Psycho influenced Halloween

Carpenter put the debt on screen rather than in an interview, three times over:

• The psychiatrist is called Sam Loomis, the name of Marion Crane's lover in Psycho
• Laurie Strode is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh's daughter, cast for exactly that reason
• The film opens inside the killer's eyeline and holds it there, extending the identification Psycho made possible in 1960

Psycho is the reason a mainstream audience would sit with a murderer at all. Halloween is what the genre built on top of that permission.