‘Halloween’: 40 years of the Boogeyman

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)

A shoestring budget of $320,000 and full creative license, John Carpenter had been given the keys to the kingdom. Executive producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad wanted to make a film about a psychotic stalker who killed babysitters, and having been familiar with and acquired Carpenter’s previous thriller, 1976’s Assault on Precinct, Yablans approached Carpenter about helming the low-budget flick. And so, Carpenter and Debra Hill began hammering out a potential story of what was then-called The Babysitter Murders.

As they struggled to plot out a story and its characters, Yablans suggested setting the action on Halloween night and renaming the slow-burning drama simply Halloween. Surprisingly, in the history of cinema at the time, no other horror movie had ever even used the name “Halloween” in its title. They struck gold, and Hill and Carpenter set about constructing the quaint, fictional town of Haddonfield, named after Hill’s own hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Carpenter tasked himself with fleshing out the material for the calm, collected but not altogether there Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and the mystique surrounding The Shape (predominantly portrayed by Nick Castle, who, reportedly, was paid $25/day). Drawing upon ancient folklore of ghost tales and the ritualistic underpinnings of the holiday of Halloween, Carpenter’s drawing of Michael Myers, who is widely known to have been named after a producer on Assault on Precinct 13, leaves much to the imagination. He plays upon deeply-rooted fears of the unknown and the plagues of the unconscious mind.

“In his persona as a writer of this ‘Halloween’ drama, I think that John believed right there and then, at least as a conceder or a pose, it was a great conceit for the movie to have him take the idea that evil is real,” Wallace tells B-Sides & Badlands over a recent phone call. “It was Rob Zombie who really wanted to get off into the psyche of Michael Myers and because of his childhood, all this stuff happened. John is the antithesis of that. He wanted absolutes. He did not want a lot philosophizing about what made Michael Myers the way he was. He like a laser beam focused in on the fact that, no, in this case, this is just a pure evil thing. That’s the essence of what a monster movie is.”

“When you take older movies, whether it’s Dracula or some sort of creature like Rodan, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. You can’t explain this in logical terms. This is a product of some sort of evil.’ Of course, in the case of Rodan and certainly Godzilla, what pretty quickly stood in for evil was the evil of atomic madness,” he continues. “For John, he wanted it to be simple because that really cuts into an audience’s psyche somewhere down deep inside of us. Even as children, we’re scared of monsters in the dark, of what’s under the bed, of what’s in the closet. He wanted to tap into that kind of primal fear ⏤ rather than some intellectual explanation of what went wrong with Michael Myers.”

Meanwhile, Hill poured her own understanding of burgeoning womanhood, babysitting and female bonds for the dialogue between and the characterizations of the three babysitters, Laurie Strode [Jamie Lee Curtis, an unknown actor at the time but whose lineage to film royalty (Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis) is quite well-known], Lynda Van Der Klok (PJ Soles, for whom Carpenter had written the role after seeing her work in 1976’s blood-soaked Carrie) and Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis), who ran in the same friend circles, had starred in Assault on Precinct 13 and was then-married to Wallace.

The legendary Donald Pleasence came into the picture after Peter Cushing (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy) and Christopher Lee (best known as Count Dracula across a score of Hammer Horror films) passed on the film. Again, Yablans played a pivotal role in seeking out Pleasence, who agreed to star in the film because his daughter, a guitarist, had fallen in love with Carpenter’s Assault score. Pleasence’s pedigree ⏤ including roles in The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice and Will Penny ⏤ understandably gave the independent film a bit of weight, in both theatrics and emotional performance.

All the pieces now in place, Halloween was set to film in South Pasadena in the spring of ‘78 with a shooting schedule of just 21 days. It was that kind of lean and mean approach that not only kept Carpenter and Hill focused but left little frills and nonsense to be had onset. The relatively small cast and crew, which included director of photography Dean Cundey, dabbled in set design, location scouting, costumes, props and shot set-ups, including dumping out bags of autumn leaves and repacking them up after Carpenter yelled “cut!” and moved on to the next sequence. “It always made me laugh when we all had to gather up the leaves and stuff them into big bags after filming on the sidewalk or in front of a house,” recalls Soles. “Debra didn’t want to lose any of ‘her precious autumn leaves,’ so we all scrambled, especially if the wind started picking up and grabbed handfuls before they could scatter. I always thought while I was doing this that we should get credit as ‘Leaf Wrangler.’”

It was that kind of close-knit camaraderie and passion that can certainly be felt in the final product. Famously, when Carpenter screened the film for an executive over at 20th Century Fox, he was told Halloween wasn’t scary. Of course, it lacked a mood-setting score, which he quickly set about completing and totally changed the general tone of the film. The iconic theme, a 5/4 beat he set to twinkling piano, and such other pieces as “Laurie’s Theme” and “The Shape Stalks” further heightened the sense of dread and evoked a presence of overwhelming evil.

Halloween premiered on October 25, 1978 at a theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. Only released regionally, the film grew in calculated drips, and as the release schedule expanded across the country to such cities as Los Angeles, New York and Pittsburgh, it was clear an audience was mounting. Many early reviews were scathing. The New Yorker claimed “Carpenter doesn’t seem to have had any life outside the movies,” and the Los Angeles Times dubbed the film an “empty but morbid thriller.”

Many other critics lampooned the film, but it was The Village Voice’s Tom Allen who turned everything around. “Carpenter’s free, eclectic use of the subjective shot is enough to drive purists crazy: he uses it, though, as the basic resource of an unabashedly devious visual labyrinth in which every blank space, curve, and corner poses a threat,” he wrote in early November 1978. A chain reaction ensued, and paired with overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth, the film became a bona fide hit and has since achieved a 93 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

By the end of its theatrical run, Halloween grossed more than $70 million internationally ($47 million domestic). It held the title for best-grossing independent film until 1990, when it was usurped by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (New Line Cinema was then still an indie film company).

No one could have possibly predicted what happened next. Halloween became the benchmark of the atmosphere-dripping slasher, and it’s not even a slasher by today’s standards. That came later when copycats like Friday the 13th, chief among them, leaned into the exploitation of violence and the gruesome displays of seeing a guy with a knife cut up bodies on screen. “Whatever you could come up with, there was a whole group of movies built around a yearly event. Not to ignore the fact, yearly means, ‘Hey, this movie might have a life after its initial run.’ That’s just smart advertising,” says Wallace.

Below, Tommy Lee Wallace walks us through the original film’s inception, from his days at University of Southern California to working on the most iconic moments. Film star PJ Soles also offers up her reflections on Lynda and her role in cementing the image of the hormonal victim set up for slaughter.

Fear of the Evening News

Our ongoing love affair with the macabre is rooted in two very different frameworks, Wallace explains.

Wallace: I can think of at least two different kinds of horror movies. One is based on a belief in the supernatural, whether the supernatural is a creature like Dracula, who is human but magical in the darkest sense, and there are other creatures who couldn’t possibly be from the real world. Then, there are what I would call Knife Movies that are about something that could really happen in your neighborhood and on your block.

That involves a different kind of fear. That’s a fear from the newspaper and the sensationalistic news on TV. That stuff really happens. Somebody goes nuts and starts killing people. That taps into a whole different kind of fear because that doesn’t require suspension of disbelief. That simply requires a knowledge that the world is a really complicated and sometimes dangerous place. That was what John was going after with ‘Halloween.’

Love of Horror

Wallace’s own fixation on heightened reality stems from both enjoyment of the craft itself and stepping outside of his natural boundaries.

Wallace: Horror, science fiction and fantasy movies are particularly a lot of fun. They really stab at the imagination. You get outside your zone of reality, which an awful lot of movies try to imitate. Your basic love story or your drama is simply working with an imitation of everyday reality, and we figured out half a century ago that cinema does that really well. But then there are these other genres that push you out of that comfort zone. I really enjoy that sensation of being taken to another place in literature and cinema.

Journey to USC

Wallace: At some point, John was really on top of things. By the time he was 9 years old or so, he knew what he wanted to do in life and that was to become a film director. At that tender age, I didn’t even know such a profession existed. The idea that someone or several someones were behind the making of a movie, the concept hadn’t occurred to me, but it certainly had occurred to John. So, he was highly motivated, and when it came time to get finished with high school and a couple years of college in our town [Bowling Green, Kentucky], John was all set to go on to some film school somewhere.

I helped him with that a little bit. I took him to the college library and got out the Blue Book, which is the book of all colleges everywhere. We looked together, and John focused in on three: University of Miami, New York University and University of Southern California. He picked USC and off he went out west. I went off to art school shortly after that at Ohio University and got very wrapped up in design and the fine arts, as well as cinema and film studies.

In the meantime, John and I continued to correspond, and the letters he sent about California really made it sound like an exciting place to be. We were both devoted to the popular music of rock ‘n roll. He would talk about walking down Sunset Boulevard and The Doors would be playing at the Whiskey a Go Go and other groups that we loved so much. He was right there, up close and personal, as well as talking about the exciting things happening to him in film school.

That was an attraction, so as I graduated from Ohio University, I really felt I was at a fork in the road. One fork led to New York City and the design world there. A lot was happening with pushpin graphics and Push Pin Studios with Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast and some of my other heroes of two-dimensional design work.

I knew I would either go there or head out west. Well, during spring break my senior year, me and two other friends took a road trip out west, and I took my portfolio with me. I visited John and went down to USC and their animation department to show the head of the department my portfolio. He accepted me into their graduated program for animation. Having been accepted, I decided to come west. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Everyone was talking about the art form of the century ⏤ being cinema, of course.

I was also getting a little disillusioned with the design world because it became obvious that eventually in order to make a living in design you might have to depart from making Aretha Franklin’s next album cover or the next great poster promoting some political cause. You might have to get down into true hardcore advertising, which at its core is creating a want and a desire for products among the public that they might not even want or need. You’re job is to make them want it. I didn’t like that part of it.

I decided to lean towards a world that at least was a fair game. You put out a product in the movies, and the public has the right to say no. They buy a ticket if they want to see your product. That’s different from advertising. It’s probably a silly, subtle difference, but it was a big difference. So, I opted to go west and follow the path John had blazed. There I was in film school and meeting a bunch of new friends like Dan O’Bannon and Nick Castle and others in that group.

Trusting in Carpenter

Carpenter is known for enlisting his close friends to help on his movies . Wallace collaborated on Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974) and worked as a sound effects editor and art director on 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13. Their long-standing friendship and respect for one another would result in countless more projects over the years, including Halloween two years later.

Wallace: USC is a feeder school into the movie business. It’s a no-nonsense kind of approach. It has a little more of a trade school approach than an art school. An awful lot of people that were going through USC were automatically moving right into the film industry, so there were plenty of opportunities to get work in one capacity or another. I was editing some commercials and art directing some other commercials, and it was hardscrabble in getting started. I founded a script reading company with a friend, another USC alumnae, and we were running around town getting to know agents who were getting all this material. We would take scripts, books and unpublished galleys from those people, and they would pay us per synopsis. It would give them a leg up on reading all this material.

That service is at studios, and there are departments devoted to that, so the executives who have to make decisions about what properties they’d like to buy or option can cull through more material without having to actually read everything. I was involved in all these different ways of making money. I was also an animation cameraman for awhile. Meanwhile, John was doggedly pursuing the track that he was already on, which was making headway as a director and writer of feature films. It’s a tough world to break into, and because he had had a little bit of success with ‘Dark Star,’ he was finding his way to more financing, which led, of course, to ‘Assault on Precinct 13.’ And after that, to ‘Halloween.’

I’m out there scrambling around getting what you could say “small-time work” in various areas. All of a sudden, one of my oldest and dearest friends turns to me and says, “I think I’ve got the money for a feature film. You want to be involved?” Well, are you kidding me? You’d have to be out of your mind to say no to that. So, of course, the answer was yes and with great enthusiasm. John tended to include his friends because it’s just an easier thing to work with people you like and trust. In his case, he tended to upgrade people into positions that they were not yet fully qualified for and trusting them to rise to the occasion.

Going into ‘Halloween,’ there were two things at work. First, I wasn’t sure of the boundaries of a production designer’s job. Therefore, I took on responsibilities of location scouting, taking care of the vehicles and getting real far into props. Basically, I had a three-man art department. It was myself, Randy Moore and Craig Stearns ⏤ with occasional help from other friends. We just did everything that was on screen, you name it, set decoration, props, signs, graphics, even the movie title cards. The other fact of the matter is, not only was I unsure of what the boundaries were, so I did more, but on a low-budget movie, that’s pretty common. Each person on the picture generally has to wear more than one hat, sometimes three or four or six or 10. So, that followed suit on ‘Halloween.’ I had my finger virtually in every pie.

The Babysitter Murders

Wallace: I think a good movie rises to its best level no matter what it’s called. But it didn’t hurt a bit that Irwin Yablans figured out the title of ‘Halloween.’ He was also behind ‘Assault on Precinct 13,’ and he had a knack for titles. We wrestled and wrestled with the title for ‘Assault.’ It was originally called ‘The Anderson Alamo’ ⏤ Anderson being the police precinct. Then, it went to ‘The Siege.’ As far as I know, it was Irwin that came up with ‘Assault on Precinct 13.’ It’s a darn good title. It’s long, and I think John always favored shorter titles, one word titles when he could.

‘The Babysitter Murders’ was a lousy title. Let’s put it that way. Everybody knew that. But really, the designation of ‘Halloween’ as a title came very early, and it stuck. Titles are hard. You either have a good one going into the project or you don’t. If you don’t, you will sometimes struggle. When Irwin came up with ‘Halloween,’ it was instant. It’s a good word. Also, there’s the fact that it’s a season.

Cinema had only been going really and truly for 50 years tops. There was a lot of uncharted territory still available. Same way in rock ‘n roll. There were new sounds after the initial wave in the ‘50s. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there was a lot of new ground to cover. After that, for me, a lot of what was heard was recycled. I love rock ‘n roll, and it has plowed into different areas that could still be thought of as original. But the going gets tougher and tougher to find new and exiting material.

In the late ‘70s, nobody had thought of exploiting the season of Halloween. As a matter of fact, ‘Halloween’ didn’t really exploit the season of Halloween very much at all. It was really far more about the babysitters and the isolation of a given neighborhood. The fact that it was occurring on Halloween was alluded to, and it was a backdrop for the movie. But, and not to be self-serving about it, it wasn’t until ‘Halloween III’ that the season itself came fully into focus.

Flickering Pumpkin Title Sequence

Even before the chilling opening murder, the mood of Halloween is set with a pretty straightforward, but ominous, title sequence. It’s a carved pumpkin lit from the inside and orange lettering, all intensified, of course, with the throbbing of the classic theme song.

Wallace: In the course of making the movie, there were a core of creative forces at work, and John was at the center of that with Debra right next to him. I think it’s safe to say, I came in third as the other key creative force. Well, it was a loose alliance of ideas that were occurring. There was a very short pre-production schedule and very short shoot. A lot of things had to happen on the fly. As I recall, it was Debra’s idea ⏤ perhaps in league with John ⏤ that while we were shooting principal photography maybe what we need to do is break off and shoot some kind of title sequence that would be easy to shoot and be a good setting for the movie.

It’s characteristic of John to want to keep things simple. I kind of think it was largely Debra’s idea to have a jack o’lantern and have it flickering in the dark. That’s easy to shoot. I remember we set it up in a garage away from the actual shooting going on that day. Debra and I were pretty much the second unit on that side project. It came into being out of necessity, and it was a great invention. We got lots of black screen to work with. It was perfect for titles. It was about that simple.

The Myers House

South Pasadena proved to be a treasure trove of riches for locations. Stumbling upon an abandoned house, then-owned by a church, was a stroke of luck. The classic midwestern feel emulated the small town way of life, from the clean, crisp front porch pillars to the even-keeled symmetry, and there was no way the crew could pass it up.

Wallace: In the pre-production period, I was looking, not just for specifics, but for an area that would evoke the Midwest, architecturally and in the foliage. I stumbled on South Pasadena. Actually, one of the associate producers Kool Lusby had grown up near there, and she was showing me this orphanage where she spent part of her childhood. In so doing, we drove through South Pasadena, and I was really charmed and felt very strongly that that was the place to be.

If you drove through there at that point in time, it was inevitable that you would go up and down Mission Street, and you’d probably go up and down Meridian Avenue. The house that we focused in on as the Myers house was right there on Meridian Avenue. We drove by it a dozen times, and it was obvious. The area is really a bedroom community. There’s lots of Midwestern influence on the architecture, not an overwhelming number of palm trees, and so, it definitely had a look. In terms of casting locations, it was awfully good for us.

Soles: I love when Dr. Loomis scares the boys in front of the Myers’ house when they are daring each other to touch the front door. That boyish grin on his face as he hides behind the bushes is priceless, and it adds an unexpected playful layer to his character.

“Black cats and goblins on Halloween night”

The first scene of the movie takes place on Halloween night 1963. Shot with Panavision’s Panaglide, the audience is taken for quite a thrill ride through the eyes of a six-year-old Michael Myers. It’s an artfully-crafted opening as he makes his way through the house to grab a large kitchen knife and up into his sister Judith’s bedroom to kill her. Myers makes his way back out of the house and down the front sidewalk, just in time for his flabbergasted parents to arrive home. The sequence is bookended with a vignette-style composition, and the camera pans from the ground into the night sky.

Wallace: I’ve been tempted to right a book on this subject. It was such an elaborate, wonderful shot. The whole day consisted of rehearsing and getting ready until we had it down. Then, the actual shooting of it didn’t take too long at all. I think we did three or maybe four takes. The final result looks like one long take, but it’s three pieces of film from the best selection of the three places we cut that are hopefully invisible to the eye. It was very elaborate. Remember, we’re working in an old rickety house that is now supposedly back in time when it looked nice and was fairly pretty inside, at least it was lived in.

All of that had to be set up strictly for the camera. If you panned the camera a few inches to the right or left, you’re looking at raw, crappy old haunted house walls. Of course, coming in, you go in the back door and through the kitchen, grab the kitchen knife and then go through the house and up the stairs and commit the murder. When you come back down, everything is in reverse. So, all those lights that were doing such a good job on the way in, they had to be reset for the trip down the stairs and out the door. There was a helluva lot going on. Gaffers and grips were jumping in and out of windows to relight while we were still in the middle of the shot.

Around the camera, as I recall, which was a glide camera, operated by Ray Stella, Dean [Cundey] was right there. The focus puller was in on it, too. Dean was holding a light. I think it was on a dimmer, so he could bring it up and put it down, as the given situation required in the shot. Sometimes, you needed a light close to camera to light up the subject, and other times, it shouldn’t be there.

While he was doing that, Debra was along dressed up as young Michael Myers because it was her hand that reached in to grab the knife. I was there with a bucket of blood and a paint brush, so that when we went upstairs and killed off Judith, I was there to splash the blood paint on her body and all over the place. That was quite a crew going up and down those narrow, rickety, little stairs. It was a hugely elaborate, tour de force type of shot and such a great way to start the movie.

I think we put the mask effect over the picture after the fact, if I’m not mistaken. We might have tried some sort of onset thing, but it was too unreliable. So, we added that part later. Of course, the entire sequence consists of two shots ⏤ the big one that goes out to the street to the parents and then, you cut to the big pull back on a crane.

Escape in the Pouring Rain

The audience is first introduced to Dr. Samuel Loomis and Nurse Marion Whittington (Nancy Stephens) as they’re driving in the pouring rain up a slippery, dark slope to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. It’s a stunningly eerie backdrop, and when they approach the front gates, they come across a swath of mental patients wandering aimlessly on the front lawn. No explanation is given, but that’s the power of suggestion. Loomis hops out and heads to the checkpoint, leaving Marion alone and frightened. The Shape attacks, forcing Marion to flee from the front seat; and The Shape drives off into the night.

Wallace: It was pretty cold. It was wet because we were making it rain. It was like any other movie scene. You show up, and the assignment is a specific set of shots. In the audience’s mind, there may have been a mental institution back there in the dark. But in real life there was certainly no such building. What you have is a gate, and it’s open. There’s a lot of suggestion, and the entire movie is built to a noteworthy degree on suggestion, rather than what we really show. That’s part of the movie’s magic.

It’s to rely on imagination and let the audience do the work of filling in the details. That scene was no different. You’ve got people wandering around in the headlights, and you’re setting up the audience for a couple of scares when he’s starting to get away. Suddenly, there’s the shadowy figure jumping onto the car. That’s a shock and scare. Suddenly, the figure is breaking the car window. Another shock and scare. It goes on like that. That was all just good, calculated scene-making. John had almost always, especially in those early days, had a really good specific set of shots in mind. There wasn’t a lot of time spent on the director wondering what he’s going to do next.

That’s not who John is. That’s not who most USC directors are. We were taught in school to be prepared when you come on the set and that there’s so much money being spent that that’s not a good time to wander around, artistically. I’m not saying that’s not a legitimate approach to filmmaking, if you can afford the time and money. If you wander around the set, you might come up with some sort of magic, especially if you’re working with actors and want to help them improvise.

That’s all great, but ‘Halloween’ certainly wasn’t that kind of movie. The approach was very specific, working in the dark and under time constraints. You have a series of shots: a moving car, a POV, then a couple of shots of the people wandering around, a couple of shots of [Dr. Loomis and Nurse Marion] in the car, a couple of shots of Nick jumping onto the car, specialty shot of me busting in the window. That’s about it.

The Hero Street

As a collective, Laurie Strode, Annie Brackett and Lynda van de Klock are the center of the narrative. From Lynda’s bubbly persona and Annie’s wry wit to Laurie’s suppressed, nervous energy, the audience is drawn into their world of pep rallies, high school cheers and babysitting. Their first scene together, as they’re walking home from school, demonstrates Hill’s knack for simple, grounded and effective dialogue, which is then peppered with Carpenter’s well-plotted camera work and the ghostly presence of The Shape stalking. It also helped to have a street that invoked the spirit of impending doom quite well enough on its own.

Wallace: That little street is still there! And it still looks mysterious. I’ll tell you something about that street. It was supposed to be the hero street. I found houses on both sides of the street that would function as the hero houses for the babysitting sequences, and we locked the locations. But I made a horrible mistake, and we lost those locations. I believe Debra found the replacement locations over in Hollywood on Orange Grove Avenue, but this was the original plan. It was a great street, and the houses were just terrific.

We were scheduled to shoot there. Being new at the job of art director, I didn’t know some of the finer points. One of those finer points was that I was coming back from a deeper location scout from further out. I was coming right by what was then the hero street in South Pasadena. I said, “Oh, you know what? I’ll stop by the hero house and take a couple measurements for the closet scene.” Wherever we went, we were going to have to do a set insert because we had to bust up the closet a little bit.

So, I went there, and being an unexpected drop-in call, I knocked on the door. A maid answered the door, and I explained who I was and asked if I could take some measurements. She said fine. I went in and up the stairs and took my measurements. On my way out, I noticed that the lady of the house was asleep in bed. I was like, “Oh, shit. This can’t be good.” Although she didn’t stir or wake up at that point, I felt uneasy. It felt like a breach of etiquette.

Sure enough, by the time I got back to the production office, she had found out what had happened and canceled us out. It was naive mistake, and we lost those locations. It was definitely a bitter pill to swallow. As good as the ones in the movie are, the ones we had originally were even better. Plus, it was much more concise of a production shoot to have it all there in one place within a few blocks. But it worked out. The houses in the movie play just great.

Day into Night

There’s a noticeable cut that occurs when Annie and Laurie are on their way to the Doyle House. After talk about Ben Tramer and Laurie’s new interest in boys, the camera cuts rather abruptly from the late afternoon glow into the dead of night. It’s not so distracting, however, to derail the story, but repeat viewings make it an obvious blip.

Wallace: We were trying for last light. Then, there’s the time cut. We don’t know how long it takes to drive to the Doyle house. It’s presumably not a real long time. But maybe enough time for it to get dark. It could have been handled somehow with a little more finesse. Maybe, we needed a sunset shot or something. But we just didn’t do that. I don’t think it matters, however, to an average audience member.

We certainly didn’t want to take anybody out of the movie by having them go, “Wait a minute. It was light, and now, it’s dark. I don’t understand…” At the same time, when you’re making a movie, especially if you’ve flayed the skin off your back trying to get it in the can and on schedule and on budget, there are going to be situations like that. In the cutting room, you might say, “I don’t think it matters to have a cut, and it’s dark. Here they come.” It wasn’t deeply, carefully calculated, and perhaps, we could have had a dissolve into night. An old adage from film school is: “If you can’t solve it, dissolve it.” [laughs]

Working with Dean Cundey

Dean Cundey (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Fog, Escape from New York) set the bar high in terms of the film’s mood, atmosphere and color palette of sinister blues. Often working directly with John Carpenter and Tommy Lee Wallace, his contributions to bring the story to life on screen were tremendous.

Wallace: We were hand in hand the whole way. Often times, the art department and the camera department will, and by definition, bump up against each other. We got along great. It was a nice set. John was on his game, as he always is, as far as I know. There was maybe a little joking around, but John’s a director who knew what he was doing. He had a shot list all prepared, even if he didn’t show it around, and he knew what was coming next. There was never any goofing around or going “hmm.” He had a plan.

Dean and I were both pretty happy in executing what John wanted to do. I divided my time between working on set and being The Shape when the action required interacting with the set ⏤ say with windows being broken or a door being busted in or in the case of the climax of the film with The Shape getting into the closet. Those kinds of things I had to be around for. We’re still friends, so I guess that speaks well for us. [laughs]

PJ’s Now-Infamous Dolly Trip

Another of the movie’s “flubs” is the moment PJ Soles accidentally trips on camera. After an all-too brief makeout session on the Wallace living room sofa, Lynda and Bob head upstairs to continue their love-making, and Lynda noticeably trips over the camera dolly.

Wallace: It never looked like an actor tripping on a dolly. It looked like a human being walking through the scene. You’ve seen accidental things where you know the actor was supposed to catch the newspaper, but they bumbled it. Then, they picked it up. Well, they left it in because that’s a human thing. It just wasn’t important to fix. Plus, we may not have had a second take. We were really to the bone. John was shooting very lean, not a lot of takes.

Once he felt he had it, that was that. There wasn’t a video village on set where producers and an editor, maybe, are sitting around looking at every moment as it happens. None of that was available to us, and frankly, as a director, that stuff is kind of way overrated, anyway. So, there wasn’t anybody to second guess and go, “Oh, you better get another take of that. PJ tripped over the dolly.” It was so lean and mean that it could very well that we didn’t have an alternate take.

“Death has come to your little town, Sheriff”

Despite the effectiveness of mood, tension and atmosphere, there had to be a tangible payoff for the audience. The death’s of Annie, Lynda and Bob, while brutal in their own right, continued that pattern of less is more, but allowed the slow build to mean something.

Soles: [It was so hard] trying to be very still and not blink. I wanted it to look realistic and not fake. Also, it wasn’t easy getting positioned into that cupboard. [laughs]

Wallace: If you think about it, the deaths of these characters were bloodless and fairly mild, for the the most part. They had to be in the movie as explanation points. It would have been unnatural not to have them in the movie, but they’re not the celebration of the blood, guts, gore and violence that came after when it was an arm’s race. The imitators came along, ‘Friday the 13th,’ most notably, and it started upping the ante on violence.

‘Halloween’ didn’t do any of that stuff, which is one of the reasons that makes it so classic. It simply relied on good ole fashioned storytelling techniques that are time-tested and time-honored ⏤ involving expectation, playing with fear and punctuating it all with the occasional pop-up scare that jolts you and keeps you nervous. Then, you’re wondering if it’ll happen again. You pull in humor, so the mood lightens a little bit, which sets you up for the next impact scare. None of those techniques were particularly on-the-nose.

Over the Banister

Upon discovering the bodies of her dead friends, Laurie Strode is left distraught and crying in the hallway of the upstairs of the Wallace residence. With a trick of lighting and use of a dimmer switch, The Shape emerges from the shadows into a pale blue pool, then stabbing Laurie on the upper left arm and causing her to tumble right over the banister onto the staircase below.

Wallace: We had stunt people giving us advice. I recall she did most of it. I believe there was a stunt woman who went through all of the action with Jamie Lee, but I don’t recall there being a stunt fall involved. I think that was done in pieces, so it could be mostly, if not all, Jamie.

The Heart-Pounding Final Chase

The third act of Halloween is a release of tension, of sorts. The audience has been led to what is appropriately deemed an explosive ending, and when Laurie Strode remains as the sole survivor, she learns to fight for her life. From the knitting needle to the clothes hanger to the knife, she’s a sharp-witted Final Girl who comes head-to-head with pure evil.

Wallace: Those [moments] are just classic tools of suspense. You’ve got a situation that’s been carefully set up. There are two houses and all kinds of business with babysitting and doors are locked or doors are unlocked and somebody’s got some keys or doesn’t. All these details lead up to a point where a person we care about is running for their life, and they come up to a door and the door is locked. They have some keys, but they don’t have much time to find the right key because of this monster is coming up behind them. That goes all the way back to Dudley Do-Right and Tess tied to the railroad track and the train is coming.

You’ve got a ticking clock or a visual situation where [you wonder], “Can this car make it across the railroad tracks before the train hits it?” It’s nothing more complicated than that. John and Debra were using the techniques of suspense-thriller filmmaking to their advantage. They had worked very hard to set all of that up, so the audience is sitting there rooting for the vulnerable character of poor Laurie who’s got to accomplish this task just in time.

Playing The Shape

Wallace dons the mask for many of the film’s crucial moments. Those include breaking down the door during the downright unnerving chase scene in the third act and the famously nail-biting closet sequence, during which The Shape attacks our heroine Laurie Strode in the upstairs closet of the Doyle house. Those moments weren’t so much artistic choices as they were purely economical.

Wallace: It’s a low-budget movie, so let’s get it right on take one. I could have spent a bunch of time explaining to Nick where to hit the door, so that it would break correctly. Or I could just put on the mask myself and get it right on first take. That was the most practical part of it. The other part was that Nick was a friend of John’s and mine. He was doing this just for a kick, involuntarily. It wasn’t like he was getting cast and getting paid. It was just friendship. So, if we’re going late, the guy has had a full day, so we let him go home. I took care of it then.

Evil Vanishes

When you think The Shape is dead, John Carpenter throws one last curveball. After Laurie instructs Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace to go call for help, The Shape regains consciousness. Visibly recovering from her trauma, Laurie is unaware The Shape is inching closer behind her ⏤ and surprise! It attempts to choke her to death. Dr. Loomis arrives in the knick of time and fires six shots into The Shape at point blank range. The Shape recoils and falls off the balcony. But that’s not the end. Cut to: Loomis’ expression of “I knew this would happen,” one of two potential interpretations of the reveal, as he learns The Shape is nowhere to be found. The final montage featuring all the places The Shape had tormented in his rampage leaves the audience uneasy and terrified.

Wallace: That final montage was not in the script originally. We manufactured that in the cutting room. We did not shoot shots of the empty rooms. We stole those from takes where it’s just before the actor enters the frame or it’s just after the actor leaves the frame and before the director yells cut. In some cases, it’s after the director yells cut. The sound effects supervisor [William Stevenson] thought up the mask-breathing technique which is really wonderful and extremely effective.

The montage opens up the movie and says, “OK, he’s out there, and he’s everywhere.” That, too, was kind of an afterthought ⏤ just having the shot of The Shape lying on the ground. I shot that shot myself while John was shooting main unit stuff. Just having Nick get out of the frame and having an empty frame to work with, it just opened up the movie in a special way.

Mementos from Set

Soles: It is the norm for low-budget films to wear your own clothes. I have always liked that. My wardrobe is very important for me in creating a character. I don’t have anything from ‘Halloween,’ unfortunately. I must have outgrown or worn everything out. That pink silk blouse was very special since I had bought it for that particular scene and it was expensive, so that ad lib line was totally natural. But I don’t have that anymore either. Who knew there would be eBay in our future?

Important Figure in Horror History

Wallace: [laughs] I’m being told that [I am], so OK… That suits me fine. [laughs] I made a very significant contribution to the original ‘Halloween,’ a very modest one to ‘Halloween II’ and obviously, I had a huge part in ‘Halloween III.’ I guess, in the way these things are measured, people are telling me that’s pretty significant, so that’s OK with me.

Soles: I am very proud and grateful to have been a part of the very first ‘Halloween’ film 40 years ago. Working with John and Debra was an amazing experience for me. Their willingness to listen to our creative ideas stands out as a highlight. To be a small part of “horror history” and the Carpenter-Hill legacy is a fantastic honor. Horror fans adore my fun-loving character.

First Reaction to the Movie

Wallace: We knew we had made a good movie. We had no idea that it would explode the way it did. It was a good, tight script. John was really, really feeling his strength. This was his third feature, and he was feeling confident. He was directing in a style that characterized his approach to movie-making, in general, which was keep it simple, be direct.

In a horror movie setting, manipulate that audience for all they’re worth. All of those things were happening, and all of the secondary considerations ⏤ certainly casting, the art department, editing, were all rolling. Everybody was doing good work. When we finished and looked at it, we said, “Man, that’s a damn, scary movie.” We expected some success. Of course, we had no idea of what it would turn into.