Why Halloween is still capable of making us jump out of our seats
From its chilling opener, which ends with six-year-old Mike Myers standing in a clown costume on his lawn, bloody knife in hand, after inexplicably butchering his sister, John Carpenter’s Halloween was destined to be one of the most iconic horror films of all time.
The genre-defining classic has continued to terrify generations of horror fans ever since it opened in cinemas on this day in 1978 and inspired a whole genre of slasher films. It spawned 10 sequels and remakes – of which Carpenter has only endorsed the latest sequel in 2018 – and remains essential Halloween viewing four decades on.
However, Carpenter never intended to name his film Halloween or even set the small town horror on October 31.
The director had been approached by independent film producer, Irwin Yablins, who was after a film about a psychotic killer who stalks babysitters. He paid Carpenter just $10,000 to write, direct and score the film. Carpenter co-wrote the script in 10 days with help from his then-girlfriend, Debra Hill, who wrote all the female babysitters’ dialogue.
It was originally titled, The Babysitter Murders, until Yablins, in a stroke of genius, advised that it should be set on October 31 and renamed Halloween.
They shot the entire film over three weeks in Illinois with a budget of $300,000. After presenting the film without music to a studio executive, who found it less than terrifying, Carpenter worked with a synth expert to rush out an eerie score in just three days. Despite its shoestring budget and rapid production, Halloween went on to gross $70 million at the box office worldwide, making it one of the most profitable independent films of all time.
Halloween’s simple plot follows masked serial killer Michael Myers, who has escaped from a psychiatric hospital, where he was incarcerated for murdering his sister. He returns to his fictional hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he goes on a killing spree, hunting down local teenage babysitters.
As horror films go, the scariest evil is usually the unknown. Carpenter’s Mike Myers was the ultimate terrifying monster. He was silent, anonymous under a creepy blank mask, moved stealthily and had no real motivation, making his targeting of a group of teenage babysitters terrifyingly inexplicable.
In a past interview, Carpenter revealed he based Myers on a young man with “a blank, schizophrenic stare,” who he encountered on a psychiatric ward as a psychology student. He also confirmed that his lead antagonist’s iconic mask was actually a rubber Captain
Kirk mask bought from a toy store and painted white, the best his meagre budget could afford.
Halloween also originated the last-girl-standing horror film trope, when lead babysitter Laurie Strode, played by a young Jamie Lee Curtis, barely escapes her attacker in the film’s nervejangling closing scenes. Myers flees into the night, leaving the door open for further films.
Jamie Lee Curtis reprised her role in the 11th instalment of Halloween in 2018, directed by David Gordon Green, which again pits Laurie against Myers, who has escaped from prison 40 years after his killing spree. No doubt she earned slightly more than her $8,000 paycheck in 1978.
For pure horror, though you can’t beat the original.