror that emerged during the 1980s. Due to its popularity, Halloween became a blueprint for success that many other horror films, such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, would follow.
The major themes present in Halloween would also become common in the slasher films it inspired. Film scholar Pat Gill notes that in Halloween, there is a theme of absentee parents but films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th feature the parents becoming directly responsible for the creation of the killer.
There are slasher films that predated Halloween, such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas which contained prominent elements of the slasher genre; both involving a group of teenagers being murdered by a stranger as well having the final girl trope. Halloween, however, is seen by historians as being responsible for the new wave of horror films because it not only used these tropes but also pioneered many others.
The 1981 horror movie spoof Student Bodies parodied these plot devices; characters are slain when about to engage in sex. Another slasher movie with a twist was the 1986 film, April Fool's Day. Director Wes Craven's Scream (1996), and its three sequels, details the "rules" for surviving a horror movie, even using Halloween as the primary example: no sex, no alcohol or illicit drugs, and never say "I'll be right back".
Read more about this topic: Halloween (1978 Film)
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—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)