Even though I admitted to not being a fan of the Friday the 13th movies, the original Halloween is still a great slasher flick, with some of the best suspense scenes of all time. It's John Carpenter who makes it good, that genre master of horror and sci-fi, here even coming up with the classic score himself. Scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis stars in her feature debut, and the 35th anniversary blu-ray looks great and comes out in plenty of time for Halloween. What's notable in this one as opposed to the Friday movies is that most of the actual violence takes place off screen, without sacrificing an ounce of suspense or scares. You can actually make that work in a horror film- who'd have thought?
Original trailer from 1978 (warning- if you haven't seen the movie yet, 70's trailers are notorious for giving away entire films, including the climax and the ending. This one's not so bad but if you don't want to see anything major, you should probably think twice):
