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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.
This week we take our second foray into the world of John Carpenter. First came They Live, which is probably in my personal Top 10 of all the films we've watched in the Club so far. And today we tackle an earlier effort of his, one that has gone on to be one of the most influential horror films of all time.
From Biography.com:
Famed filmmaker John Carpenter, born on January 16, 1948, in Carthage, New York, developed an interest in film and music as a young boy. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, where one school project, The Resurrection of Bronco Billy, won him an Academy Award (best live action short subject) in 1970. Carpenter co-wrote the screenplay and composed the music for the film.
Working with Dan O'Bannon, Carpenter started his first full-length movie while at USC. Dark Star, a sci-fi comedy, started out as a short film about astronauts on a mission to blow up unstable planets, but the pair later expanded it to feature length. Carpenter handled many responsibilities on the film, serving as its director, producer, writer, and composer. Made a shoestring budget, Dark Star was released in 1974 and eventually became a cult classic.
Paying to tribute to the westerns of Howard Hawks, especially his masterpiece Rio Bravo, Carpenter next worked on Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). The low-budget film is an urban retelling of a traditional western standoff, with a Los Angeles police station coming under siege by gang members. Carpenter earned kudos for this gritty thriller with the London Times calling him "a first-rate story-teller."
With his next effort , Halloween (1978), Carpenter made his name nearly synonymous with the horror genre. Again wearing many hats, he served as the director, co-writer, and composer on what became one of the highest-earning independent films of all time. Costing only $300,000 to make, Halloween terrified movie audiences with the story of Michael Myers, a killer who escapes from a mental institution to returns to his hometown to wreck havoc. Donald Pleasence played Myers's doctor from the institution and Jamie Lee Curtis appeared as a teenage babysitter trying to avoid Myers's murderous wrath.
Carpenter drew comparisons to famed director Alfred Hitchcock for his ability to take the audience on a visual thrill ride. Critics also complimented him for his advanced technical skills. This suspenseful and violent film paved the way for a wave of other slasher movies, such as Friday the 13th. Halloween itself became a film franchise, but without Carpenter onboard. He only penned the screenplay for Halloween II (1981).
With his initial success, Carpenter found himself working on studio films and with larger budgets. Again turning to horror and suspense, Carpenter wrote and directed The Fog (1980). The residents of a small coastal town had to battle against the zombielike beings, the former inhabitants of an old leper colony. His then-wife, actress Adrienne Barbeau, co-starred with Jamie Lee Curtis in the film. Turning to a gritty, futuristic action drama, Carpenter worked on Escape from New York (1981) starring Kurt Russell. Both films opened to disappointing reviews and mixed box office results. Carpenter teamed up with Russell again in 1996 when he directed Escape from L.A.
Taking on one of the literary masters of horror and suspense, Carpenter directed the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's Christine. He took a break from his usual fare for the science fiction romance Starman (1984) starring Jeff Bridges. Bridges played an alien who takes over a dead man's body and becomes involved with the man's widow (Karen Allen). The film proved to be a critical and commercial success with Bridges earning an Academy Award nomination for his work.
Returning to independent film, Carpenter has continued to work with varying degrees of success, but none matching the heights he reached with Halloween. Horror thriller Prince of Darkness (1987) and sci-fi action flick They Live (1988) failed to attract much of an audience. Carpenter tried comedy, directing 1992's Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase, which also proved to be a disappointment.
After the 2001 sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars, Carpenter took a break from directing. He worked on a few television episodes, but he did not return to the big screen until 2010 with The Ward. In the thriller starring Amber Heard and Mamie Gummer, young female patients at a mental institution suffer at the hands of an evil ghostly figure.
Jamie Lee Curtis: www.imdb.com/name/nm0000130
Premise: Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again.
Budget: $300,000
Box Office: $70 million
* Due to its shoestring budget, the prop department had to use the cheapest $2 mask that they could find in the costume store: a Star Trek (1966) William Shatner mask. They later spray-painted the face white, teased out the hair, and reshaped the eye holes. Shatner admitted that for years he had no idea his likeness was used for this film. It was only during an interview that someone mentioned his mask was being used. He has since stated that he is honored by this gesture.
* Of the female leads (all the girls are supposed to be in high school), only Jamie Lee Curtis was actually a teenager at the time of shooting.
* A young Jamie Lee Curtis was so disappointed with her performance that she became convinced she would be fired after only the first day of filming. When her phone rang that night and it was John Carpenter on the phone, Curtis was certain it was the end of her movie career. Instead, Carpenter called to congratulate her and tell her he was very happy with the way things had gone.
* John Carpenter considered the hiring of Jamie Lee Curtis as the ultimate tribute to Alfred Hitchcock who had given her mother, Janet Leigh, legendary status in Psycho (1960).
* John Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated many times over the years that they did not consciously set out to depict virginity as a way of defeating a rampaging killer. The reason why the horny teens all die is simply that they're so preoccupied with getting laid that they don't notice that there's a killer at large. Laurie Strode, on the other hand, spends a lot of time on her own and is therefore more alert.
* John Carpenter's intent with the character of Michael Myers was that the audience should never be able to relate to him.
* The original script, titled "The Babysitter Murders", had the events take place over the space of several days. It was a budgetary decision to change the script to have everything happen on the same day (doing this reduced the number of costume changes and locations required) and it was decided that Halloween, the scariest night of the year, was the perfect night for this to happen..
* Halloween was shot in 20 days in the spring of 1978. Made on a budget of $300,000, it became the highest-grossing independent movie ever made at that time.
* John Carpenter approached Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to play the Sam Loomis role (that was eventually played by Donald Pleasence) but both turned him down due to the low pay. Lee later said it was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his career. Donald Pleasence was paid $20,000 for 5 days work.
* Half of the $300,000 budget was spent on the Panavison cameras so the film would have a 2.35:1 scope.
* As the movie was actually shot in early spring in southern California (as opposed to Illinois in late October), the crew had to buy paper leaves from a decorator and paint them in the desired autumn colors, then scatter them in the filming locations. To save money, after a scene was filmed, the leaves were collected and reused. However, as Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter note on the DVD audio commentary, the trees are quite full and green and even some palm trees can be seen, despite that in Illinois in October, the leaves would probably be mostly gone and there would be no palm trees due to Illinois cold climate - the state is mostly full of deciduous trees.
* All of the actors wore their own clothes, since there was no money for a costume department. Jamie Lee Curtis went to J.C. Penney for Laurie Strode's wardrobe. She spent less than one hundred dollars for the entire set. She shot the film while on hiatus from the sitcom Operation Petticoat: Operation Petticoat (1977).
* The opening POV sequence took 2 days to film.
* Prior to the movie, a book was written by Curtis Richards, and reveals more of the story behind Michael's rage. However, the book is very rare.
* Jamie Lee Curtis' first feature film. She was paid a reported $8,000 for her efforts.
* P.J. Soles went to a screening of the movie after it was released, sitting in the 4th row of a regular audience. She was very amused, when during her nude scene and line of "see anything you like?" a male audience member in front yelled out "Hell yes I do!" unaware she was right behind him. Dennis Quaid, asked her if she wanted him to confront the man, but she declined, too amused from the experience. Quaid was originally supposed to play Lynda's boyfriend, Bob, but scheduling conflicts prevented this.
* John Carpenter was quite intimidated by Donald Pleasence, of whom he was a big fan and who was easily the oldest and most experienced person on set. Although Pleasence asked Carpenter difficult questions about his character, Pleasence turned out to be a good-humored, big-hearted individual and the two became great friends. Pleasence went on to appear in two other Carpenter films.
* The scene where The Shape seems to appear out of the darkness behind Laurie was accomplished by using a simple dimmer switch on the light that slowly illuminated the mask.
* The opening shot appears to be a single, tracking, point of view shot, but there are actually three cuts. The first when the mask goes on, and the second and third after the murder has taken place and the shape is exiting the room. This was done to make the point of view appear to move faster.
* The character of Michael Myers was named after the European distributor of Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) as a kind of weird "thank you" for the film's overseas success.
* John Carpenter's iconic score for the movie manifested from a female critic's negative review after screening the film: that it wasn't scary. At the time, there was no music in the film whatsoever. Carpenter then composed the fully-improvised score in 3 days.
* For its first airing on television, extra scenes had to be added to make it fit the desired time slot. John Carpenter filmed these during the production of Halloween II (1981) against his better judgment.
* When they were shooting the scenes for the start of the film (all the ones seen from Michael's point of view) they couldn't get the 6-year old child actor until the last day, so the movie's producer, Debra Hill, volunteered to be Michael for any scenes where his hands come into view. This is why the nails on young Michael's hands look so well manicured and varnished.
* Donald Pleasence confessed to John Carpenter that the main reason why he took the part of Loomis was because his daughter Angela (who was a musician) had loved Carpenter's musical score for his previous movie Assault on Precinct 13 (1976).
* As the film was made in spring, the crew had huge difficulty in procuring pumpkins.
* The "Myers" house was a locale found in South Pasadena that was largely the decrepit, abandoned place seen in the majority of the film. However, as the house had to look ordinary (and furnished) for the early scenes with the young Michael Myers, almost the whole cast and crew worked together to clean the place, move in furniture, put up wallpaper, and set up running water and electricity, and then take it all out when they were through.
* That Michael Myers could drive a car despite having been committed to an asylum at the age of six inspired many guffaws. The first movie novelization came up with a simple but effective explanation: when Doctor Loomis drove Michael to sanity hearings over the years, Michael simply watched very closely and carefully as Doctor Loomis operated the car. Remember, even if Michael sat in the back seat and there was a screen of bulletproof glass partition, Michael could still look over the Doctor's shoulder without Loomis realizing the significance. Alternatively Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) provides a retroactive explanation to this question.
* In an interview, Moustapha Akkad said that John Carpenter had envisioned making the movie for around $300,000. Coincidentally, Akkad said he was producing and filming a major motion picture at the same time starring Laurence Olivier which was costing his company roughly around $300,000 a day. When Carpenter told him the fixed price of his movie, he immediately funded it.
* As has been noted, the killer is referred to as The Shape in the script and credits for this film. The word "shape" was used by the Salem Witch Trials judges to describe specters (or spirits) of the accused doing mischief or harming another person.
* The wealthy film producer Moustapha Akkad had admittedly little interest in this film and helped make it primarily due to the enthusiasm of John Carpenter and Irwin Yablans. However, when the film turned out to be a huge box-office smash, Akkad saw an opportunity and facilitated every 'Halloween' sequel. This does not include the two remakes, which were produced after his death in 2005.
* In a 2010 documentary, it was revealed that five different people dressed as The Shape: Nick Castle (throughout the movie), Tony Moran (during the unmasking by Laurie Strode), stuntman James Winburn, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace (due to his knowledge of how much force would be needed to break props during action shots in a single take), and co-writer/co-producer Debra Hill (in the external wide shot when Tommy sees The Shape for the first time). Tony stated that no one told him until he arrived on set that he would be wearing a mask; Debra explained that she happened to bring the costume with her that day and no one else was available for the shot.
* John Carpenter told production designer Tommy Lee Wallace to go out and find a "government-looking" car to be used by Dr. Loomis and Marion in the opening scenes, which Michael Myers ultimately steals and uses throughout the film. Wallace went to the nearest car-rental agency and a 1976 Ford LTD station wagon was the only car there that looked the part. Wallace hired it for two weeks, installing a wire-mesh divider between the front and rear seats, and slapping Illinois state decals on the front doors. Carpenter loved it, and the car-rental agency had no idea of the LTD's use in the film.
* Much credit for the concept must go to its producer Irwin Yablans, who had the concept originally for a horror film called "The Babysitter Murders". Upon further research, Yablans discovered to his surprise that no previous film had been titled "Halloween" and thought it would be a great concept to set these "babysitter murders" on the holiday. With these ideas, Yablans convinced an excited John Carpenter to write and direct a film around them.
* The story is based on an experience John Carpenter had in college touring a psychiatric hospital. Carpenter met a child who stared at him "with a look of evil, and it terrified me."
* The dark lighting comes from necessity: the crew didn't have enough money for more lights.
* On the 25th anniversary disc, John Carpenter states that the original title sequence was to show a long shot of a sidewalk ending with a Halloween mask on the floor. The idea was dropped and the more iconic title sequence of the Jack O'Lantern was used.
* Ironically, Jamie Lee Curtis admitted, "I loathe horror movies. I don't like to be surprised."
* John Carpenter's direction for Nick Castle in his role as Myers was minimal. For example, when Castle asked what Myers' motivation was for a particular scene, Carpenter replied that his motivation was to walk from one set marker to another. Carpenter also instructed Castle to tilt his head a couple of times as if he was observing the corpse, particularly in the scene when Myers impaled one of his victims against a wall.
* In the scene where Laurie and Annie are walking home and Laurie thinks she sees Michael hiding behind a bush, you can see the smoke from John Carpenter's cigarette coming up from behind the bush.
* Will Sandin (Young Michael Myers) became a police officer in L.A.
* John Carpenter himself dismisses the notion that Halloween is a morality play, regarding it as merely a horror movie. According to Carpenter, critics "completely missed the point there". He explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."
* John Carpenter purposely took a more restrained, suggestive approach with the gore in this movie. He learned his lesson with his last movie Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) when he killed off Kim Richards' character and the audience wound up hating him. Because of this he purposely took a more discreet approach to the bloodshed, ala Psycho (1960), as opposed to an over- the- top gorefest ala A Bay of Blood (1971).
* According to Don Post Jr., President of Don Post Studios, the famous California mask making company, the filmmakers originally approached his firm about custom making an original mask for use in the film. The filmmakers explained that they could not afford the numerous costs involved in creating a mask from scratch, but would offer Post points in the movie as payment for his services. Post declined their offer, as he received many such proposals from numerous unknown filmmakers all the time.
* Although Don Post Studios turned down an offer by the filmmakers to receive points in the movie in exchange for an original mask it was the company's own 1975 Star Trek (1966) Captain Kirk mask of actor William Shatner, after alteration, that epitomized the face of Michael Myers. They would agree four years later, however, to provide the Silver Shamrock masks for Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982).
* At 3 minutes and 54 seconds into the film, the lights go off upstairs where Michael's sister and her boyfriend are. The boyfriend is heard saying goodnight to her from the stairs at the 5 minute mark, leaving only 1 minute and 6 seconds for them to have slept together.
* Tommy Lee Wallace had worked second unit for John Carpenter on this film and was originally chosen by Carpenter and the producers to direct Halloween II (1981). His approach was more of a Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) approach, where it' s five years later and Lorie was in graduate school when Michael resurfaces. But Carpenter insisted this had to be a very next day kind of sequel, and the studio and producers were insisting on a lot more blood due to the success of Friday the 13th (1980). Because of all this Wallace decided he wasn't comfortable with the sequel, and he declined. He did direct Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) however.
* When Terry Gross interviewed Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel live in front of an audience for a fundraiser for radio station WBEZ in Chicago in 1996, Terry asked them about the scariest movie they've sen. Roger mentioned how the first "Halloween" movie was extremely scary and then recounted how when Gene saw it at a local movie theater, he was so scared, he took a cab home, even though he only lived two blocks from the movie theater. Gene then recounted how when he got home, he went to the shower and pulled the curtain back to see if anyone was in there.
* According to Carpenter, the look of "Halloween" was patterned after the 1974 movie, "Chinatown".
* For years after 'Halloween' was released, people would tell writer/director John Carpenter how horrified they were by Michael Myers grotesquely disfigured face, glimpsed when Laurie pulls his mask off for a moment towards the end of the film. But actually all they saw was the ordinary face of the actor Tony Moran playing the role, perfectly normal except for the small knife wound inflicted by Laurie during their struggle in the closet which was created using Special Effects makeup. Carpenter cites this as evidence of the power of suggestion in cinema, that the audience saw a monster on-screen so assumed that he must look like a monster underneath the mask.
* The adult Michael Myers was portrayed by Nick Castle in almost every scene, except for some pick-up shots and the unmasking scene, where he was replaced by Tony Moran. Castle was a school-buddy of John Carpenter, and was on set just to watch the movie be filmed. It was at the suggestion of John Carpenter that he took up the role of Michael Myers, as he was tall and had what Carpenter considered an interesting walk. Castle admitted he was disappointed to not be the face shown, but understood that Carpenter wanted a more "angelic" face to juxtapose with Myers' ghastly deeds. Castle has gone on to become a successful director.
* Originally the script had Dr. Loomis having a surprised reaction to the disappearance of Michael Myers's body from the lawn at the end of the film. Donald Pleasence suggested his character's reaction should instead be an "I knew this would happen" look on his face. They shot it both ways and ended up using Pleasance's idea.
* Michael Myers' full name is mentioned in the final film. In the scene where Dr Loomis asks to have him moved to a maximum security hospital, the doctors he is speaking to say his full name as Michael Aubrey Myers.
* Because P.J. Soles' shirt was open for the scene where she is strangled with the telephone cord, an alternate version was shot for the trailer and publicity shots where she is wearing a bathrobe.
* We find out that Michael is 6 when he murders Judith in 1963. The main part of the film is set in 1978 making Michael now 21, however in the end credits he is credited as 'Michael Aged 23.'
* Was selected in 2006 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.
This week we take our second foray into the world of John Carpenter. First came They Live, which is probably in my personal Top 10 of all the films we've watched in the Club so far. And today we tackle an earlier effort of his, one that has gone on to be one of the most influential horror films of all time.
Our Director
From Biography.com:
Famed filmmaker John Carpenter, born on January 16, 1948, in Carthage, New York, developed an interest in film and music as a young boy. After high school, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, where one school project, The Resurrection of Bronco Billy, won him an Academy Award (best live action short subject) in 1970. Carpenter co-wrote the screenplay and composed the music for the film.
Working with Dan O'Bannon, Carpenter started his first full-length movie while at USC. Dark Star, a sci-fi comedy, started out as a short film about astronauts on a mission to blow up unstable planets, but the pair later expanded it to feature length. Carpenter handled many responsibilities on the film, serving as its director, producer, writer, and composer. Made a shoestring budget, Dark Star was released in 1974 and eventually became a cult classic.
Paying to tribute to the westerns of Howard Hawks, especially his masterpiece Rio Bravo, Carpenter next worked on Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). The low-budget film is an urban retelling of a traditional western standoff, with a Los Angeles police station coming under siege by gang members. Carpenter earned kudos for this gritty thriller with the London Times calling him "a first-rate story-teller."
With his next effort , Halloween (1978), Carpenter made his name nearly synonymous with the horror genre. Again wearing many hats, he served as the director, co-writer, and composer on what became one of the highest-earning independent films of all time. Costing only $300,000 to make, Halloween terrified movie audiences with the story of Michael Myers, a killer who escapes from a mental institution to returns to his hometown to wreck havoc. Donald Pleasence played Myers's doctor from the institution and Jamie Lee Curtis appeared as a teenage babysitter trying to avoid Myers's murderous wrath.
Carpenter drew comparisons to famed director Alfred Hitchcock for his ability to take the audience on a visual thrill ride. Critics also complimented him for his advanced technical skills. This suspenseful and violent film paved the way for a wave of other slasher movies, such as Friday the 13th. Halloween itself became a film franchise, but without Carpenter onboard. He only penned the screenplay for Halloween II (1981).
With his initial success, Carpenter found himself working on studio films and with larger budgets. Again turning to horror and suspense, Carpenter wrote and directed The Fog (1980). The residents of a small coastal town had to battle against the zombielike beings, the former inhabitants of an old leper colony. His then-wife, actress Adrienne Barbeau, co-starred with Jamie Lee Curtis in the film. Turning to a gritty, futuristic action drama, Carpenter worked on Escape from New York (1981) starring Kurt Russell. Both films opened to disappointing reviews and mixed box office results. Carpenter teamed up with Russell again in 1996 when he directed Escape from L.A.
Taking on one of the literary masters of horror and suspense, Carpenter directed the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's Christine. He took a break from his usual fare for the science fiction romance Starman (1984) starring Jeff Bridges. Bridges played an alien who takes over a dead man's body and becomes involved with the man's widow (Karen Allen). The film proved to be a critical and commercial success with Bridges earning an Academy Award nomination for his work.
Returning to independent film, Carpenter has continued to work with varying degrees of success, but none matching the heights he reached with Halloween. Horror thriller Prince of Darkness (1987) and sci-fi action flick They Live (1988) failed to attract much of an audience. Carpenter tried comedy, directing 1992's Memoirs of an Invisible Man with Chevy Chase, which also proved to be a disappointment.
After the 2001 sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars, Carpenter took a break from directing. He worked on a few television episodes, but he did not return to the big screen until 2010 with The Ward. In the thriller starring Amber Heard and Mamie Gummer, young female patients at a mental institution suffer at the hands of an evil ghostly figure.
Our Star
Jamie Lee Curtis: www.imdb.com/name/nm0000130
Film Overview and YouTube Videos
Premise: Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again.
Budget: $300,000
Box Office: $70 million
Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)
(courtesy of IMDB)
* Due to its shoestring budget, the prop department had to use the cheapest $2 mask that they could find in the costume store: a Star Trek (1966) William Shatner mask. They later spray-painted the face white, teased out the hair, and reshaped the eye holes. Shatner admitted that for years he had no idea his likeness was used for this film. It was only during an interview that someone mentioned his mask was being used. He has since stated that he is honored by this gesture.
* Of the female leads (all the girls are supposed to be in high school), only Jamie Lee Curtis was actually a teenager at the time of shooting.
* A young Jamie Lee Curtis was so disappointed with her performance that she became convinced she would be fired after only the first day of filming. When her phone rang that night and it was John Carpenter on the phone, Curtis was certain it was the end of her movie career. Instead, Carpenter called to congratulate her and tell her he was very happy with the way things had gone.
* John Carpenter considered the hiring of Jamie Lee Curtis as the ultimate tribute to Alfred Hitchcock who had given her mother, Janet Leigh, legendary status in Psycho (1960).
* John Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated many times over the years that they did not consciously set out to depict virginity as a way of defeating a rampaging killer. The reason why the horny teens all die is simply that they're so preoccupied with getting laid that they don't notice that there's a killer at large. Laurie Strode, on the other hand, spends a lot of time on her own and is therefore more alert.
* John Carpenter's intent with the character of Michael Myers was that the audience should never be able to relate to him.
* The original script, titled "The Babysitter Murders", had the events take place over the space of several days. It was a budgetary decision to change the script to have everything happen on the same day (doing this reduced the number of costume changes and locations required) and it was decided that Halloween, the scariest night of the year, was the perfect night for this to happen..
* Halloween was shot in 20 days in the spring of 1978. Made on a budget of $300,000, it became the highest-grossing independent movie ever made at that time.
* John Carpenter approached Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to play the Sam Loomis role (that was eventually played by Donald Pleasence) but both turned him down due to the low pay. Lee later said it was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his career. Donald Pleasence was paid $20,000 for 5 days work.
* Half of the $300,000 budget was spent on the Panavison cameras so the film would have a 2.35:1 scope.
* As the movie was actually shot in early spring in southern California (as opposed to Illinois in late October), the crew had to buy paper leaves from a decorator and paint them in the desired autumn colors, then scatter them in the filming locations. To save money, after a scene was filmed, the leaves were collected and reused. However, as Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter note on the DVD audio commentary, the trees are quite full and green and even some palm trees can be seen, despite that in Illinois in October, the leaves would probably be mostly gone and there would be no palm trees due to Illinois cold climate - the state is mostly full of deciduous trees.
* All of the actors wore their own clothes, since there was no money for a costume department. Jamie Lee Curtis went to J.C. Penney for Laurie Strode's wardrobe. She spent less than one hundred dollars for the entire set. She shot the film while on hiatus from the sitcom Operation Petticoat: Operation Petticoat (1977).
* The opening POV sequence took 2 days to film.
* Prior to the movie, a book was written by Curtis Richards, and reveals more of the story behind Michael's rage. However, the book is very rare.
* Jamie Lee Curtis' first feature film. She was paid a reported $8,000 for her efforts.
* P.J. Soles went to a screening of the movie after it was released, sitting in the 4th row of a regular audience. She was very amused, when during her nude scene and line of "see anything you like?" a male audience member in front yelled out "Hell yes I do!" unaware she was right behind him. Dennis Quaid, asked her if she wanted him to confront the man, but she declined, too amused from the experience. Quaid was originally supposed to play Lynda's boyfriend, Bob, but scheduling conflicts prevented this.
* John Carpenter was quite intimidated by Donald Pleasence, of whom he was a big fan and who was easily the oldest and most experienced person on set. Although Pleasence asked Carpenter difficult questions about his character, Pleasence turned out to be a good-humored, big-hearted individual and the two became great friends. Pleasence went on to appear in two other Carpenter films.
* The scene where The Shape seems to appear out of the darkness behind Laurie was accomplished by using a simple dimmer switch on the light that slowly illuminated the mask.
* The opening shot appears to be a single, tracking, point of view shot, but there are actually three cuts. The first when the mask goes on, and the second and third after the murder has taken place and the shape is exiting the room. This was done to make the point of view appear to move faster.
* The character of Michael Myers was named after the European distributor of Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) as a kind of weird "thank you" for the film's overseas success.
* John Carpenter's iconic score for the movie manifested from a female critic's negative review after screening the film: that it wasn't scary. At the time, there was no music in the film whatsoever. Carpenter then composed the fully-improvised score in 3 days.
* For its first airing on television, extra scenes had to be added to make it fit the desired time slot. John Carpenter filmed these during the production of Halloween II (1981) against his better judgment.
* When they were shooting the scenes for the start of the film (all the ones seen from Michael's point of view) they couldn't get the 6-year old child actor until the last day, so the movie's producer, Debra Hill, volunteered to be Michael for any scenes where his hands come into view. This is why the nails on young Michael's hands look so well manicured and varnished.
* Donald Pleasence confessed to John Carpenter that the main reason why he took the part of Loomis was because his daughter Angela (who was a musician) had loved Carpenter's musical score for his previous movie Assault on Precinct 13 (1976).
* As the film was made in spring, the crew had huge difficulty in procuring pumpkins.
* The "Myers" house was a locale found in South Pasadena that was largely the decrepit, abandoned place seen in the majority of the film. However, as the house had to look ordinary (and furnished) for the early scenes with the young Michael Myers, almost the whole cast and crew worked together to clean the place, move in furniture, put up wallpaper, and set up running water and electricity, and then take it all out when they were through.
* That Michael Myers could drive a car despite having been committed to an asylum at the age of six inspired many guffaws. The first movie novelization came up with a simple but effective explanation: when Doctor Loomis drove Michael to sanity hearings over the years, Michael simply watched very closely and carefully as Doctor Loomis operated the car. Remember, even if Michael sat in the back seat and there was a screen of bulletproof glass partition, Michael could still look over the Doctor's shoulder without Loomis realizing the significance. Alternatively Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) provides a retroactive explanation to this question.
* In an interview, Moustapha Akkad said that John Carpenter had envisioned making the movie for around $300,000. Coincidentally, Akkad said he was producing and filming a major motion picture at the same time starring Laurence Olivier which was costing his company roughly around $300,000 a day. When Carpenter told him the fixed price of his movie, he immediately funded it.
* As has been noted, the killer is referred to as The Shape in the script and credits for this film. The word "shape" was used by the Salem Witch Trials judges to describe specters (or spirits) of the accused doing mischief or harming another person.
* The wealthy film producer Moustapha Akkad had admittedly little interest in this film and helped make it primarily due to the enthusiasm of John Carpenter and Irwin Yablans. However, when the film turned out to be a huge box-office smash, Akkad saw an opportunity and facilitated every 'Halloween' sequel. This does not include the two remakes, which were produced after his death in 2005.
* In a 2010 documentary, it was revealed that five different people dressed as The Shape: Nick Castle (throughout the movie), Tony Moran (during the unmasking by Laurie Strode), stuntman James Winburn, production designer Tommy Lee Wallace (due to his knowledge of how much force would be needed to break props during action shots in a single take), and co-writer/co-producer Debra Hill (in the external wide shot when Tommy sees The Shape for the first time). Tony stated that no one told him until he arrived on set that he would be wearing a mask; Debra explained that she happened to bring the costume with her that day and no one else was available for the shot.
* John Carpenter told production designer Tommy Lee Wallace to go out and find a "government-looking" car to be used by Dr. Loomis and Marion in the opening scenes, which Michael Myers ultimately steals and uses throughout the film. Wallace went to the nearest car-rental agency and a 1976 Ford LTD station wagon was the only car there that looked the part. Wallace hired it for two weeks, installing a wire-mesh divider between the front and rear seats, and slapping Illinois state decals on the front doors. Carpenter loved it, and the car-rental agency had no idea of the LTD's use in the film.
* Much credit for the concept must go to its producer Irwin Yablans, who had the concept originally for a horror film called "The Babysitter Murders". Upon further research, Yablans discovered to his surprise that no previous film had been titled "Halloween" and thought it would be a great concept to set these "babysitter murders" on the holiday. With these ideas, Yablans convinced an excited John Carpenter to write and direct a film around them.
* The story is based on an experience John Carpenter had in college touring a psychiatric hospital. Carpenter met a child who stared at him "with a look of evil, and it terrified me."
* The dark lighting comes from necessity: the crew didn't have enough money for more lights.
* On the 25th anniversary disc, John Carpenter states that the original title sequence was to show a long shot of a sidewalk ending with a Halloween mask on the floor. The idea was dropped and the more iconic title sequence of the Jack O'Lantern was used.
* Ironically, Jamie Lee Curtis admitted, "I loathe horror movies. I don't like to be surprised."
* John Carpenter's direction for Nick Castle in his role as Myers was minimal. For example, when Castle asked what Myers' motivation was for a particular scene, Carpenter replied that his motivation was to walk from one set marker to another. Carpenter also instructed Castle to tilt his head a couple of times as if he was observing the corpse, particularly in the scene when Myers impaled one of his victims against a wall.
* In the scene where Laurie and Annie are walking home and Laurie thinks she sees Michael hiding behind a bush, you can see the smoke from John Carpenter's cigarette coming up from behind the bush.
* Will Sandin (Young Michael Myers) became a police officer in L.A.
* John Carpenter himself dismisses the notion that Halloween is a morality play, regarding it as merely a horror movie. According to Carpenter, critics "completely missed the point there". He explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."
* John Carpenter purposely took a more restrained, suggestive approach with the gore in this movie. He learned his lesson with his last movie Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) when he killed off Kim Richards' character and the audience wound up hating him. Because of this he purposely took a more discreet approach to the bloodshed, ala Psycho (1960), as opposed to an over- the- top gorefest ala A Bay of Blood (1971).
* According to Don Post Jr., President of Don Post Studios, the famous California mask making company, the filmmakers originally approached his firm about custom making an original mask for use in the film. The filmmakers explained that they could not afford the numerous costs involved in creating a mask from scratch, but would offer Post points in the movie as payment for his services. Post declined their offer, as he received many such proposals from numerous unknown filmmakers all the time.
* Although Don Post Studios turned down an offer by the filmmakers to receive points in the movie in exchange for an original mask it was the company's own 1975 Star Trek (1966) Captain Kirk mask of actor William Shatner, after alteration, that epitomized the face of Michael Myers. They would agree four years later, however, to provide the Silver Shamrock masks for Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982).
* At 3 minutes and 54 seconds into the film, the lights go off upstairs where Michael's sister and her boyfriend are. The boyfriend is heard saying goodnight to her from the stairs at the 5 minute mark, leaving only 1 minute and 6 seconds for them to have slept together.
* Tommy Lee Wallace had worked second unit for John Carpenter on this film and was originally chosen by Carpenter and the producers to direct Halloween II (1981). His approach was more of a Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) approach, where it' s five years later and Lorie was in graduate school when Michael resurfaces. But Carpenter insisted this had to be a very next day kind of sequel, and the studio and producers were insisting on a lot more blood due to the success of Friday the 13th (1980). Because of all this Wallace decided he wasn't comfortable with the sequel, and he declined. He did direct Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) however.
* When Terry Gross interviewed Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel live in front of an audience for a fundraiser for radio station WBEZ in Chicago in 1996, Terry asked them about the scariest movie they've sen. Roger mentioned how the first "Halloween" movie was extremely scary and then recounted how when Gene saw it at a local movie theater, he was so scared, he took a cab home, even though he only lived two blocks from the movie theater. Gene then recounted how when he got home, he went to the shower and pulled the curtain back to see if anyone was in there.
* According to Carpenter, the look of "Halloween" was patterned after the 1974 movie, "Chinatown".
* For years after 'Halloween' was released, people would tell writer/director John Carpenter how horrified they were by Michael Myers grotesquely disfigured face, glimpsed when Laurie pulls his mask off for a moment towards the end of the film. But actually all they saw was the ordinary face of the actor Tony Moran playing the role, perfectly normal except for the small knife wound inflicted by Laurie during their struggle in the closet which was created using Special Effects makeup. Carpenter cites this as evidence of the power of suggestion in cinema, that the audience saw a monster on-screen so assumed that he must look like a monster underneath the mask.
* The adult Michael Myers was portrayed by Nick Castle in almost every scene, except for some pick-up shots and the unmasking scene, where he was replaced by Tony Moran. Castle was a school-buddy of John Carpenter, and was on set just to watch the movie be filmed. It was at the suggestion of John Carpenter that he took up the role of Michael Myers, as he was tall and had what Carpenter considered an interesting walk. Castle admitted he was disappointed to not be the face shown, but understood that Carpenter wanted a more "angelic" face to juxtapose with Myers' ghastly deeds. Castle has gone on to become a successful director.
* Originally the script had Dr. Loomis having a surprised reaction to the disappearance of Michael Myers's body from the lawn at the end of the film. Donald Pleasence suggested his character's reaction should instead be an "I knew this would happen" look on his face. They shot it both ways and ended up using Pleasance's idea.
* Michael Myers' full name is mentioned in the final film. In the scene where Dr Loomis asks to have him moved to a maximum security hospital, the doctors he is speaking to say his full name as Michael Aubrey Myers.
* Because P.J. Soles' shirt was open for the scene where she is strangled with the telephone cord, an alternate version was shot for the trailer and publicity shots where she is wearing a bathrobe.
* We find out that Michael is 6 when he murders Judith in 1963. The main part of the film is set in 1978 making Michael now 21, however in the end credits he is credited as 'Michael Aged 23.'
* Was selected in 2006 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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