The Film: And so we come to The Shape. Quite possibly the defining film of Carpenter's career, Halloween was born once he'd helped boost his career with script-for-hire jobs on the likes of The Eyes Of Laura Mars (though little of his work remains in that film's final cut).

Working from an idea spawned by producer Irwin Yablans, who thought a murderer stalking babysitters might be a killer concept, Carpenter welded that to Yablans' other suggestion to set it at Halloween. Michael Myers - and to a large extent, the slasher genre - was born.
 
Carpenter Chats: “I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you. All cheap tricks. But when you come out, you love it.

"I remember a William Castle film, The House On Haunted Hill, where a skeleton came out of a box next to the screen and it floated on a string out over the audience. Real cheap stuff, but I watched that and thought, 'Wow, isn't that the greatest stuff of all time!'

"So I thought I'd make a film like that. F**k everybody. I don't care if this is something I shouldn't be doing. I really like it."

Remade? You might be familiar with Mr Rob Zombie's canon-tweaking first film, released in 2007 and the follow-up, which arrived this year to little fanfare and less box office. A third is still in development, though not with Zombie attached.