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Although Halloween's lead, Jamie Lee Curtis, was the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, she wasn't well-known at the time. For Carpenter, the real star of the movie was British actor Donald Pleasence, who plays Dr Loomis, the psychiatrist of the movie's knife-wielding psychotic, Michael Myers.

"He was the first star I'd worked with," says Carpenter, "the first big one, and it terrified me. Donald agreed to be in it and I met him for lunch to talk about the movie. He said, 'Well, I don't understand this script and I don't understand my character, but my daughter is in a rock-and-roll band in London and she liked the music to your last film [Precinct 13], so that's why I'm here.' I thought, Jeez, but I came to be real close friends with him and he's one of the funniest people when you get past what he needs as a person. I just loved Donald – I cast him as the president of the United States in Escape From New York, so you can tell how much I wanted him."

Music is fundamental to Carpenter's movies – unusually for a director, he also scored many of them himself. This came, however, from necessity. "On Dark Star, we couldn't afford any music, so I had to do it myself. I got in touch with this guy in the San Fernando Valley who had his own synthesizer. I stayed in his apartment for a few days and recorded the whole score."

For Halloween's once-heard-never-forgotten score, Carpenter already had an idea in mind long before he started shooting the movie. "The main theme, the theme that people know the most, was something I'd thought of for years, and it comes out of my dad [a music professor] teaching me 5/4 time on a pair of bongos he bought me. I was just noodling on the piano to that beat and just played some octaves."

Setting a fast piano motif over dark synth chords, it was an immensely novel sound at the time. "I must tell you," adds Carpenter, "I'm impressed with myself for one reason: I was able to play that fast. I can't do it anymore, it's too hard."

When Halloween was released, in October 1978, it initially looked as though Carpenter had another flop on his hands. "In critical terms, there were some brutal reviews in the beginning, but I'd soon moved onto something else." And so, by the time when Halloween finally setting the box office ablaze, Carpenter barely noticed, as he was deep into his Elvis Presley television movie, Elvis. "We had 30 days, 188 locations, 90 speaking parts. It was a baptism, I was so tired."

Yet Halloween undoubtedly made Carpenter's name. It was pivotal in the creation of the slasher genre, proving en route that this unknown kid from Kentucky could turn a very small pile of money into an enormous one. It was also part of a hugely accomplished run of movies in the horror, thriller and sci-fi genres that went on to include The Fog (1980), Escape From New York (1981), and, perhaps his grandest achievement, The Thing (1982). "You'll never see another movie quite like that," he says with some pride, referring to the movie's gloopy pre-CGI special effects.

Success began to elude Carpenter in the Nineties, and he has largely pulled out of the game, preferring to spend his time relaxing, playing video games, watching basketball. Over the years, he says, he has seen the film industry change beyond all recognition from the days when a young director could be given a few hundred thousand dollars to make whatever movie he fancied.

"The major corporations bought all the studios, so they are now just divisions rather than actual studios. It's all committees and profit analysis, based on all these 'facts' they have regarding what the audience wants to see. You can't argue – they just won't hire you. It's all gone from Hollywood. Thousands still come here looking to see movie stars, but they're all off making movies in Eastern Europe, wherever they can get a tax break."

Still, Carpenter's legacy from the Seventies and Eighties still stands proud, with Halloween arguably among the most influential films of all time. Is he proud of his achievements? "Hugely," he admits.

But what of Halloween's astonishing influence and durability – can he say why the film has survived the way it has?

"I've analysed this so many times over the years," he says. "I've no idea why its lasted, I'm just delighted it has. I can't explain how audiences take a movie.

"I can't watch my own movies," he adds. "Too painful! You watch it and go, 'Why did I do that? God, what was I thinking?' "

A special 35th-anniversary ediotion of 'Halloween' is now available on Blu-Ray (Anchor Bay)