DEBRA HILL co-wrote and produced the low-budget horror hit Halloween (1978) and blazed a trail for women producers in the 1980s when she produced a string of mainstream Hollywood movies, including The Fisher King (1991) with Robin Williams and director Terry Gilliam.

“Back when I started in 1974, there were very few women in the industry, and everybody called me ‘honey’,” she recalled. “I was assumed to be the make-up and hair person or the script person. I was never assumed to be the writer or producer. I took a look around and realised there weren’t many women, so I had to carve a niche for myself.”

Hill was born in 1950 in Philadelphia and grew up largely in the New Jersey town of Haddonfield, a name she would later use for the home town of the killer Michael Myers in Halloween, though the film was set in Illinois.

She started her screen career in the 1970s as a production assistant and script supervisor, or continuity girl, the person who records the specifics of shooting to ensure for instance that a cigarette is not longer at the end of the scene than it was at the beginning.

She worked on the television crime series The Streets of San Francisco, starring Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, and on John Carpenter’s action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), on which she was assistant editor as well as script supervisor.

Carpenter, who was emerging as one of America’s most exciting new genre directors, took her under his wing, and they co-wrote Halloween, the horror thriller about a homicidal maniac in a Halloween mask. One commentator said: “Hill provided the insight into small-town America and into teenage girls; Carpenter provided the scares.”

Halloween cost $300,000, grossed $60 million worldwide, launched the film career of Jamie Lee Curtis and sparked the craze for “slasher movies”. Hill continued her association with Carpenter on The Fog (1980), an atmospheric ghost story that she co-wrote and produced. She also produced Escape from New York (1981), Halloween II (1981) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), a superior horror movie which starred Dan O’Herlihy as a mad toymaker.

Breaking away from Carpenter, she set up a production company with the producer Lynda Obst and they produced the Chris Columbus comedies Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Heartbreak Hotel (1988), as well as The Fisher King (1991), Terry Gilliam’s contemporary twist on Arthurian legend, which won an Oscar for Mercedes Ruehl.

Her other films as producer include Gross Anatomy (1989), made under a deal with Disney, which included short films for the theme parks; a 1993 remake of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, with Daryl Hannah; Escape from LA (1996), which reunited her with Carpenter; and Crazy in Alabama (1999), with Melanie Griffith.

She had been suffering from cancer for months and had had both legs amputated. But she continued to work on new projects, one about the World Trade Centre disaster and a remake of The Fog, which starts shooting this month.

Debra Hill, film producer, was born on October 11, 1950. She died on March 7, 2005, aged 54.