October is the prime season for horror movies and with a new sequel heading to theaters, set 40 years after the original, it’s the perfect time to peer behind the mask of Halloween.
John Carpenter and Debra Hill co-wrote the script, with Carpenter also directing and scoring the modern classic horror flick. It starred Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Psycho star Janet Leigh) with Donald Pleasence, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, and Charles Cyphers rounding out the small cast. The movie was released on October 25, 1978 by Compass International Pictures.
Halloween, made on a modest budget of around $300,000 and turning in $70 million at the global box office, is considered one of the most successful independent films of all time. It was followed by seven sequels, remakes of the first two movies, and now a direct sequel to the first film, along with a novelization, video game, and comic book adaptations. Halloween was added the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2006.
The movie opens in 1963 with a teenager sneaking her boyfriend in while her parents are out for the evening. They are being spied on by someone who enters the house, slides a mask over a still mysterious face, and grabs a knife. After killing the teenage girl, the killer is unmasked and revealed to be her 6-year-old brother, Michael Myers.
Flashforward to 1978, Michael Myers breaks free from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium’s custody and heads back to Haddonfield. The audience is then introduced to teenager Laurie Strode and her friends Annie and Lynda. What follows starts as a typical night of babysitting but unfolds in terror as Michael stalks and dispatches several teens on the hunt for Laurie.
After seeing Carpenter’s work directing Assault on Precinct 13, indie film producers Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad sought him to direct a horror movie about a killer stalking babysitters. Carpenter took the assignment on the condition that he’d get full creative control over the project.
He brought in Debra Hill to cowrite the script, and it took the pair about two weeks to write the movie, which was originally titled The Babysitter Murders. Hill, who had been a babysitter herself, supplied that angle as well as the dialogue between the young women and Carpenter provided the voice of Dr. Loomis. They drew on their own pasts to name portions of the film, like Haddonfield, the same name of the town where Hill was raised, and several streets were named after ones in Carpenter’s hometown. They also paid homage to Hitchcock, naming Tommy Doyle after the detective in Rear Window and Dr. Loomis after Sam Loomis in Psycho. For the part of Michael, Carpenter utilized the haunted house motif and was inspired by a trip taken to a psychiatric institute while studying psychology during college.
The movie was shot in a mere four weeks, on the small budget of $300,000, which was low even for the time. It was shot in the spring of 1978 in Southern California, masquerading as Haddonfield, Illinois. It’s an amusing fact since palm trees can be seen in the movie – a tree that is not indigenous to the Midwest. The crew had to reuse their fall décor in different areas of the set and local families dressed their kids up for trick ‘r treat scenes.
Carpenter brought Tommy Lee Wallace in to be production designer, art director, co-editor, and location scout. Wallace created the Michael Myers mask by using a Star Trek Captain Kirk mask, then widening the eye holes and spray painting it a bluish-white. The mask has human features but is nearly expressionless and devoid of any emotion, making it a great addition to the tone of the movie.
Halloween is praised for Carpenter’s direction and score, beginning with the spooky title scene depicting a jack o’ lantern against a black background and the slow pan into the pumpkin face’s eye before the light goes out completely. The opening sequence shown from the killer’s point of view, a call back to Psycho and Peeping Tom, is a great tracking shot that puts the viewer in the unsettling position of witnessing the violence up close. Carpenter deftly drew out tension, not just relying on jump scares but the frightening, extended moments of desperation as Laurie tries to get back into a locked house with Michael trailing her or when a traumatized Laurie cowers in front of the couch after seeing an open glass door where he could’ve entered the house.
He created a fear meter to help actors measure how scared they should appear in different scenes. For Nick Castle’s portrayal as Michael, Carpenter gave stage directions (walking from marker to marker) more than acting direction to keep the killer single minded and monochromatic. One key piece of direction for the character came when Carpenter told Castle to pause and tilt his head after killing Bob as though he was examining a butterfly pinned to a wall.
For the score, Carpenter created a piano melody to serve as the main theme. The entire score, which took him about three days to compose, is somewhat simple but very unsettling. Carpenter and a group of his friends performed other songs during the movie under the name, The Coupe De Villes. One of the few instances of popular music in the soundtrack was “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult, cleverly played while Laurie and Annie are in the car and Michael is following them in a stolen vehicle.
Halloween is largely credited with beginning the wave of slasher films that were popular throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. It helped establish unwritten rules of slashers like those who misbehaved (i.e. partied, used drugs or alcohol, or had sex) were likely going to die.
It was an early slasher example that introduced the concept of a final girl who was pursued by the killer but survives and even injuries or kills the bogeyman. After Halloween Jamie Lee Curtis starred in four more horror movies – The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, and Halloween II – all in 1980 and 1981. The character of Laurie and Curtis’ horror roles that followed cemented her status as one of the most beloved scream queens in horror. The titles of final girl and scream queen have been attributed to several other characters and actresses following Halloween and a few (like Fay Wray, Janet Leigh, and Marilyn Burns) from before.
Though the filmmakers and audiences couldn’t have anticipated the series that would follow, Halloween created Michael Myers as an agent of pure evil from the beginning. On a few occasions throughout the movie, Dr. Loomis calls Michael evil – even though when the film began he had only killed one person. But the depravity of the kill and Michael’s lack of response to Dr. Loomis’ treatment convinced the doctor – a man of science – that Michael was indeed evil. The bogeyman theme is reinforced at the film’s conclusion when Michael is stabbed and shot repeatedly but manages to survive and flee the scene.
The film received a lot of critiques and criticism on several subjects. Some feminist critics stated that it debased and abused women, casting Laurie as a survivor only because Dr. Loomis saved her. Other feminist critics saw it as an example of female heroism since many earlier horror movies featured women as practically helpless but in Halloween Laurie fights back, injures Michael Myers, and protects the children she’s babysitting at her own peril.
When it was released some groups were shocked and unhappy with how the teenagers behave in the movie. They drink alcohol, sneak around, hook up with their boyfriends, even good girl Laurie partakes in smoking marijuana. It portrayed the teens as rebellious and rambunctious – which parents did not enjoy.
Others have also noted that the movie suggests the disintegration of suburban safety. Whereas films would often cast cities in the light of dangerous landscapes and dubious individuals, Halloween features a killer born in middle class suburbia who wreaks havoc not once but twice on the happy little town.
The silent killer Michael Myers goes beyond rationale in his single-minded pursuit to destroy. He doesn’t have a complicated backstory or vengeful motivation, he’s just plain evil. For her part, Laurie is just a regular teenage girl with no training or abilities that does her best to survive a relentless, terrifying situation. Whether viewers watch it for the thrills or deconstruct its themes and symbolism, Halloween is a pivotal modern horror classic.
