<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $300,000--$325,000 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $70 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut . It is the first installment in the Halloween franchise . In the film, on Halloween night in 1963, Michael Myers murders his sister in the fictional Midwestern United States town of Haddonfield, Illinois . He escapes on October 30, 1978, from Smith's Grove Sanitarium, and returns home to kill again . The next day, Halloween, Michael stalks teenager Laurie Strode and her friends, while Michael's psychiatrist, Samuel Loomis, pursues his patient . </P> <P> Halloween was produced on a budget of $300,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, $23 million internationally, for a total of $70 million worldwide, selling almost 30 million tickets in 1978, equivalent to $269 million as of for 2017 . It became one of the most profitable independent films . Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960 film). In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". </P>

What is the name of the first halloween movie