John Carpenter's Halloween gave birth to the modern slasher film, establishing virtually
every one of the genre's tropes and dramatically announcing its director as a major new talent.
But even though you've seen it a dozen times, there's a lot you might not know about one
of the greatest and most influential horror films ever made.
Independent feature It's now a classic horror film that paved
the way for everything that came after, but Halloween wasn't exactly a major production.
The film was the brainchild of producer Irwin Yablans who hired Carpenter because of his
strong visual style and ability to innovate on a tight budget.
Yablans' idea was simple enough: "Ah, a movie about babysitters in jeopardy
being terrorized and we'll do it all in one night."
In fact, early in pre-production, the project had the working title The Babysitter Murders.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Carpenter remembered,
"I was finishing [directing] a TV movie called Someone's Watching Me! when Irwin Yablans
called and said, 'Why don't we set it on Halloween night, in fact, why don't we call it Halloween?'"
Carpenter came up with the idea of the small town with a dark secret that's revisited on
Halloween night.
He and Debra Hill wrote the script, as Hill explained to Fangoria:
"We wrote the whole thing in three weeks.
Then we just had to find the right actors."
Casting Laurie Especially important was casting the part
of Laurie Strode, the movie's heroine.
Tommy Lee Wallace, Carpenter's friend and one of the film's editors, explained to Consequence
of Sound: "This was a time that women were asserting
their rights like never before, and Debra was a very assertive woman.
No way she was going to have a weeping violet type as her heroine."
Carpenter, who didn't watch television, had never seen Jamie Lee Curtis' work on the series
Operation Petticoat, but Hill was convinced she'd be perfect for the role.
One small detail was all it took to convince Carpenter, Curtis also happened to be the
daughter of Janet Leigh, perhaps the original scream queen, whose shower had been rudely
interrupted in the 1960 classic Psycho.
Pulling out all the tricks The film was shot with a $320,000 budget.
If it doesn't look particularly low-budget, it's because Carpenter was a master at making
something from nothing.
As there was no room in the budget for a costume department, the entire cast's wardrobe was
purchased on the cheap at local department stores.
Michael Myers' mask was crafted from a repurposed William Shatner mask, purchased from a local
costume store for $1.98 and painted white.
Also enabling them to keep the budget in check, the filming location for the Myers' house
was an abandoned property, owned by a church.
And although the film was shot in Pasadena, California, it was set in Illinois, so Carpenter
evoked the feel of autumn in the Midwest by using the same several trash bags full of
painted leaves for exterior scenes, scattering them around whatever street they were currently
shooting on, only to collect them all to be re-used in the next shot.
The minimalist aesthetic carried over to post-production; Carpenter wrote the film's classic theme in
only an hour, and scored the entire film himself in just three days.
Working for peanuts Another way to keep the budget low was to
pay very little.
As the biggest name in the cast, Donald Pleasence got a flat fee of $20,000, while little-known
star Curtis received only $8,000.
Carpenter's buddy Nick Castle was paid the princely sum of $25 per day to portray "The
Shape," as Michael Myers is called in the credits, and Carpenter himself took only $10,000
plus a small percentage of the film's profits, which ended up working out for him.
He said: "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."
Limited release Halloween debuted on October 25, 1978 in a
single city, Kansas City, Missouri.
As the buzz started to grow, national critics started paying attention.
The great Roger Ebert concluded his sparkling review with a warning that should have had
any horror fan sprinting out the door to buy tickets:
"I'd like to be clear about this.
If you don't want to have a really terrifying experience, don't see Halloween."
The film went on to gross an astonishing $47 million, reigning for over a decade as the
most profitable independent film ever made.
Not as gory as you think Despite how you might remember it, Halloween
includes virtually no onscreen gore.
Carpenter's expert use of slowly building tension, spooky imagery, and perfectly deployed
jump scares left audiences with the impression that what they had just seen must have been
crazy violent in order to be that disturbing.
But that wasn't Carpenter's take.
"I wanted something deadly simple and something that would just eat at you a little bit."
Hill alluded to this in production notes for 1981's Halloween 2, saying,
"People don't seem to realize that we showed next to no blood in the first picture.
You think you're seeing a lot more than we're showing you."
The almost-anthology Carpenter and Hill never envisioned even a
single sequel, let alone a franchise.
Carpenter explained to Deadline: "I didn't think there was any more story,
and I didn't want to do it again."
Instead of finding ways to bring Michael Myers back, Carpenter and Hill had the idea to tell
a different story with each new Halloween film, making it an ongoing horror anthology
series.
Halloween 2's tepid box office convinced producers to give it a shot, and the result, 1982's
Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, instantly polarized horror fans everywhere.
Many fans wanted Michael Myers back and they got their wish six years later, although the
sequels and rebooted series that followed provided mostly diminishing returns, with
one exception.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later ignored previous sequels and served as a direct sequel to Halloween
2.
Ironically, Halloween is set to receive the same retcon treatment again.
The Halloween reboot scheduled for 2018 will serve as a direct sequel to the original,
with Carpenter serving as executive producer and providing the score, and Jamie Lee Curtis
returning to play Laurie Strode one more time.
"Michaaaaeeeel."