Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween. The film was directed by John Carpenter and stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle as Michael Myers. The film centers on Michael Myers' escape from a psychiatric hospital, his murdering of teenagers, and Sam Loomis's attempts to track and stop Myers. Halloween was produced on a budget of only $325,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, making it the most successful independent film in American movie history. Many critics credit this film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The movie originated many of the clichés seen in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, although first-time viewers of Halloween may be surprised by the fact that the film contains little actual graphic violence or gore.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_%28film%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

27 BC: Gaius Octavius was given the title Augustus by the Roman Senate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus)

929: Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III of Cordoba declared himself caliph, thereby establishing the Caliph of Córdoba. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd-ar-Rahman_III)

1547: Ivan the Terrible was crowned Tsar of Russia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_IV_of_Russia)

1909: The expedition led by Ernest Shackleton located the Magnetic South Pole. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton)

2006: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in as President of Liberia, becoming Africa's first female elected head of state. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Johnson-Sirleaf)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same. -- Susan Sontag (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag)