A patient named Michael Myers (Tony Moran) escapes from a mental hospital which he was being kept at for stabbing her sisters 15 years ago. He comes back to Haddonfield on Halloween and starts stalking babysitters. It’s a small and quiet town. Because it’s Halloween, it’s hard to tell the fake monsters from the real one who is cold as ice behind his flat white mask. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), the doctor who kept him under surveillance him at the hospital for years follows his trail to catch him or at least warn the people of Haddonfield about the seriousness of the situation. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is one of Michael’s potential victims but she is a tough cookie and not ready to give in yet.
Here’s another classic from legendary director John Carpenter whose body of work speaks for itself and it’s a definite must for every horror/thriller fan.
This is a pretty straight forward story but yet, without revealing much, it keeps the mystery going on and makes it even scarier. A lot of classic horror tricks that make audiences jump are used here too but it’s done sparingly. The the chemistry of anyone who worked on this movie had to have been so right to create such a “flawless flow” so to speak.
We never see Michael’s face but his presence is ever chilling. Jamie Lee Curtis is wonderful so is Donald Pleasence.
The idea for this film came from the executive producer Irwin Yablans who thought it would be a very scary idea for a film to have a cold blooded killer going after defenseless baby sitters demise of whom would also mean that now the kids they were looking after are in danger and that would make the story all the more disturbing. Everybody could relate to the baby sitter situation easily but if only there was a way to bring these events together under an umbrella… Then it occurred to him that that umbrella was 'Halloween' ; although he dismissed the idea quickly thinking that surely someone else out there had to have made a movie called “Halloween”. It was his lucky day because not only had no one ever thought of making a movie called “Halloween” but there hadn’t even been a single movie that included the word “Halloween” in its title before. Yablans had seen John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976) and he knew that he was the one to direct this movie. Carpenter needed the work and he liked the idea; he said he could make it for as little as $ 300, 000 if he was given total artistic control plus some percentage of the royalty from future showings. Irwin Yablans was more than happy to hear that.
John Carpenter worked on the screenplay with his collaborator Debra Hill for a few weeks and got right to it.
Budget was low and the people who worked on this movie were very young. Everybody was passionate about it though and that created this phenomenal movie that’s turned into an everlasting franchise after a slow start and kept making money forever.
My memories of this film is:
I saw it at a movie theater but many years later than its original release year. I was already a big fan of two of John Carpenter’s movies called “The Fog” (1980) and “Escape from New York” (1981) although, to be honest, at the time I didn’t know that they were his work, because I was too young and I wasn’t a director screening movie goer yet. As far as the directors went, I only knew who Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were and that was about it.
The reason I wanted to see this movie desperately was the pumpkin on the poster. For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by pumpkins; the shape, the colors, if it was carved the evil face; to this day they are one of my favorite drawing subjects alongside sharks, spiders, sharp edges and mermaids; go figure! A knife, pumpkin shadow, this just HAD to be a good movie.
And I was already infatuated by Jamie Lee Curtis after seeing her in “The Fog” and “Terror Train” (1980) which were obviously made a few years later, but as I mentioned before, my local movie theater had more of a say in what movie I would get to watch and when it was going to happen than I did. Hey, I couldn’t complain! I was happy to see whatever I could and whenever I could.
G.R.Senn
