Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film set in the fictional suburban midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois, USA on Halloween. The original draft of the screenplay was titled The Babysitter Murders . John Carpenter directed the film, which stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle, Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace sharing the role of Michael Myers (listed in the credits as "The Shape"). The central theme of the film is Myers' escape from a psychiatric hospital and his subsequent murder of a number of teenagers, whilst Dr. Loomis' attempts to track and stop him. Halloween is widely regarded as a classic among horror films, and as one of the most influential horror films of its era. In 2006 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Halloween was produced on a budget of $320,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, equivalent to over $150 million as of 2008, becoming one of the most profitable independent films. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The movie originated many clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s. However, the film contains little graphic violence and gore.
Critics have suggested that Halloween and its slasher film successors may encourage sadism and misogyny. Others have suggested the film is a social critique of the immorality of young people in 1970s America, pointing out that many of Myers' victims are sexually promiscuous substance abusers, while the lone heroine is depicted as chaste and innocent (although she is seen smoking a joint). While Carpenter dismisses such analyses, the perceived parallel between the characters' moral strengths and their likelihood of surviving to the film's conclusion has nevertheless become a standard slasher movie trope.
Plot
On Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) murders his seventeen-year-old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) with a large butcher knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. Almost immediately after, his parents arrive home and find him in a trance-like state. He is then sent to Smith's Grove Warren County Sanitarium and he is placed under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Eight years of treatment leads Loomis to believe that Michael is nothing less than pure evil. An additional seven years of trying to keep Myers locked up ends upon his attempted transfer to be prosecuted as an adult. As Loomis and his assistant Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) go to Smiths Grove to take the 21-year-old Myers to court, Myers steals their car, nearly kills Marion and escapes. Loomis then decides to find Michael at all costs. In Haddonfield, Myers stalks teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and some of her friends. At various points throughout the day Laurie sees a man in a white mask (from her classroom window, behind a bush while she walks home, and in the clothesline from her bedroom window). Later in the evening, Laurie meets her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews).
After arranging to pick up her boyfriend, Annie sends Lindsey to stay with Laurie at the Doyle house. As she gets into the car, however, Myers pops up from the backseat and strangles her, and ends up cutting her throat. Tommy sees Myers carrying Annie's body into the Wallace house and thinks he is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses the boy's terror and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles), another friend of Laurie's arrives at the Wallace house with her boyfriend Bob Simms. After the couple has sex, Bob is stabbed by Michael and Lynda is strangled while trying to call Laurie.
Laurie worries for her friends' safety after receiving a strange phone call from Lynda at the Wallace house. She walks across the street and discovers the three bodies plus Judith Myers' missing tombstone. She is attacked by Michael Myers but manages to escape back to the Doyle house. Michael manages to gain access to the house but Laurie jabs a knitting needle into his neck, apparently killing him. She goes upstairs to reassure the children when Michael again follows her. She hides the children and locks herself in a closet leading to the "Infamous Closet Scene". Michael then tries to break open the closet door. When he does Laurie stabs him in the eye with a wire hanger, causing him to drop his knife. Then she stabs him in the torso with the knife, by which he falls down, apparently dead.
Exiting the closet, she sends the children to a neighbors for help. Loomis sees the kids running from the house screaming and enters the Doyle house. Behind Laurie, Myers gets up and walks towards her and begins to throttle her. Loomis appears and manages to shoot him away, following up with 5 more shots which knock Michael over a balcony. Loomis then looks over the balcony, and sees that Michael has disappeared. Laurie sees the look on Loomis's face, and realizes her fears are not over yet.
Deaths
Judith Myers - Stabbed to death
Trucker - Stabbed in chest (off-screen)
Annie - Choked and stabbed in stomach
Bob - Pinned to wall with butcher knife in chest
Lynda - Choked to death with phone cordProduction
After viewing John Carpenter's film Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to direct a film for them about a psychotic killer that stalked babysitters. In an interview with Fangoria magazine, Yablans stated, "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 ." Carpenter and his then-girlfriend Debra Hill began drafting a story originally titled The Babysitter Murders , but Carpenter told Entertainment Weekly that Yablans suggested setting the movie on Halloween night and naming it Halloween instead.
Akkad fronted the $320,000 for the film's budget, considered low at the time (even though Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13 , had an estimated budget of $100,000). Akkad worried over the tight, four-week schedule, low budget, and Carpenter's limited experience as a filmmaker, but told Fangoria , "Two things made me decide. 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". Carpenter received $10,000 for directing, writing, and composing the music, retaining rights to 10 percent of the film's profits.
Because of the low budget, wardrobe and props were often crafted from items on hand or that could be purchased inexpensively. Carpenter hired Tommy Lee Wallace as production designer, art director, location scout and co-editor. Wallace created the trademark mask worn by Michael Myers throughout the film from a Captain Kirk mask purchased for $1.98. Carpenter recalled how Wallace "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." Hill adds that the "idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless — this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not." Many of the actors wore their own clothes, and Jamie Lee Curtis' wardrobe was purchased at J.C. Penney for around a hundred dollars.
The limited budget also dictated the filming location and time schedule. Halloween was filmed in 21 days in the spring of 1978 in South Pasadena, California and Sierra Madre, California (cemetery). An abandoned house owned by a church stood in as the Myers house. Two homes on Orange Grove Avenue (near Sunset Boulevard) in Hollywood were used for the film's climax. The crew had difficulty finding pumpkins in the spring, and artificial fall leaves had to be reused for multiple scenes. Local families dressed their children in Halloween costumes and trick-or-treated them for Carpenter.
In August 2006, Fangoria reported that Synapse Films had discovered boxes of negatives containing footage cut from the film. One was labeled "1981" suggesting that it was additional footage for the television version of the film. Synapse owner Don May, Jr. said, "What we've got is pretty much all the unused original camera negative from John Carpenter's original Halloween . Luckily, Billy was able to find this material before it was destroyed. The story on how we got the negative is a long one, but we'll save it for when we're able to showcase the materials in some way. Kirkus should be commended for pretty much saving the Holy Grail of horror films." It was later reported, "We just learned from Sean Clark, long time Halloween genius, that the footage found is just that: footage. There is no sound in any of the reels so far, since none of it was used in the final edit."
Writing
Yablans and Akkad
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