Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles CyphersIt was a cold Halloween night in 1963 when six year old Michael Audrey Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith Margaret Myers. He was sentenced to the Smith's Grove-Warren County Sanitarium for his brutal crime. There, he remained locked away and dormant for 15 years.
But on October 30, 1978, things are about to change. While being transferred for a court date, a 21-year-old Michael Myers steals a car and escapes Smith's Grove. He returns to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he follows three young women.
Seventeen-year-old Laurie Strode is a quiet bookworm, preferring babysitting over parties. As she goes about her school day, she finds her mind playing tricks on her. Her friends, Annie and Lynda, are busy thinking about the fun of Halloween night.
That evening, Laurie and Annie are babysitting across the street from each other. Laurie has to keep an eye on comic-loving Tommy Doyle, while Annie watches "little Lindsey Wallace," obsessed with the television. Little do they know, Michael Myers has come home to kill. Carefully, he murders Annie first, followed by Lynda and her boyfriend Bob.
Their only hope is Dr. Loomis, Michael's childhood psychiatrist who has followed Michael's trail back to Haddonfield. Loomis enlists the help of town sheriff Leigh Brackett, who happens to be Annie's father. The duo search the streets, but the bogeyman is close to his prize for the night: Laurie!
A pulsing finale will have horror fans screaming as Michael stalks innocent Laurie, praying that Dr. Loomis will rescue her. He is the only one who knows just what Michael is - pure evil!
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HALLOWEEN actually had its roots in John Carpenter's previous film, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Irwin Yablans, an independent film producer, saw it, liked it, and picked it up to release through his company, Turtle Releasing. ASSAULT was not a hit, so he took it overseas to the Milan Film Festival. There, Yablans met a an englishman named Michael Myers, who liked ASSAULT and entered it into film festivals in Europe.
Later, John Carpenter and his girlfriend at the time, Debra Hill, visited the London Film Festival to see a screening of ASSAULT. There, they met financier Moustapha Akkad, who was looking to get into the mainstream American film market with his partner, Irwin Yablans.
Yablans saw the talent in 29-year old John Carpenter. He had an idea brewing in his mind - about babysitters being stalked by a psychopath. "I was thinking what would make sense in the horror genre, and what I wanted to do was make a picture that had the same impact as THE EXORCIST," executive producer Irwin Yablans said in an interview with Fangoria magazine. He sketched out an idea for for a movie he called THE BABYSITTER MURDERS. "I was finishing [directing] a TV movie called SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME! when Yablans called and said, 'Why don't we set it on Halloween night - in fact, why don't we call it HALLOWEEN?" Carpenter told Entertainment Weekly.
Financier Moustapha Akkad was brought in, and he put up the $300,000 budget from money leftover from another Akkad project, LION OF THE DESERT. "I was unemployed at the time, so I was thinking $300,000 is a lot of money," Carpenter said. "We basically shamed Moustapha into it," laughed Yablans. "I toldhim, '$300,000 would probably be too much for you to invest,' knowing he couldn't back off because of his pride." John Carpenter was payed $10,000 to direct, write, and create music for the film, plus Carpenter would receive ten percent of the film's profits.
Akkad was a bit worried, since the film had a tight schedule, low budget, and relatively new filmmakers at the helm. "Two things made me decide," Akkad told Fangoria magazine, "One, Carpenter told me the story verbally and in a suspenseful way, almost frame for frame. Second, he told me he didn't want to take any fees, and that showed he had confidence in the project."
In addition to creative control, Carpenter also wanted his girlfriend at the time, Debra Hill, to produce. Hill told Fangoria, "The idea was that you couldn't kill evil, and that was how we came about the story. We went back to the old idea of Samhain, that Halloween was the night where all the souls are let out to wreak havoc on the living, and then came up with the story about the most evil kid who ever lived. And when John came up with this fable of a town with a dark secret of someone who once lived there, and now that evil has come back, that's what made HALLOWEEN work. We didn't want it to be gory. We wanted it to be like a jack-in-the box." The town of "Haddonfield" took it's name from Haddonfield, New Jersey, where Debra Hill was raised. Many of the street names were taken from Carpenter's hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Laurie Strode got her name from an old girlfriend of Carpenter's. Hill wrote most of the "girl" dialogue, while Carpenter came up with Loomis' speeches on the evil of Michael. "We wrote the whole thing in three weeks. Then we just had to find the right actors," said Hill. Yablans wanted the script written like a radio show, with "boos" every 10 minutes. He also instructed that the audience shouldn't see anything. It should be what they thought they saw that frightens them.
Casting for the film was next. "Jamie Lee wasn't the first choice for Laurie. I had no idea who she was. She was 19 and in a TV show at the time, but I didn't watch TV," Carpenter explained. His first choice was Annie Lockhart, the daughter of June Lockhart from LASSIE. "I knew casting Jamie Lee would be great publicity for the film because her mother was in PSYCHO," Hill said.
During the brief pre-production time frame, Carpenter's old friend Tommy Lee Wallace (also Nancy Loomis' boyfriend) joined the crew. His responsibilities included production designer, art director, location scout, and co-editor. He also was the man responsible for creating the killer's mask. "The idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless - this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not," said Hill. "First came a clown mask, which we all thought was eerie and scary," Wallace told Fangoria. "A clown mask really shakes you up a bit, so we knew we were on solid footing." Then came the Kirk mask. Wallace visited Burt Wheeler's Magic Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. He bought a Captain Kirk mask for $1.98, "widened the eye holes and spray-painted the flesh a bluish white. In the script it said Michael Myers' mask had 'the pale features of a human face' and it truly was spooky looking. It didn't look anything like William Shatner after Tommy got through with it," Carpenter recalled. "We bought my entire wardrobe at JC Penney for probably a hundred bucks," says Jamie Lee Curtis. The cheap and conservative look helped convey her character's attitude.
HALLOWEEN was shot in 21 days in the spring of 1978, mostly in South Pasadena California. Check out the Location Pictures page and Location Directions page for information about the film sites. Pumpkins in March were a problem, as were the palm trees of sunny California. Fake leaves were raked up and reused due to the low budget.
Production started at an old abandoned house (the Myers house), which was owned by a church. The crew worked out of cinematographer Dean Cundey's Winnebago. The caterer's truck was featured as the "Phelps Auto Service" truck in one shot, while Carpenter's old Cadillac showed up in another. "When we needed kids walking down the street, anyone who had a family rounded up their kids. Everyone helped out - it was just the joy of making movies," Carpenter explained
The entire crew worked together to redecorate the old Myers' house for the last scene shot - which was the opening scene. Crew members had to move lights as the long opening shot, reminiscent of TOUCH OF EVIL, was filmed. "John had planned these elaborate shots. The setup for it really was a lot of work," Nancy Kyes (who played Annie) recalled. Debra Hill's hands doubled for young Michael's. "We couldn't afford another kid to hold the knife later that night, so that's my hand holding the knife that stabs Michael Myers' sister. I had the littlest hands," Debra Hill proclaimed.
Carpenter worked closely with Curtis, creating a "fear meter," since the film was shot out-of-sequence. "Here's about a 7, here's about a 6, and the scene we're going to shoot tonight is about a 9 1/2," said Curtis, remembering John Carpenter's directions.
We were like these little kids who they were coming to with $300,000, and we really wanted to put everything on the screen," said Debra Hill. The film went on to become one of the highest grossing independent films of all time. A key success factor was John Carpenter's score, consisting of a haunting piano melody, a 5-4 time rhythm Carpenter learned from his father. Carpenter stated in an interview, "I can play just about any keyboard, but I can't read or write a note." Carpenter used the name "The Bowling Green Orchestra" and created the horrific soundtrack. He and a few pals on the crew got together and created a group called "The Coupe Devilles" - their song can be heard in the background as Laurie gets into Annie's car. Also helping was composer/orchestrator Dan Wyman, in his arrangement and "electronic realization" of the Halloween themes. Wyman is currently a professor at San Jose State University in California, in the electronic music department. He has an extensive background in creating soundtracks for major motion pictures including another one of John Carpenter's greats, THE FOG.
HALLOWEEN opened up slowly, with a platform release. But word of mouth grew, and soon it was a hit. "Right after HALLOWEEN, I started ELVIS, and I wasn't paying attention to how HALLOWEEN was doing. Then, around Christmas, people started treating me nice. All my friends were looking at me like I was keeping some secret, and studio people wanted to meet with me," said Carpenter. Slowly the critics came around, too. HALLOWEEN went on to gross $55 million theatrically. Unfortunately, most of the creative players involved didn't have very good deals. Nick Castle, who played the Shape, was payed only $25 dollars a day. Curtis only received $8,000 for her participation, while Pleasence took a flat $20,000 fee. "After it took off, I did see some of it, though. I can't remember exactly how much money I made off the film. I do remember getting one check for over a million dollars - that wasn't bad," Carpenter recalled. "Over the years, we've seen a lot of money from all the HALLOWEEN movies," said Hill. "But if I knew then what I know now, I'd be rolling in it. I really resented it when Irwin Yablans drove up in a yellow Rolls-Royce and bought a yacht."
"Everyone had something to prove with HALLOWEEN," said cinematographer Dean Cundey. "We were all struggling because it was a very hard time to break into mainstream Hollywood." HALLOWEEN more or less created the slasher film. Many films since have duplicated the "kill point-of-view" camera perspective. The film stock used on the film conveyed the colors of fall perfectly, and filming the movie in Panavision scope format added to it's horrific feeling. Many critics of the film have brought up the fact that Laurie (the virginal character) was the only female to survive. Lynda, Annie, and Judith, who are up to no good with their boyfriends, all fall prey to The Shape. Debra Hill and John Carpenter both deny any preconceived notion on this theme appearing in the film. Overall, they wanted to convey the idea that evil can appear in even the smallest of towns. Although it has been duplicated by many films, the legacy of HALLOWEEN continues, and it remains a very distinctive classic.
Donald Pleasence Dr. Sam Loomis
Jamie Lee Curtis Laurie Strode
Nancy Loomis (Kyes) Annie Brackett
P.J. Soles Lynda VanDerclork
Charles Cyphers Leigh Brackett
John Michael Graham Bob
Brian Andrews Tommy Doyle
Kyle Richards Lindsey Wallace
Nancy Stephens Marion Chambers
Nick Castle The Shape
John Carpenter Co-writer, Music, Director
Debra Hill Co-writer, Producer
Tommy Lee Wallace Production Designer
Irwin Yablans
Moustapha Akkad Executive Producer
Financier
The film made it's television debut on NBC in the early 80's. "First they told us what had to go, which was everything, and I wrote them back, telling them this was ridiculous," Debra Hill said in a 1981 interview. Carpenter went back and filmed a few extra scenes for the television version. They include Dr. Loomis talking with Smith's Grove officials on May 1, 1963, telling them "He's waiting." Loomis then walks into Michael's room, sees the child, and asks, "you've fooled them, haven't you Michael? But not me." Another extra shot features Dr. Loomis at Smith's Grove checking out Michael's abandoned cell - as well as the word "Sister" scratched into the door. Finally, a scene was added in which Lynda comes over to Laurie's house before she leaves to baby sit. This version occasionally makes its way to television. It can also be found on some of Anchor Bay Entertainment's releases of the film.
