Halloween

Halloween (1978)

Timing: 1:31 (91 min)

7.556/10
6120

0/10
13

5.2/10
63

All about film

Video 14

Photo 364

Actors and characters

Release date

1978-10-24

Country

United States

Production

Compass International Pictures, Falcon International Productions, Miracle Films

Genre

Horror, Thriller

Budget

$325 000

Revenue

$70 260 597

Website

http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/halloween/

Director

John Carpenter

Actors

Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, John Michael Graham, Nancy Stephens, Arthur Malet
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Debra Hill, Moustapha Akkad, Irwin Yablans

Operator

Dean Cundey

Composer

John Carpenter

Artist

Randy Moore

Audition

Editing

Charles Bornstein, Tommy Lee Wallace
All team (20)

• The characters in Jamie Lee Curtis's house are enjoying a viewing of the 1951 film 'The Thing'. John Carpenter would later direct a remake of this film.
• The film was shot in 20 days.
• Carpenter recorded the film's music with his friends in 4 days.
• Carpenter's first choice for the role of Laurie Stroud was Ann Lockhart, and the film's original title was 'The Babysitter Murders'.
• The film is set in autumn, but filming took place in spring. To save money, the crew painted paper leaves, then collected and reused them for shooting.
• The actors wore their own clothes in the film, as there was no money for a professional costume designer.
• The film is filled with numerous hidden references and jokes. For example, the town was named Haddonfield after the place in New Jersey where Debra Hill went to school. Laurie Stroud is actually the name of John Carpenter's first girlfriend. Michael Myers was named after the British distributor of John Carpenter's 'Assault on Precinct 13' (1976).
• John Carpenter originally wanted to cast Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in the role of the doctor, but they declined.
• The name of the character 'Sam Loomis' is also not accidental – a character with the same name appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's famous film 'Psycho'.
• The town of Smith's Grove (in Illinois) mentioned in the film is a real place with a population of around 600 people. It is located 15 miles from Bowling Green, John Carpenter's hometown. Despite the film being set in Illinois, all the license plates visible in the shots are Californian. Palm trees, which do not grow in Illinois, also appear in the film.
• The 'Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra' mentioned in the credits does not exist.
• All the female characters in the film are high school students. However, of the actresses involved in the film, only Jamie Lee Curtis roughly matched the appropriate school age.
• Carpenter was inspired to create the character of Michael Myers by the android from 'Westworld' (1973), played by Yul Brynner.
• The full version of the film has a runtime of 101 minutes.
• The famous Myers mask has its own history. It was made from a Halloween Captain Kirk mask (the hero of the science fiction series "Star Trek" (1966—1969)) costing about a dollar, which in turn was made from the actor who played Kirk, William Shatner. The purchased mask had its eyebrows removed, the eye sockets widened, and it was painted white. This version, due to its emotionlessness, appealed more to the creators than the smiling clown mask.
• In 2006, the Library of Congress added "Halloween" to the National Film Registry as a film "of cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance."
• The film's small budget made it impossible to attract major actors, so up-and-coming actors such as Jamie Lee Curtis were cast in some roles. The actors' fees were very modest: Donald Pleasence received the most ($20,000), Jamie Lee Curtis received $8,000, and Nick Castle, who played Myers, filmed for only $25 a day.
• Christopher Lee, who refused to star in the film due to the small fee, later said that it was his biggest mistake of his career.
• Donald Pleasence was initially unenthusiastic about the offer to play Dr. Sam Loomis, but his daughter, after watching "Assault on Precinct 13", convinced him to work with Carpenter.
• According to Debra Hill, one of the reasons Jamie Lee Curtis was cast was because she was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of 'Psycho': this was intended to give the film additional publicity. For Curtis, the role of Laurie was her film debut. Before that, she had only appeared in television series.
• Little-known actress Nancy Kyes (she appeared under the pseudonym Nancy Loomis for Carpenter) played Laurie's friend Annie Brackett. Kyes was already known to Carpenter, as she had appeared in 'Assault on Precinct 13'. Furthermore, at the time of filming 'Halloween', she was dating Tommy Lee Wallace, the film's artist and editor.
• Dennis Quaid was invited to play the role of Bob, Lynda's boyfriend, and he was dating P. J. Soles at the time (they married the same year), but Quaid declined the role due to his commitments.
• Ten-year-old actress Kyle Richards, who played Lindsey Wallace, was the younger sister of Kim Richards, who played the role of Katie in 'Assault on Precinct 13'.
• The role of Michael Myers (credited as “The Shape”) was played by six different people.
• The character Tommie Doyle's name is taken from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film "Rear Window," and the nurse Marion Chambers' name is a combination of the first and last names of two characters from "Psycho." Finally, Sheriff Lee Brackett (Annie's father) was named after screenwriter Lee Brackett, who worked with Howard Hawks on the 1959 film "Rio Bravo," which influenced "Assault on Precinct 13."
• The television broadcast rights to the film were sold to NBC for $4,000,000. In 1980, NBC released a television version of the film, which, unlike the original, lasted 101 minutes. Four scenes were reshot with the original cast specifically for it during work on "Halloween II" by Carpenter and Hill.
• As Jamie Lee Curtis recalled, in order for her character's emotions to match the director's vision, Carpenter devised a "fear meter": the director would call out a level, and the actress would accordingly portray different emotions. According to Curtis, the instructions sounded something like, "It will be 7 here, 6 here, and somewhere around 9 and a half in the scene we'll be shooting tonight."
• Following the success of "Halloween," other films appeared in the 1980s and 1990s based on the story of a maniac pursuing teenagers. Some of them, such as "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street," subsequently spawned film series. Carpenter himself later said that he "didn't even realize what effect [the film] would have. This film started a trend that by the end of the eighties made horror films unpopular."
• Daniel Gonzalez, a London resident who committed several murders, compared them to the murders in "Halloween" after his arrest.
• The final scene filmed was the murder of Judith Myers. An abandoned house in South Pasadena, owned by a church, was used as the Myers house. To film the scene of Judith's murder, the film crew furnished the house and ran electricity to it.
• The scene of Judith's murder was filmed late at night, so Will Sandin could not stay on set until the end of the episode. In the scene where Myers stabs his sister with a knife, the knife is held by Debra Hill's hand.
• Much later, Carpenter and Hill, recalling all the performers who played Michael, could not remember who specifically played him in the final shot, when his body lies on the ground.
• If you look closely at the scene where Laurie notices a figure near the bush, you can see smoke – this was smoke from John Carpenter's cigarette that accidentally got into the frame.
• The people in the house of Jamie Lee Curtis's character are enjoying a screening of the 1951 film 'The Thing'. John Carpenter would later direct a remake of this film.
• Myers's iconic mask has its own story. It was made from a Halloween Captain Kirk mask (the hero of the science fiction series 'Star Trek'; 1966—1969) costing about a dollar, which was, in turn, modeled after William Shatner, who played Kirk. The purchased mask had its eyebrows removed, the eye sockets widened, and it was painted white. This version, due to its emotionlessness, appealed more to the creators than the smiling clown mask.
• Donald Pleasence was initially unenthusiastic about the offer to play Dr. Sam Loomis, but his daughter, after watching "Assault on Precinct 13", convinced him to work with Carpenter.
• According to Debra Hill, one of the reasons Jamie Lee Curtis was cast was because she was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of "Psycho": this was intended to give the film additional publicity. For Curtis, the role of Laurie was her film debut. Before that, she had only appeared in television series.
• Nancy Kyes, then a relatively unknown actress (credited as Nancy Loomis in Carpenter's film), played Laurie's friend Annie Brackett. Kyes was already known to Carpenter, having appeared in "Assault on Precinct 13". Additionally, at the time of filming "Halloween", she was dating Tommy Lee Wallace, the film's artist and editor.
• Ten-year-old actress Kyle Richards, who played Lindsey Wallace, was the younger sister of Kim Richards, who played Katy in "Assault on Precinct 13".
• The television broadcast rights for the film were sold to NBC for $4,000,000. In 1980, NBC released a television version of the film, which, unlike the original, ran for 101 minutes. Specifically for it, during the work on "Halloween II", Carpenter and Hill, with the original cast, filmed four additional scenes.
• As Jamie Lee Curtis recalled, to ensure her character's emotions aligned with the director's vision, Carpenter devised a "fear meter": the director would call out a level, and the actress would accordingly portray different emotions. According to Curtis, the instructions were along the lines of "It'll be a 7 here, a 6 here, and somewhere around 9 and a half in the scene we're shooting tonight."
• Following the success of "Halloween" in the 1980s and 1990s, other films appeared based on the story of a maniac pursuing teenagers. Some of them, such as "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street", subsequently spawned film series. Carpenter himself later said that he "didn't even realize the effect [the film] would have. This film started a trend that by the late eighties made horror films unpopular."