Hi, Tommy.

You coming over tonight?

Same time, same place.

Can we make Jack O lanterns?

Sure.

Can you watch the monster movies?

Sure.

Will you reach me?

Can we make popcorn?

Sure, sure, sure.

You better hurry.

Why do you mean to walk into school this way?

My dad asked me to.

Why?

I have to drop off a key.

Why?

Because he's going to sell a house.

Why?

Because that's his job.

Where?

The Myers house.

The Myers house?

You're not supposed to go up there.

Yes, I am.

Uh, that's Book House.

Just watch.

Lonnie Eden said never to go up there.

Lonnie Eden said that's a haunted house.

He said awful stuff happened there once.

Lonnie Lamb probably won't get out of the sixth grade.

I gotta go.

I'll see you tonight.

Bye.

Bye.

I wish I had you all alone.

Just the two of us.

In a world overflowing with movies.

We need a hero.

Someone to separate the past from the movie.

To drama.

She'll give you her reaction.

Movie should know.

We should know.

Hi, everyone.

Hi, Nell.

And welcome to Diorama, episode 277, Halloween.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies you know and movies you don't.

And happy Halloween to you all if you are listening to this on Halloween.

Welcome to Verbal Diorama.

Whether you are a brand new listener, whether you are a regular returning listener, thank you for being here.

Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast on or around Halloween.

And I'm so happy to have you here for the history and legacy of, surprisingly, Halloween.

This episode is coming out on the spookiest of spooky days, and I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who listens to this podcast and who has continued to listen to and support this podcast over the last almost six years now.

It means so much to have your support.

It means so much to read your wonderful comments and emails, especially for October's spooky episodes.

So this month I've done episodes on Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th, and now the Granddaddy of Them all, Halloween.

This month I wanted to do a slasher season, and I wanted to go across the 70s and 80s and fully represent the Mount Rushmore of Slasher horror.

And so we've had chucky, Freddy Krueger, Mrs.

Voorhees, not Jason.

And now we finally get to Michael Myers himself, and he distinguishes himself from his fellow slashers by simply being a stalker.

He is calculating and methodical.

He watches, he judges, and he takes action.

He's not using any of the later slasher cliches like judging promiscuity or killing the children of those who wronged him.

Michael Myers kills indiscriminately, but he decides who to kill and then stalks them until he does indeed kill them.

He's calculated, he's deliberate, he's cold.

And woe betide anyone who misjudges the boogeyman.

Here's the trainer for Halloween.

The one, the only, the classic Halloween.

Halloween night.

A small American town.

15 years ago.

Michael.

Halloween.

I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up.

Because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil.

I think he'll come back.

Exploring uncharted territory.

Totally charted.

Just talk.

Sure.

The only reason she babysits to have.

Halloween.

Come on out, Uncle.

Help me save for this thing.

Holy cat.

Halloween.

The Night He Came Home.

On Halloween night, 1963, 15 year old Judith Myers is brutally stabbed to death by her 6 year old brother Michael.

After being institutionalized for 15 years, the now 21 year old Michael Myers escapes Smith's Grave Sanitarium and drives the 150 miles back to Haddonfield, Illinois, chased by his doctor, Sam Loomis, who believes the mute Michael is the personification of evil.

Meanwhile in Haddonfield, teenage babysitter Laurie Strode is attempting to convince young Tommy Doyle that the boogeyman doesn't exist and that she can protect him.

Michael follows Laurie and her friends Annie and Linda and becomes fixated.

But while he easily kills both Annie and Linda and Linda's boyfriend Bob, Laurie Strode becomes the one that got away.

Let's run through the cast.

We have Donald Pleasence as Dr.

Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Mick Castle as Michael Myers, AKA the Shape, Toni Moran as the unmasked Michael Myers, Nancy Loomis as Annie Brackett, PJ Soles as Linda Vander Clock Charles Ciphers as Sheriff Lee Brackett, Kyle Richards as Lindsay Wallace and Brian Andrews as Tommy Doyle.

Halloween has a screenplay by John Carpenter and Deborah Hill and was directed by John Carpenter.

So today, if you're listening to this on release day, 31st October is Halloween, the day before All Saints Day, the western Christian feast day, also known as All Hallows Eve.

Originating Gaelic culture, Scottish and Irish immigrants took the day over to the new world of America in the 19th century, where it became renowned as an American holiday.

And the Halloween that we know and love today is firmly rooted in U.S.

culture and traditions including pumpkin carving, trick or treating, and dressing up as something spooky or sexy if you're a woman, because that's a thing.

Some people still practice it as a Christian holiday, observing candlelit rituals, attending church services, and remembering deceased friends and loved ones.

But others see it as more of a secular holiday.

Considering the popularity of Halloween in the US and celebrating Halloween as a time where families can dress up and go trick or treating around the neighborhood, which is a fairly new thing for here in the UK.

Maybe only really in the last 15 to 20 years or so has it actually been a thing.

Nobody Hollywood had ever attempted to use the premise of Halloween night as the theme of a film before, and that was something producer Irwin Yablins of Compass Pictures wanted to establish, and he sought out John Carpenter to direct a movie about a relentless killer hunting babysitters on Halloween night.

But to tell the story of Halloween, the movie, not the day we have to start with Hollywood horror up to that point, the end of the Hays Code was firmly signaled by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in 1960, where a woman was seen having relations with a man outside of marriage, scandal, appearing in lingerie, shocking.

And the famous shower scene, as well as being the first film to show a flushing toilet.

It was due to the loosening of the Hays Code that Hitchcock managed to get away with keeping the majority of his controversial scenes in the movie.

Many consider Psycho to be the first Slusher.

Others think Black Christmas from 1974 is more of the archetypal Slusher that we know today.

Black Christmas would provide its own holiday themed influence, as well as a killer POV opening and not really seeing the killer's face.

Even the creator of Black Christmas, Bob Clark, would deny Halloween ripped off Black Christmas, despite the revelation by Clark in 2005 that the two had discussed Carpenter making a Black Christmas sequel in 1977, the plot of which sounds remarkably similar to Halloween.

It's certainly not far fetched to assume that Black Christmas proved inspiration for Halloween, but unlike Black Christmas, Halloween took those ideas, perfected them, and made them the definitive slasher genre rules.

As Richard Noel notes in his book Blood the History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle, there were also a pair of more direct predecessors.

The Texas chainsaw massacre in 1974 and the town that dreaded sundown in 1976, both independently produced and distributed horror films about masked killers.

But the influence of Psycho would remain apparent to the creation of Halloween not just in the themes, structure, cinematography and horror beats, but also attempting to understand the mind of A killer.

Hitchcock would attempt to make Norman Bates interesting and charming and commenting on the psychology of a killer, while Michael Myers would hardly be considered charming.

The character of Sam Loomis, named of course after Sam Loomis in Psycho, would be Myers psychiatrist and would be decipher to help the audience understand Michael Myers motivations to kill.

Many fans believe the theory that Halloween's Sam Loomis is Psycho's Sam Loomis, only older, wiser and retrained as a psychologist after his experiences with Norman Bates at the Bates Motel.

Welcome to the Psycho verse, I guess, and the links to Psycho.

They're just going to keep coming.

The relationship between Irwin Yablans and John Carpenter started with assault on Precinct 13.

Yablans had seen the movie at the Milan film festival in 1976.

Assault on Precinct 13 was Carpenter's homage to Howard Hawke style westerns and he wanted to refashion Rio Bravo into a modern setting.

His previous movie, Dark Star, had been co written by Dan O'Bannon who would go on to utilize a lot of the setting for a little film called Alien.

Assault on Precinct 13, then called the Siege, was acquired by Irwin Yablands who suggested the title be changed.

The film received mixed reviews and lackluster box office in the US before it debuted at the London Film Festival where it won the first prize and huge critical acclaim.

The man who helped get it to the London Film Festival was Michael Myers.

And no, I'm not kidding, Michael Myers is real.

Michael Myers, the real Michael Myers was instrumental in helping assault on Precinct 13 get into the London Film Festival.

I'm gonna come back to Michael Myers, the other Michael Myers a bit later because post the success of assault on Precinct 13, Yablans wanted to make movies and he wanted to make one with John Carpenter.

And he had this idea about babysitters being murdered on one night.

Yablins has debunked rumors that Halloween was previously called the Babysitter Murders.

His intention always was to set this movie on Halloween night.

And remarkably, no one had thought to call their movie Halloween before.

Jablins had met Mustafa Akkad when he distributed Akkad's controversial 1976 movie the Message, also known as Muhammad, messenger of God.

Akkad wanted to make epic biblical movies.

But making epic biblical movies came at a cost.

The movie, the Message, elicited protests over potential depictions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

And the premiere of that movie had to be canceled after the Hanafi movement, a splinter group of the religious organization Nation of Islam, threatened to blow up a building in Washington D.C.

the message would end up flopping.

But Akkad had deep pockets.

Yablans wanted to make a horror movie.

Mustafa Akkad would cough up the $300,000 required.

And there were rumors, never proven, that he acquired some of the money to fund Halloween from his business relationship with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi's government would publicly co finance Akkad's next movie, lion of the Desert.

John Carpenter was on board this idea of this movie of teen babysitters being killed on Halloween night, as long as he could have full creative control, which miraculously he got.

Carpenter received $10,000 for directing, writing and composing the music, retaining rights to 10% of the film's profits.

But if this was a movie about Halloween called Halloween, released around Halloween 1978, the budget would be low and so the turnaround would be tight.

To help write the screenplay, one of Carpenter's must haves was his partner at the time.

Deborah H.

Hill and Carpenter had worked together on assault in Precinct 13 and marked the beginning of both their professional and personal relationships.

It was Deborah Hill who grew up in Haddonfield.

Haddonfield, New Jersey, that is not Haddonfield, Illinois, where she was also a teen babysitter.

And it was Hill who wrote most of the dialogue for the female characters.

Built Annie, Linda and Laurie's friendship, as well as the scenes with Laurie while Carpenter focused on Dr.

Sam Loomis.

There's a rumor that Laurie Strode was named after one of John Carpenter's old girlfriends, but that's never actually been proven.

As I've mentioned, Michael Myers was named after English film producer and distributor Michael Myers.

Sam Loomis was named after Sam Loomis in SoCo.

And Tommy Doyle after Detective Thomas Doyle from Rear Window.

Carpenter had visited a psychiatric institution in Kentucky during his college years, and there he met a young boy with a blank stare.

This inspired not only the character of Michael Myers, but also how Dr.

Loomis describes him to Sheriff Brackett.

The blackest eyes, the devil's eyes, etc.

The fundamental backstory of Halloween came from those haunted house tales.

Kids always talk about that one rundown house in town where legend has it someone committed a bunch of murders or someone died there and a ghost haunts it.

The idea that that sort of evil could live in suburbia and you can't kill evil and every town has a boogeyman legend going back to Halloween and the Celtic legends of Samoane, that Halloween was the one night all souls are released.

And Halloween happens to be the one night of the year when Michael Myers can wreak his revenge on Haddonfield.

This was always going to be a low budget independent film, and so the idea of casting big movie stars was just out of the question.

Peter Cushing was offered the role of Dr.

Loomis just after appearing in Star wars as Grand Loft Tarkin, but his agent rejected the low salary.

Christopher Lee was also approached, but he also turned it down.

Lee would regret the rejection and call declining the role the biggest mistake he'd made in his career.

Veteran actor Donald Pleasence, known to most as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in youn Only Live Twice and From the Great Escape, made his acting debut in 1954 and had starred alongside such greats as Alec Guinness, Derek Bogard, Richard Burton, Charleston Heston, Robert Duvall and Peter Cushing, as well as Sean Connery in youn Only Live Twice.

As the biggest name by far in the cast, he would receive the biggest paycheck, but still only $20,000, which is about $97,000 in 2024.

Lenny.

And even though she wasn't first choice for the part, Jamie Lee Curtis had reservations about accepting the role of Laurie Strode, mostly because she'd witnessed the effect Psycho had had in the years after her mother, Janet Leigh, had become synonymous with the role.

It defined Lee's career going forward.

She would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and win a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Psycho as Marion Crane.

But it also made her afraid to take showers and typecast her.

Curtis didn't want that for her own career, and despite being the daughter of two famous movie stars, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, she wanted to forge a career in her own name.

It was upon learning she was the daughter of Janet Leigh that Debra Hill pushed for her to get the part, citing it would be great publicity to have the daughter of Psycho's Janet Leigh in their movie.

Hill and Curtis would end up becoming close friends, with Curtis praising Hill for being the female voice of the movie.

Curtis would take the movie on the simple fact that Laurie Strode was on every page of the script.

It wasn't the typical female part in a Hollywood movie.

It wasn't the hot girlfriend or the nurse or some bikini babe.

Laurie was a typical teenage girl, but she was the main character, and that was rare.

Weighing up the pros and cons, Curtis took the role and was paid $8,000, which, considering she'd only really had small TV roles up to this point, was serious money.

It's also worth mentioning that Universal Studio Producers and director Richard Franklin were also trying to get Jamie Lee Curtis to star in the sequel Psycho 2 as the character Mary Loomis, Sam Loomis and Lola Crane's daughter and Marion Crane's niece.

That role would eventually go to Meg Tilly.

Taking the roles of Laurie's friends Annie and Linda were Nancy Loomis, who despite the Loomis connection, was a genuine Loomis.

It wasn't a Psycho inspired stage name.

She now goes by Nancy kyes and also PJ Souls.

Loomis had previously starred in Assault on Precinct 13 as well as being the wardrobe mistress, where she was credited as Louise Carries for being the wardrobe mistress and Nancy Loomis for the role she played of Julie.

PJ Soules had previously starred in Carrie as Norma Watson and had auditioned for Princess Leia in Star Wars.

She was married to actor Dennis Quaid at the time and he was considered to play her boyfriend Bob, but he had other commitments and for Michael Myers, credited as the Shape Mick Castle had become friends with John Carpenter when they both studied at the University of Southern California, and he had starred in Dark Star for Carpenter in 1974.

Castle was also an aspiring filmmaker and because production of Halloween was happening close to his home, he asked Carpenter if he could hang out on set.

Carpenter agreed if Castle would appear as the masked killer.

He was told to do nothing, just walk.

But Castle wanted him to move gracefully, and Castle added personality to the mute Michael just by a simple tilt of the head.

For the Unmasked Michael, Carpenter wanted someone with a more angelic face, and so Toni Moran plays the Unmasked Myers.

Production designer Tommy Lee Wallace, the boyfriend of Nancy Loomis at the time, also portrayed Myers in some key scenes as well as editing the movie.

He would also go on to write and direct Halloween 3 season of the Witch.

Tommy Lee Wallace would also be responsible for the iconic Michael Myers mask.

They didn't have any money to make a mask, but the script called for a pale mask with human features, but also somewhat featureless.

This idea was inspired by the French film Eyes Without a Face.

Wallace purchased a William Shatner mask from a random Hollywood Boulevard costume shop for $1.98 alongside a clown mask.

He spray painted the Shatner mask white and cut the eye holes rounder, removed the eyebrows and sideburns and puffed up the hair a bit.

It originated from mask maker Don Post, who was asked to make a mask of William Shatner for Captain Kirk's death scene.

In order to acquire more masks while making Halloween 2, they had to Contact Don Post Studios to order more masks.

There wasn't much of a clothing budget either.

All of Laurie Strode's clothes were purchased from a J.C.

penney for about $100.

Many of the other actors wore their own clothes, and everyone looked in on set, moving equipment, setting up cameras, and many took on multiple jobs.

Filming took place over 20 days in May 1978.

Once again, it was Deborah Hill's idea to bring on cinematographer Dean Cundy, who would continue to work with Carpenter on movies like the Fog, Escape from New York, the Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China, and later on seminal classics like Back to the Future, Jurassic park and Apollo 13.

Although Carpenter wasn't established yet, Kundy felt he was making a big leap in his career.

He would intentionally start with wide shots and include Michael Myers in the background as often as possible to give the audience the feeling that they too are being watched by him.

He gradually moves in closer and the audience feels the same as Laurie in that closet.

Trapped, constricted, evil bearing down on them.

He would cleverly use shade and positioning to give Michael Myers the ultimate visual flair, being not there or there or maybe there until he is definitely there.

And as I'll come to, while the visuals were important, they were nothing without the score.

The majority of the daytime Halloween filming, including the scene where Michael vanishes behind a hedge, were filmed in South Pasadena, California, in Montrose Avenue.

There is now a sign on that greenery that reads welcome to Haddonfield.

The homes of Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace, and the majority of the nighttime scenes were filmed on Orange Grove Avenue in West Hollywood, just north of Sunset Boulevard.

Two houses were used for exterior shots, and two different houses on the street were used for the interior shots as well as interior shots of the Strode family home.

The exterior of the Strode house was sold for $1.7 million in October 2023.

The Smith's Grove Sanitarium scenes were shot in the Hollywood Hills and Altadena.

The Myers house is in the Mission West Historic District and was under threat of demolition.

So the house was actually transported down the street from its original location and is now located at 1000 Mission street and there's a gallery out the back of the house called the Sugarmint Gallery, where you can purchase Halloween inspired art as well as Hocus pocus memorabilia.

Since the movie was produced on a very tight budget of about $300,000, there are very few extras in the sequences in the movie, which also gives them a spooky feeling of isolation, save for a few local children who dressed in Trick or treat outfits they already owned and obviously being shot in May, but set in October, the production team had to supply their own autumn leaves to scatter around each location.

The infamous Michael Myers point of view shots were filmed using a panaglide, which is now known ubiquitously as the Steadicam, which allowed the camera to be fitted to a camera operator for far ranging and smoothly unbroken shots.

Carpenter loved it because he could shoot copious amounts of footage in one day to make up for the film's minuscule budget.

Halloween was among the first four films to use the panaglide, the first being Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven.

According to Carpenter, the famous opening sequence of Halloween was also partly inspired by another Janet Leigh film, Touch of Evil.

The classic thriller directed by Orson Welles also opens with an extended uninterrupted shot for the cast and crew.

This opening shot, an uninterrupted four minute take from the perspective of a killer, was a logistical nightmare.

It begins outside the house, enters through the back door, travels through multiple rooms, climbs and descends stairs, and ends in the front garden.

Carpenter planned it for the last day of the 20 day shoot because he knew it would be the most difficult and time consuming sequence.

Meanwhile, he experimented with the panoblide with cinematographer Dean Cundy.

The Halloween budget would not allow for a dolly track, so the cameraman with the stabilizing rig would have to walk through the house to get the shot.

On the final day of shooting, camera operator Ray Stella hoisted the equipment onto his body and went inside the house.

Crew members would hurry about, shifting lights in and out of place as he went into the rooms, trying to ensure the correct areas of the house were captured on camera and lit correctly.

The Myers house was actually dilapidated at the time, and the production design team had only partially decorated the house to make it appear like a functional home.

In an effort to avoid being noticed by the panaglide camera crew members would hang off the balconies and jump out of windows.

The panaglide was so heavy that three camera operators worked on that scene for 16 hours straight.

And considering this is a movie where people tragically lose their lives fairly young, there's somewhat of an irony that two of the biggest people associated with this movie would both die in 2005.

Deborah Hill would pass away from colon cancer in March 2005, and Mustafa Akad would be killed in a terrorist attack in Amman in November 2005 along with his daughter Reema.

When suicide bombers attacked the Grand Hyatt, Vadison, SAS and days inner hotels In a coordinated attack.

Akkad and his daughter were among the 57 people killed and 115 others were injured.

Al Qaeda quickly claimed responsibility for the bombings, and neither really get the credit they deserve for Halloween being the huge success it was, especially Deborah Hill, whose career started with Halloween and she stayed with the franchise till Halloween 3.

But she also worked with John Carpenter on the Fog and Escape from New York, also branching out into producing movies like Klum, Adventures in Babysitting, and the Oscar winning the Fisher King.

Carpenter would credit working with Hill as, quote, one of the greatest experiences of my life.

She had a passion for not just movies about women or women's ideas, but films for everybody, unquote.

And speaking of a man who makes films for everybody, let's segue into the obligatory Keanu reference for this episode.

The obligatory Keanu reference is basically me, each episode trying to link the movie that I'm featuring with Keanu Reeves for no reason other than he is the best of men and he definitely won't stalk you, come after you and kill you, which is always a plus, especially when we're talking about men.

And so the easiest way to link this movie to Keanu Reeves is that when he was a child, Keanu's mother, Patricia Taylor, created outfits for many famous people, including Dolly Parton.

And one Halloween when he was younger, he got dressed up in an outfit that Dolly Parton had previously worn for the COVID of Playboy in 1978.

The full on Playboy ears, bustier, fishnet stockings, and a bow tie, apparently with sneakers as well.

I'm sure he looked fabulous.

And so I mentioned earlier that the movie was visually very striking.

But when Carpenter screened an early cut of the film for an executive at 20th Century Fox, he realized that he needed to save it with the music because he was told the film just wasn't scary enough.

But this was before Carpenter had created the score.

So he took three days to compose and record the entire score, primarily of a piano melody playing in a 10, 8.

More complex 5, 4 time signature.

Halloween's end credits bill him as the Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra.

Professor Dan Wyman of San Jose State University assisted on the composition, having already worked with Carpenter on assault on Precinct 13.

The Halloween theme has become not only synonymous with the whole franchise, except for Halloween 3 and Halloween the Day, but also of Carpenter himself.

And in the movie, he also uses previously written songs by other artists to reinterpret the meaning of the songs and shape the melody to fit the plot.

When Laurie and Annie are in the car getting high blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper comes on the radio, and unbeknownst to the two ladies, Michael Myers is following the car closely while the music is playing, suggesting that the Reaper is indeed probably coming for the both of them.

So everything on Halloween happened fast.

Irwin Yabnans wanted to get it into theaters in time for the title Holiday, so the entire production was working backwards from that deadline.

Jablins and Akkad had the reasonable expectation that a major studio or distributor would probably purchase the film from them for marketing and release, and they thought it would be a very commercial product.

Halloween was released during a time when exploitation films like Candy Striped Nurses and the Pom Pom Girls, as well as more mainstream genre productions like Exorcist 2, the Fury, and most importantly, Carrie frequently featured strong box office returns with young female leads.

And horror seemed to sell after the phenomenal success of Jaws in 1975 and to a lesser extent the Omen the following year, which both feature unstoppable killing machines.

Kind of similar to Michael Myers, except obviously Shark and Small Boy, respectively.

However, Halloween was turned down by every major studio, which left Yablans in the unfavorable position of self distribution.

After barely making its premiere on 24 October 1978 in Kansas City, Missouri, the movie started to spread through word of mouth despite the fact that by that point Halloween had long since passed.

It opened in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

And like so many low budget films in the 70s which didn't have a wide release, independent distributors would traditionally bicycle prints around the country.

Regionally, tickets began to sell out because of a combination of clever marketing, the iconic poster image of a giant knife in a sinister jackal lantern, fantastic word of mouth, and surprisingly positive reviews, which I will come to.

On its $300,000 budget, Halloween would gross $47.2 million domestically in the US and a further $23 million internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $70.2 million, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time and remains the most successful release of any Halloween film and the third most successful film in the slasher genre, Behind Scream from 1996 and Scream 2 from 1997.

And when Halloween first came out, the majority of critics flatly rejected the film, frequently using a variation of the 9 more trick than treat.

The New York Daily News referred to it as schlock shock and Variety described it as just another maniac on the loose suspenser.

However, some critics recognized Halloween for what it was.

Tom Allen of the Village Voice described the movie as a movie of almost unrelieved chills and violence, conjuring up that unique mix of subliminal threat and contrapuntal physicality employed by Hitchcock, drawing comparisons to not only Psycho but also Night of the Living Dead.

As the months passed, more critics started to praise the movie, including Vincent Camby of the New York Times and Roger Ebert, who would say, quote, halloween is a visceral experience.

We aren't seeing the movie, we're having it happen to us.

It's frightening.

Maybe you don't like movies that are really scary, then don't see this one.

But people took that as a challenge to actually see the movie.

As it crept across the US Ticket sales just increased week on week.

In March of 1979, five months after its debut, Variety was predicting a $20 million gross and prepping for a major driving burst for July through August.

Warner Brothers then picked up the film for European distribution.

It holds a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus reading scary, suspenseful and viscerally thrilling.

Halloween set the standard for modern horror films.

NBC purchased the Halloween TV rights in 1980 for about $3 million following a dispute between Carpenter Hill and NBC's Standards and Practices regarding the censorship of specific scenes.

Halloween made its TV debut in October 1981.

During the making of Halloween 2, Carpenter shot 12 minutes of extra footage to fill a two hour time slot, including Dr.

Loomis at a hospital board review of Michael Myers.

Dr.

Loomis speaking to a six year old Michael at Smith's Grove, Dr.

Loomis at Smith's Grove, examining Michael's deserted cell following his escape, noticing the word sister scratched into the door.

And another scene was added where Annie calls Laurie to borrow the same silk blouse and Linda visits Laurie's house to borrow it before Laurie leaves to babysit.

Laurie's hair is covered by a towel in this new scene because Jamie Lee Curtis hairstyle at the time was significantly shorter than what she had worn in 1978.

Because she famously hated the Halloween hairstyle, it was a perm that was straightened out with hot rollers.

She would eventually chop all her hair off afterwards.

And more footage was found by SYNAPSE Films from this additional shoot from Halloween 2.

For Halloween's TV version, the footage was labeled 1981.

It contained no sound, but it was saved from being destroyed by SYNAPSE films.

Billy Kirkus Halloween was first released on VHS in 1979 and again in 1981.

The synopsis misspelled Myers as Mayers M E Y E R s.

It was also released on Betamax and Laserdisc.

It got its first DVD release in 1997 featuring the original mono audio track as heard in theaters in 1978, and Anchor Bay also released an extended edition featuring the TV version.

In 1999 it got a two disc limited edition of both the theatrical and extended editions.

In 2003 it got a 25th anniversary edition with improved picture and audio and interviews with John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Deborah Hill.

It was released on Blu Ray in 2007, a 30th anniversary Blu Ray was released in 2008 and a 35th anniversary Blu Ray came out in 2013.

In September 2014, Scream Factory teamed up with Anchor Bay to release the film as part of a Blu Ray box set featuring every film in the series up to 2009's Halloween 2 as both a standard and limited edition.

It was released on Ultra HD Blu Ray for the 40th anniversary in 2018 and a brand new 4K Ultra HD Dolby Vision scan of Halloween through to Halloween 5, the Revenge of Michael Myers was also released by Scream Factory.

And despite all of these releases, for some reason Halloween is really hard to find on DVD or Blu Ray for a reasonable price on its own, not in a box set.

So I ended up buying a secondhand copy from Amazon Marketplace for this episode only to sit down and watch it.

And the actual disc inside was for Halloween 2, not Halloween.

That was disappointing.

So I got a copy of Halloween 2 at home, not a copy of Halloween.

And yes, it ended up being a free copy because I did get a refund from Amazon Marketplace.

If we're going to talk about Halloween 2, we might as well talk about all of the sequels.

Halloween 2 came out in 1981, Halloween 3 Season of the Witch in 1982, which is not really a sequel, it's more of a separate entity.

Halloween 4 the return of Michael Myers in 1988, Halloween 5 the revenge of Michael Myers in 1989, the curse of Michael Myers in 1995, Halloween H2O in 1998, Halloween resurrection in 2002, Rob Zombie's Halloween in 2007 and Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 in 2009, and then David Gordon Green's Halloween in 2018, Halloween kills in 2021 and Halloween ends in 2022.

Halloween and Halloween 2 have split timelines, being the start of the Thorn timeline of four, the Return five, the Revenge and the Curse of Michael Myers, as well as the start of the Halloween H2O and Halloween resurrection timelines.

Halloween 2018 ignores Halloween 2 and just uses Halloween 1978 as a starting point for its story and ignores everything else before it.

Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween 2 are technically remakes at this point, and Halloween 3 season of the Witch is just its own sweet little entity only.

The first sequel, Halloween 2, was written by Carpenter and Hill.

It was meant to wrap up the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers and starts right where Halloween ends.

Although he and Hill produced Halloween 3 season of the Witch, its plot is unrelated to any other Halloween films because Michael Myers is not in it.

Carpenter would not be involved in any of the series later films with the exception of David Gordon Green's Halloween 2018 and its two sequels in an executive producer and composer role.

Following Caesar of the Witch's unfavorable critical and financial reception, the studio revived Michael Myers with Halloween the Return of Michael Myers.

Mustafa Akard remained involved with the Halloween franchise, serving as executive producer of each follow up up until his death in 2005, after which his son Manette Akard would be involved as a producer from Halloween 2007 through to Halloween ends in 2022.

At each episode I've talked about a movie within the franchise that I might do next year.

I've talked about Wes Craven's new nightmare and Jason X, and possibly Halloween 3 season of the Witch might be a great shout for that little Rogues gallery of episodes.

So let me know what you think about that.

Halloween was also chosen by the Library of Congress in 2006 to be preserved in the US National Film Registry for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Empire Magazine named it one of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

In 2008, it was chosen as one of the 100 greatest movies of all time by Total Film.

In 2010, it was named the Greatest Slasher Movie of all time by Complex Magazine in 2017, and in 2018, LA Weekly named Michael Myers the greatest slasher villain of all time and Paced named Halloween as the best slasher movie ever.

And really, Halloween became the blueprint that successors like Friday the 13th and a nightmare on Elm street followed.

It was largely responsible for the popularization of slusher films in the 1980s and helped develop the Slusher genre.

It popularized many tropes that have become synonymous with the slusher genre, like the Final Girl and the killing of horny teenagers, the use of a motif for the killer as well as popularizing point of view shots.

But John Carpenter and Deborah Hill never set out to make virginity the hero it was never meant to be A social statement on sex equals death.

Just that Laurie, without a boyfriend on Halloween night was mindful and lonely.

She looks out of windows and happens to see Michael Myers because she's not distracted by boys.

That it was less about virginity and more about inner strength, tenacity and defiance.

And of course, numerous films.

Friday the 13th, Mother's Day, Christmas, Evil, My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night and the Bloody Birthday have all adopted the Halloween model of low budget production, fresh face casts and unstoppable knife wielding holiday killers.

The majority of these films eschewed carpenter's craftsmanship in favor of more explicit gore and sex.

However, neither Halloween nor its constant barrage of sequels was surpassed by any of these imitators.

It would seem impossible to recreate the magic of Halloween because it had a unique set of circumstances.

Hungry and talented filmmakers, producers who never gave up, audiences who were ready for change, and a genre that was ready for reinvention.

Every town has its local legend of horror and evil.

Haddonfield's is Michael Myers and he is unapologetically evil.

Last Halloween I went trick or treating with my sister and nephews and a local guy dresses as Michael Myers.

We're talking full on face mask, overalls, knife fake obviously.

Now my nephews, they are 8 and 5 and they didn't really know what to think.

They didn't know who this guy is.

He's just a guy in an outfit dressed up for Halloween.

But this guy, he gets the full Myers performance.

He doesn't talk, he just cocks his head and he watches you as you walk by.

The kids weren't scared.

I was genuinely scared of this guy because Michael Myers is scary.

He's relentless, unknown.

He doesn't stop hunting you.

He can't be reasoned with, he can't be understood.

He doesn't understand your point of view and that makes him terrifying.

What drives him?

What's he thinking?

Who knows?

And it speaks to the deepest recesses of fear in women that you never truly know what a man's intentions are.

It just so happens that this particular man is also wearing a mask and has a knife.

So it kind of makes it doubly terrifying.

John Carpenter would go on to become the master of horror.

While the Thing wasn't well received at the time, it's now regarded as a sci fi horror masterpiece.

But he will always be remembered most fondly for Halloween for the independent cheap slasher that became one of the most successful indie films of all time.

And Jamie Lee Curtis career would only go from strength to strength.

She'd work with Carpenter and Hill again on the Fog, and she'd stick with slashers for prom night before reprising her role of Laurie Strode in Halloween 2, but then managing to shed her scream queen image in Trading Places, and then established herself as a comedic actress in A fish called Wanda.

46 years ago, a simple, effective horror movie premiered dripping with suspense and chills.

It's a bold choice to name your horror movie Halloween, because if it's rubbish, it's always going to be associated with that one night of the year.

It has to be worthy of the holiday.

Imagine naming your Christmas movie Christmas.

But that's the thing with Halloween.

It will always come around.

Every year the trick or treaters will come out, the Jack O lanterns will be carved, the ghosts and goblins would haunt our streets.

And every year, Halloween will be talked about on podcasts, will be watched in the black of night by teenagers wanting to be scared.

And every Halloween, you'll always wonder in the back of your mind, is tonight the night the Boogeyman will come for me?

Thank you for listening.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Halloween and thank you as always, for your continued support of this podcast.

If you want to get involved and help this podcast grow, you could do something really simply tell your friends and family about this podcast or about this episode.

Leave a rating or review wherever you found this podcast.

And you can also find me on social media.

I'm herbaldiorama on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, threads, bluesky, and Letterboxd where you can share like, follow, et cetera on all of those places to help spread the word.

Now this is the point where I normally talk about the next episode.

However, I'm going to be taking a break for the month of November to recharge and catch up on my episode backlog.

But while I'm gone, I will be releasing some classic archival episodes from a long time ago.

We're talking over three years ago, so chances are you probably haven't listened to them.

But I'm going to be starting with one of my favorite horror comedies, Tales from the Crypt Demon Night.

So that will be coming up next.

And then there will be three more archival episodes coming out across the month of November before we then jump into December.

And guys, we're going to start talking about Christmas movies.

Yay.

Now I always say this podcast is free and it always will be free.

However, it is not free to make a podcast.

So I rely on some exceptionally generous people to help support this podcast.

And if you want to become one of them, you're under no obligation to do so.

You can continue to listen absolutely free for the rest of your days.

But if you get value out of what I do and you wish to support the future of this podcast, you can do that in one of two ways.

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If you want to get in touch with me, you can email verbaldiorama gmail.com or you can go to verbaldiorama.com and fill out the little contact form where you can just say hi.

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And finally get out.

Come on.

As a matter of fact it was.

Bye.

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