After six-year-old Michael Myers kills his older sister with a kitchen knife, he is sent to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium and placed under the care of Dr. Loomis. The doctor spends hours with the mostly silent boy, trying to gain some insight into the mind of the young killer. He comes to the conclusion that Michael is a genuine sociopath, beyond rehabilitation: in other words, exactly the kind of person who should be locked up for the rest of his natural life. Naturally, Michael escapes from the sanitarium (on the night before Halloween) and heads back to his hometown to take care of some unfinished business, leading Loomis on a dogged pursuit that takes him through no less than five subsequent films. Donald Pleasence was not director John Carpenter’s first choice for the role — offers went out to horror-film legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee — but its hard to imagine the doctor without his odd intensity and penetrating stare.
