Original subtitles

What's the boogeyman?

You know,

Salahween, I guess everyone's entitled one good scarab.

It was

the low-budget shocker that made a surprise box office killing.

Without movie stars or special effects, it sliced

its way to the top of Hollywood's record books.

Everybody was surprised by it.

It's making was the ultimate test for a group of struggling filmmakers who took a

stab at creating a new chapter in Screen Horror.

We were a little army.

We were a little army making a film.

We were just a bunch of kids trying to make a movie.

When they were doing the deed, the sexual abuse.

Oh my God.

Everybody did everything.

Go get me a beer.

You weren't getting me one.

It was that kind of a Mickey Rooney, let's make a movie.

Totally.

Anytime I'm channel surfing and I come across a scene from Halloween,

you know, I just have to sit there and watch it again.

It's amazing how many fans, generation after generation after generation,

who have come up to me and said, I loved it.

I was so scared I couldn't sleep.

People really embraced this picture.

Are you insane?

Halloween is the gone with the wind of the horror movies.

I watched him for 15 years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the

wall, looking past the wall, looking at this night in humanly patient,

waiting for some secret silent alarm to trigger him off.

Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.

You can either ignore it or you can help me to stop it.

Released in 1978, the horror tale Halloween became

a box office smash and a cultural phenomenon.

I saw the boogeyman.

With its simple but terrifying story of small-town

babysitters, stocked by a maniacal killer.

Despite a budget of just $320,000, Halloween would go on to become the most

profitable independently released film ever.

Its worldwide success shocked not only Hollywood, but also the filmmakers behind

it, who went on to become some of the industry's hottest talents.

All the elements were right, an intriguing villain, a little bit of camp value with

the the Loomis character played by Donald Pleasons.

I'm his doctor.

You must be ready for him.

If you don't, it's your funeral.

You had some pretty teenagers in there.

We have three new cheers to learn in the morning.

The game is in the afternoon.

I have to get my hair done at five and the dance is in eight.

All the stars were in alignment.

Totally.

Everybody was very young.

We were shooting an incredibly fast pace.

The entire makeup wardrobe prop department was in a tiny Winnebago.

Here I was with these 18, 19, 20, 22-year-old guys primarily, and a lot of

people's girlfriends and friends and family all creating this movie.

Well kiddo, I thought you out grew superstition.

We were kids back then in 78.

People were giving us some money.

We were going out and playing.

We had a huge sandbox to play.

We had our friends with us.

We had no idea what we had.

Here's something that a movie, which didn't cost that much money,

which is constantly continues to sell.

I don't think there's another film like it.

Although Halloween was created by a team of movie-making hopefuls, its eerie

premise was the idea of a veteran Hollywood player.

Studio executive turned independent film distributor Erwin Jablons.

I want to do a horror film.

So I started to think about how to do this for the limited amount of money we had.

And it occurred to me that if we did a movie about babysitters, it would work

because everybody had either been a babysitter or been a baby.

And also I thought it would be something that would lend itself to kids in jeopardy.

One night would be the best way to do it.

Halloween just popped into my mind.

Check a chain.

Check a chain.

And I thought to myself, gee, wouldn't that

be great, but I'll bet somebody's done it.

You know, the title's been used.

Someone's made a picture called Halloween.

And then the magical thing that I learned,

the word Halloween is much weaker research.

Not only had it not been used, but even the word had not been used as

part of another title in the history of the movie business.

Now that's an interesting thing.

Yablons' enthusiasm was shared by his pick for director.

He turned to a 29-year-old USC graduate who'd recently

helmed one of Yablons' most intriguing action films.

His name was John Carpenter.

I had made a low-budget movie called Assault on Precinct 13.

It had gotten some critical response in Europe.

It's terror in the night.

It's the most shuttering assault on a police station in history.

This is the siege.

It's a goddamn siege.

Assault on Precinct 13.

Erwin said, let's make a horror film about

babysitters who are stalked by this psychotic killer.

And John got it really excited.

I met with him the next day at the hamburger hamlet.

We had a tuna fish sandwich together.

And I explained it to him.

He suggested we put it on Halloween night,

but play the whole thing on Halloween night.

And called a movie Halloween.

Because he felt it was a holiday that everybody could identify with.

And it hadn't really been done.

And since I needed the job and I wanted to do that kind of thing, I said,

sure, I'll do it.

And as long as I can have complete creative control, and I get my name above the title.

And we'll do it.

He said, I can do this for $300,000.

I said, for $300,000, if you can do that, you can have final cut.

You can have it able to title it.

You can have anything you want.

He said he would do it in four weeks.

He would do the music.

And for that, he received the princely sum of $10,000,

which, by the way, was a lot of money for John at that time.

And 10% of profit, which I'm sure he believed that he would never see a dollar of.

Now I got to find a $300,000.

But I agreed at the spot.

I knew I would find that money somehow.

We were in business with a man named Mustafa Akad.

And he invested some money in our company.

But he was, quite frankly, uninterested.

I was shooting an epic, big historic epic line of the desert with Anthony Quinn and

Irene Papas and Rod Steiger and Morocco and Rome.

And here I get a message that John Carpenter wants to meet me.

So I was in London.

John Carpenter came to London with Erwinia Blanton.

I said, this is the idea.

How much?

They said $300,000.

I said $300,000.

I mean, when it's expensive, you get worried.

And when it is so cheap, you get worried.

How can they make a movie or $300,000?

I get backing John up and telling Mustafa that this picture from a commercial point

of view could be a very successful little movie.

And we would do very well.

And then I really hit him with the zinger.

I said to John, but you know, John, $300,000 is a lot of money.

And maybe it's just more than Mustafa can handle.

I think it was calculated because I knew Mustafa was a very proud man.

Oh, what do you mean?

And with that, and then he reads us $300,000 right there.

And that was it.

Galvanized by the promise of total creative freedom, John Carpenter now

eagerly set out to make a film that would be his industry calling card.

To co-write and produce, he turned to a trusted past collaborator, Deborah Hill.

His script supervisor on Assault on Precinct 13.

It took us about three weeks to write the script.

We placed it in Haddonfield, Illinois, because I'm from Haddonfield, New Jersey.

So I really had a sense of what a small town was like.

You're not supposed to go up there.

Yes, I am.

No, I'm not.

Let's go down.

It could be any place in the Midwest.

Most small towns have a kind of haunted house story of one kind or another.

At least that's what teenagers believe.

There's always a house down the lane that somebody

was killed in or somebody went crazy in it.

Then I'm going to live here.

I know it's since 1963 when it happened.

Every kid in Haddonfield thinks this place is haunted, and the lane is alive.

Bonnie, you're never going to go up there.

Bonnie, this is a haunted house.

Bonnie Land probably won't get out of the sixth grade.

I was a babysitter, and I knew what it was

like to be, you know, all those characters.

And so I really contributed a girl dialogue.

Why are you babysitting to me?

The only reason she babysits is to have a place.

Shit.

I have a place for that.

I forgot my chemistry book.

So who cares?

I always forget my chemistry book, and my math book, and my English book,

and my, let's see my French book.

Well, who needs books anyway?

I don't need books.

I always forget all of my books.

I mean, it doesn't really matter if you have your books or not.

Hey, isn't that Devon Graham?

I don't think so.

I think he's cute.

Hey, jerk!

Speed kills!

Can you take a joke?

John really is, I would say, the developer of the whole evil concept.

He gave Michael Myers that sense of foreboding.

Oh, look.

Look where?

Behind the bush?

I don't see anything.

Can you drop by so fast that when you're yelled at?

Oh, settle, isn't he?

Halloween is loaded with scares.

Suspense scares.

Hopefully not grisly or gory, but suspenseful

making people on the edge of their seats.

I enjoy doing that.

Great.

Laurie, dear.

He wants to talk to you.

He wants to take you out tonight.

You're standing right there.

Laurie, scared another one away.

Halloween was really influenced by the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

They're coming!

They're coming!

And the kinds of films that John and I loved when we grew up.

Psycho is the granddaddy of these kind of movies.

That's the first modern horror film.

Took horror out of Gothic castles and European romanticism, vampires and

werewolves, and brought it into modern day problems and so forth.

It was a terrifying movie.

That was the signpost that everybody followed.

To play Halloween's Good Girl Hero in Laurie Strode, Carpenter already had an

actress in mind, a rising newcomer named Annie Lockhart.

I thought she was a great actress, didn't she, turned us down?

So, Debra came up with Jamie Lee.

Jamie Lee was a contract player at Universal.

Jamie Lee Curtis was the perfect Laurie Strode.

She had vulnerable qualities and she just was just wonderful in her audition.

Excuse me, Laurie.

Oh, Mr. Brackett, I'm sorry, Mr. Brackett.

Oh, I didn't mean to startle, yeah?

Oh, that's all right.

You know, Halloween, I guess everyone's entitled to one good scare, huh?

Yes, sir.

Nice of you, sir.

She had just done Operation Pettico, which was a television series.

So, she was very, very green.

She was very, very fresh.

And yet she was the product of these unique parents, Janet Lee and Tony Curtis.

And besides being the best actress for the role, as a producer, I saw a great

opportunity to promote the fact that she was the product of this Hollywood marriage.

When Jamie Lee Curtis came to mind, a month they popped in my mind.

Janet Lee in, uh, in Psycho.

So, we did how we hired Jamie Lee for that reason.

Who, incidentally, would have been the best choice anyway.

She's trying to be a fine actress.

You know, Girl Scott comes through again.

I was a young actor, and all I kept seeing was my name.

The character's name on every page, so I knew it was a big part, and I knew

that there were other parts that they were casting, other women, other girls.

And I was very much a smart aleck and was a cheerleader in high school, so felt very

concerned that I was being considered for the really quiet, repressed young woman

when, in fact, I was very much more like the other two girls.

Hello?

Why'd you hang up on me?

Annie?

Was that you?

Of course.

Why'd you say anything?

You scared me to death?

I had my mouth full, couldn't you hear me?

Thought I was an obscene phone call.

Now you hear of me, Laurie.

I already lost it.

I doubt that.

Listen, my mother's letting me use your car.

I'll pick you up.

630.

Okay.

Bye.

She added something beyond herself.

Jamie, as I'm saying, was very savvy.

You know, grew up with Hollywood parents.

She wasn't that little teenager that she played.

That was her acting ability, and she was very, very good.

I'm babysitting the doils.

It's only three hours is down.

We can keep each other comfortable.

Oh, terrific.

I've got three choices.

Watch the kids sleep.

Listen to Linda school around and talk to you.

Cast as Laurie's girlfriends were Nancy Loomis, the real-life

wife of Halloween's production designer, Tommy Lee Wallace.

I plan on making popcorn and watching Dr. Dementia.

6 straight hours of horror movies.

Little Lindsey Wallace won't know when to hit her.

And PJ Soles, who played a similar bad girl role in the 1976 horror hit Carrie.

Okay, so we're gonna... first we go inside, right?

Then we'll just talk a little.

Then Annie, we'll distract Lindsey.

That's when we go upstairs to the first bedroom on the left.

You got it?

Okay, first I rip your clothes off.

Don't rip my blouse.

It's expensive, idiot.

Then you rip my clothes off.

Then we rip Lindsey's clothes off.

Yeah, I think I got it.

Totally.

Like a million other actresses, I auditioned.

And it was only afterwards that I found out that John Carpenter actually had

written the part for me and hoping that he would

be able to use me in it because he had seen Carrie.

Want a beer?

Yeah.

Is that all you can say?

Yeah.

Go get me a beer.

I thought you were gonna get me one.

Yeah.

I was married to Dennis Quaid at the time and I know that they had asked to see if

he was available, but I think he was doing the movie of the week, which was kind of a

bummer because it would have been fun to have him.

We brought a lot of ourselves and our own ideas to the characters.

All right, all right, come on, where's my beer?

I think every line I ever said, I ended it with totally or started it with totally.

Totally.

Totally.

Totally.

Totally.

Totally.

Totally.

Totally.

But among their cast of fresh faces, Carpenter and Hill were desperate to cast

a recognized name in the small but pivotal role of Michael Myers Pursuer,

Dr. Sam Loomis.

With $20,000 in the budget, the filmmakers made an offer.

My first choice was Peter Cushing.

Peter Cushing was a famous British actor.

I just loved him since I was a kid.

This was in 1978 and 77, Peter Cushing was in Star Wars.

So we called his agent and made an offer and he would...

he would never deem to be in here a little low budget film.

Christopher Lee also declined to do the role.

It was funny, years later, we ran into Christopher Lee at a party and he said

that is the biggest mistake I ever made of my career is to not be in this movie.

It was I who said, have you ever seen Donald Pleasants?

And I remember Donald Pleasants playing a bit of a loony in a picture called Will

Penny and a few others, as a matter of fact.

And I knew he was a versatile actor.

I didn't think we'd get him.

But I said, wouldn't he give us a touch of class?

I was a huge fan of Donald.

Had been again since I was a kid.

So we hired Donald Pleasants and we gave him an additional $20,000.

So he total on the film was $320,000.

Pardon me, I'm a loomist, Dr. Sam loomist.

Be bracket.

I'd like to have a word with if I could.

Well, maybe a few minutes.

I've got to take it.

It's just important.

Ten minutes.

I'll be here.

Donald accepted the part.

My most frightening moment as a director was the first time I had to go meet Donald.

Years later, I became very close with Donald.

He became a very dear, dear friend.

But at the time, I was scared to death of him.

So he said, I don't know why I'm doing this film.

I don't know what my character is all about.

The only reason I'm here is because my daughter, who's a rock and roll guitar

player, thought that the music you did in Assault and Precinct 13 was good.

So I don't know what I'm doing.

There are parts of the script which I'm now doing for John, which I can't accept.

But I have to bring myself Brown to sing it in his way because it's his film.

I realize that he was just testing me.

It's a little melodramatic.

And certainly in my role.

He got hungry.

Could have been a skunk.

Could have.

And wouldn't do that.

This is a number now.

But of course it's not intended to be real in that awful word realistic sense.

He always wanted to test the director to see, what did you have in mind for him?

Did you have passion for the role?

What was going on?

But oh, my heart was pounding.

It was awful.

It was awful.

But greater fright slayed just ahead.

As the first day of filming now approached, and John Carpenter set out to

risk everything on the most ambitious film of his career.

I'm just up here.

Shouldn't we go on up to the hospital?

Wait.

In May of 1978, cameras rolled on day one of Halloween.

As John Carpenter and his eager young collaborators

set out to conjure movie magic from a skeletal budget.

We shot a 20 day schedule, four weeks.

Everybody did everything.

It's harder to ask a stranger for a favor to

work for free or to work for very little money.

So we really asked our friends to help us make this picture.

A lot of people worked on the film, worked free.

They didn't have the money to do it, but it was making a film I bond love.

They loved the work.

You forgot about sleep for a couple of months.

You just went and made the movie.

And that was your life, and you ate it, drank it, slept it.

Everybody was doing ten jobs.

It wasn't surprising to see Jamie grabbing a case and helping us carry stuff.

She was really part of the crew.

We always said to make a fabulous girl's count.

The actors didn't get paid very much, which is okay, though.

They got scale, and that was important.

I think it's the energy that everybody exuded

because we were all young working actors.

You know, just people beginning.

And they all brought that enthusiasm in.

Hi, Annie.

Laurie.

Hi, Dan.

What happened?

Oh, somebody broke into the hardware store.

Probably kids.

You blame everything on kids.

Well, now all they took were some Halloween masks, a rope, and a couple of knives.

Who do you think it was?

It's hard growing up with a cynical father.

That was the best time I'd ever had on a film since, before or since.

So we had a lot of fun on this set.

There was a lot of jokes and kind of light.

It was a light atmosphere.

We had a great time.

It wasn't really so much of pressure because it's easier

for me to get, you get a scene in one or two takes.

You do a little bit of rehearsal and then you

give 150% and you try to get it in the first take.

Hey, let's look for a note.

Let's go.

They had a dolly track.

And I guess, you know, I had big, high shoes on.

And then we're going to go from the couch across the living room and up the stairs.

I was going to be one sweeping shot.

And, you know, you're always trying to look ahead and not

look at the camera, look down to see where you're going.

Because, you know, you're trying to create this fake world here.

Lindsey is gone for the night.

That's wonderful.

And I guess I tripped over the dolly track.

And John kept it in because the rest of the shot worked, so thanks John.

Even the movie's most veteran actor got into the Halloween spirit.

He's lusting me the very sinister doctor.

When Donald's cousin came on set, it was just amazing.

We only could afford to shoot him for a week.

So we scheduled all the scenes together.

And, you know, it was a lot to accomplish.

But when they were doing the D, the sexual D... Oh my God.

Yes.

Donald was unbelievable.

He was so kind to us.

But he never looked down on what we were doing.

He gave every scene.

Its respect.

He gave everything that we were doing.

Absolute.

100% of him.

He was amazing.

I just couldn't believe it.

How great he was.

Not too bad.

I feel better to have it happen in here and then you leave.

I think she was sitting right here.

I do think it's good for a lot to get into.

Because that gives him a close through.

Exactly.

I think Donald was completely surprised when he arrived here from England that we

were so young and we were such a small crew.

There are behind the scenes shots stills of him and I just chatting away.

Chicken.

Go ahead, Lonnie.

Go in!

Hey, Lonnie.

Get your ass away from there.

He was just so enamored with everybody.

And so he kind of joined in.

He was like pulling cable, too.

And that was really great.

I'd like to have a word with if I could.

Well, maybe a few minutes.

I've got to take care.

It's important.

Ten minutes.

I'll be here.

It was wonderful to work with him because he was kind of spooky.

Those eyes, you know, move it around.

You just look at him and go, what's going on in there?

Halloween's success would also rely not just on enthusiasm

but the effectiveness of its monstrous villain, Michael Myers.

How does Samuels feel like?

Me?

Answer the question.

Well, um, Costain wrote that fate was somehow related only to religion whereas

Samuels felt that, well, fate was like a natural element like earth, air,

fire, and water.

That's right.

Samuel's definitely personified fate in Samuel's

writing fate is immovable like a mountain.

Many of the names that, uh, that they use, one comes to my, Michael Myers were little

in jokes that John and Deborah used from their own experiences.

Michael Myers was the distributor of assault on precinct 13 in England.

Michael Myers pushed it into the London Film Festival.

That's where my reputation kind of began.

So I felt I owed him.

So that was my tribute to my, he was this dearest, dearest man.

He's cute.

I thought it might be a good idea to raise this

Michael Myers character up to a mythic status.

Make him human, he asked, but almost like a force, a force that will never stop,

that can't be denied.

I told him how dangerous he was.

He wasn't of two roadblocks and an odd points bulletin wouldn't stop a five-year-old.

Well, it was your patient, Doctor, and for Costain's

word, strong enough, you should have told somebody.

I told everybody.

Nobody listens.

There's nothing else I can do.

You can get back in there and get back on that telephone.

Tell him exactly who walked out of here last night.

And tell him exactly where he's going.

Probably going.

I'm wasting my time.

Sam hadn't feel as 150 miles away from here now.

Now, for God's sakes, he can't drive a car.

He was doing very well last night.

Maybe someone around here gave him lessons.

And I suppose I was influenced by a couple of things.

I remember Michael Crichton directed a movie called Westworld.

Yule Brenner was a robot, a killer robot that couldn't be destroyed.

MGM presents Westworld.

We know you'll enjoy your stay in Westworld.

Hold it.

The ultimate resort.

Let me do it this time.

We're nothing.

Nothing can possibly go wrong.

You've shot.

Go wrong.

Go wrong.

Go wrong.

Oh, my God.

But when I was in college, I had a class, a psychology or something.

And we visited a mental institution.

And this was in Kentucky.

And visited the most serious mentally ill patients.

And there was this kid.

I missed him at 12 or 13.

And he literally had this look that I gave the lines to Donald Pleasance to say,

I met this six-year-old child with this blank pale emotionless face.

The blackest eyes.

The devil's eyes.

I spent eight years trying to reach him.

And then another seven tried to keep him locked up because I realized that what was

living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil.

It's a schizophrenic care.

Stair is what it is.

It's a real evil stare.

And it was unsettling to me.

And it was like the creepiest thing I'd ever seen just because as a stranger,

it was completely insane.

Here's a guy who's a sociopath.

He killed his sister when he was like six years

old on Halloween night dressed as a clown.

All of carpenters ingenuity and a stunning new camera only recently invented.

When I was making student films, I was in love with dolly shots.

I was in love with Orson Welles' opening shot in

Touch of Evil, which is a big long crane shot.

But physically, when you do dolly shot, it takes a long time.

You have to lay down this track and you put the camera on a dolly.

Get these people to push it.

You know, it takes time.

We don't have the time and a low-budget film to make a lot of dolly shots.

And then I discovered something called the Steadicam, or the panic line.

That's a Panavision version.

It's a gyroscopic camera that you attach to yourself, the camera operator,

and walk around with it.

The Steadicam, it was a brand new device.

And it allowed us to smoothly sort of move the camera wherever a guy could walk.

And John said he wanted to use that as the opening shot.

A sort of long, continuous shot that brought the audience

into the back story of what was going to be the movie.

He wanted to start off establishing the old house,

moving up to it as if it was somebody's point of view.

Never one to, you know, short from a challenge like that, I immediately

thought, well, this is going to be great fun.

John used the camera as we know as the character, Michael.

So the camera becomes Michael moving in.

We are alone, aren't we?

Michael's around someplace.

We look into the windows, we come around, and we come back around in the back door.

And that's when I, posing as the young boy, get the knife, and I'm carrying the knife.

Obviously when you shoot with children, you're

limited in terms of the time to shoot with the kids.

Very, very complicated lighting set up, very complicated

shot, and that was going to take up most of the time.

So they needed somebody whose hands were small enough.

So I became, you know, the kid.

I'm carrying the knife.

Those are my hands in the clown suit.

That's me climbing upstairs with the camera behind me.

And that's me killing a sister.

I actually wasn't even touching her.

It was also a challenge because the shot took

almost exactly one role of film each time.

So every time we did the shot, we would just

barely get it done and the film would run out.

Eventually, they decided they wanted to piece

together, I think, three of the different takes.

If you have a very sharp eye, you'll notice that as the camera moves up,

the stairs looks down on the floor and sees the mask.

And then places the mask in front of the lens.

There's a cut.

The second one is just as the camera runs from having killed

the girl to the top of the stairs and swishes to look down.

There's another cut that occurs there.

It took us a night to do the whole sequence.

Michael, we had a crane for the evening.

We pulled back from the little kid who's unmasked.

We come back from the house up and see the neighborhood.

That was an ambitious shot for a little old-budget crew.

Although set in the Midwest, Halloween was filmed entirely in Southern California.

Halloween has a couple of distinct locations.

Let me tell you about them.

One is in South Pasadena.

That's where the old house is, that the kids are out in front of.

That's where we pull back in the beginning of the movie.

The Halloween street, however, where the girls are babysitting.

That's actually in my hometown of Hollywood, California.

It's right off of Sunset Boulevard.

And they were wonderful to us.

Absolutely wonderful.

They didn't mind the shooting at all.

Our biggest problems in creating an autumn world in Southern California in the spring

with palm trees was to shoot around the palm trees or to

create shots that blocked out the palm trees in some way.

Especially in the beginning of the movie, you can see a few palm trees.

That's the only thing that screwed it up.

What the hell?

In the beginning of the movie, we got these big bags of leaves,

orange leaves, fall leaves, and we would have

this sort of stupid fan next to the camera.

We would throw the leaves so that they would blow in front of the camera.

I remember there maybe being six to eight people on the crew.

And it was time to throw the leaves on the grass.

Everybody pitched in.

And when we finished that scene, you know what we did?

We went and raked the leaves, picked them up

and put them back in the bags for the next time.

But amid the group's exuberance, there was also anxiety

on the part of first-time film star Jamie Lee Curtis.

The first day we shot, I remember going home and thinking I was going to be fired.

I just thought I sucked.

And I remember being at home and my roommate said, Jamie,

it's John Carpenter and I thought, oh man, this is it.

Hello?

Who is this?

And he called to say how happy he was with the

day's work and I just thought that was great.

That's never happened to me again.

This was her first big break and she wanted to be very good.

So she and I had a great time together.

We had a hoot because she's very funny.

She's very charming.

She's very lovable.

And you know, we became very good friends after that.

I just was totally enamored by Jamie.

I felt like Jamie was my little sister.

She really needs a lot of love and a lot of confidence building.

And I think that's what makes her so unique as a talent.

Is that the somewhat the lack of confidence she

makes up for sort of a bigger-than-life character?

You know, you could ask somebody.

Sure you could.

All you have to do is go up to somebody and say, you want to go to the dance?

You could do that.

I couldn't.

Inhabiting the sinister shape of Michael Myers was one of John Carpenter's friends

and former USC schoolmates, future filmmaker Nick Castle.

When I found out that John was going to be shooting Halloween, pretty close to my

house actually, I went down there and asked if I could stick around the set

because at that time I was trying to get my

own pictures off the ground as a director.

And he said, okay, fine, but as long as you're

going to be here, why don't you do something?

And he said, go here, put this on, and you'll

be the guy running around with the killer.

And that's fine.

Do I get any money?

Yes, $25 a day.

And it was great.

He's just a real pal, and his father was a choreographer for Fred Astaire,

and he just moved right.

And I think John really wanted to play him as

that, where he just looks, and his head turns.

And he's enamored by this sister-like character that he sees in Moistrode.

He makes the connection.

He breaks out of the insane asylum and gets to his house and

sees this young girl and makes this sort of subtle connection.

I basically asked the actor question, what is my motivation?

And he said, your motivation is to walk from this point to the end point.

And roll.

Do nothing.

Just walk.

Don't act.

Just walk.

I think he really gave the movie something.

I think there's little moments that he does in the movie that are really special

that, you know, take it away from being just some sort of thug in a suit.

Come on out.

The only crazy thing he did was when he stabs the kid.

And he looks at him like this, like he's looking at a butterfly collection.

That's the only direction I think I gave him.

He was just, you know, a gentle friend of John's there.

He didn't want to hurt anybody.

Nick had a wife and I believed two babies.

And they came by every day at lunch.

And, you know, here's this guy with this over-suit on.

And, you know, the mask was just always lying

next, only put it on and go do the work.

John sent me out to find the perfect mask

or to create the perfect mask for the movie.

And it was simply to be a kind of a blank face.

We didn't have any money to make a mask.

It was originally written the way you see it.

In other words, it's a pale mask with human features.

Almost feature less.

I don't know why I wrote that down.

My Deborah and I decided on that.

Maybe it was because of an old movie called Eyes Without a Face.

It's a French film.

And this girl had a burned face.

So she wore this face mask.

It was real creepy because it was featureless and immobile except for her eyes.

So, Tommy Lee Wallace, the production designer, ran up to

the mask shop on Hollywood Boulevard and bought a couple.

One was a clown mask.

And that's, you know, one way to go.

And the other, he got this William Shatner Star Trek mask.

Captain Kirk.

Because in mask form, the William Shatner mask was just kind of a blank face.

It didn't really look like anybody.

And he cut the eye holes out a little bit bigger so they weren't like this.

They were rounder.

Tore off the eyebrows.

I kind of goofed up the hair a little so it looked demented and strange.

And I spray painted it whiter than it already was.

Took off the sideburns.

That's the one.

Ah, cheese.

Oh, cheese.

Oh, it created a shiver right in the room.

And we knew we had something special.

I guess I owe the success of Halloween to William Shatner.

Well, sort of.

The hilarious thing about the mask situation is that

the mask of Captain Kirk anyway looked nothing like him.

Nothing like him.

I don't know what it looked like, but that was the secret

that we really didn't look like William Shatner at all.

John was acutely aware of the importance of composition.

You deliberately put a character on one side of the frame, leaving a lot of empty

frame, which can either tell the audience something is going to happen there,

or potentially could happen.

Hello?

Who's there?

Paul, is this one of your cheap trims?

There's one where Nancy Loomis is in the kitchen talking on the phone.

Hi, Annie.

Oh, hi, Paul.

Alright, cut it out.

It can happen to anyone.

And the camera sort of pans with her.

And it passes by behind her in the doorway, is the shape standing there.

And the camera gets off of it, and then when it comes back, he's not there.

Yeah, but I've seen you stuck in plenty of other positions.

Oh, that's fabulous.

When did they leave?

About a half hour ago.

Oh, utterly fantastic.

Oh, the dog.

Killing the dog.

You know, I'm a dog lover.

I hate it that.

But I think what we had to do was to find a way

to show that the shape was really evil and deadly.

Lindsay Lester's barking again and getting on my nerves again.

Never mind.

I guess you found a hot date.

In crafting the story of Halloween, John Carpenter cleverly balanced high

tension with carefully chosen moments of comic relief.

Most of them were courtesy of co-star PJ Soles.

Hey, is Annie around?

I thought she'd be home right now.

She went to pick up Paul.

Well, she's totally not here.

She probably stopped off someplace.

Have her call me when she gets home though.

I have Lindsay here and I want to know what time to put her to bed.

Okay.

Later.

Have a good time.

We definitely will.

Bye.

You know, Jamie always told me she was jealous

of my part because I got to do all the fun stuff.

I had a lot of make out scenes.

But

the phone keeps ringing.

Oh, and I can't keep you in the kitchen.

Just answer the damn phone.

Well, I can't.

What if it's the wallaces?

Can Annie in trouble now?

Just taking her phone.

I'm going to go back.

That bedroom scene.

That was really a good scene.

Oh, fantastic.

John did say it would be nice in this scene if we could have

a little nudity and I don't know however you want to do it.

But he was trying to be very gentle with it.

But, you know, in the script it does say she slides the sheet down.

Now, I happen to be naked under there.

And the ghost, the guy comes back with the sheet over his head.

And I'm thinking it's my boyfriend.

How come I can't get him to react to me or anything?

Well, did you get my beer?

Cute, Bob, real cute.

I think the line was, okay big guy, come over here.

But instead I slid the sheet down and say... See anything you like?

I just thought that was really funny and John liked it too.

And that's become a classic line.

In fact, the first time that I had gone to see the movie

in Hollywood, there was a guy behind me, right behind me.

I was sitting there watching and I say, see anything you like?

Okay, answer me.

And the guy goes, you bet your sweet beep I do.

Are you weird?

And I just sank down in my chair.

I was so embarrassed and I thought, oh boy, I gotta wait till everybody clears

out of here before I move, because I don't want him to know it was me.

Carpenter and Debra Hill had filled their script

with several set pieces of shocking horror.

Now, with time running out, Carpenter had to capture that

horror on film with little bloodshed and no special effects.

Usually at carnivals or fairs or any place, there's always the haunted house ride.

Things jump out at you and these foolish things happen.

And when I was a little guy, kid, I went to these

things and I remember what scared me about those rides.

I tried to duplicate them in a cinematic way.

The things that go bump and jump out and scare you.

We wanted it to not be gory, wouldn't it be scary?

And there's a big difference between gore and scare.

John is from childhood from earliest days.

One of his passions was scary movies.

And when he got his turn, he drew from the

lessons he had learned watching these movies.

And one of the cardinal rules is don't show too much of the monster.

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to understand that it's not what you see,

it's what you don't see, that gets you scared.

It's about knowing some things in there.

And when your character, for some compelling reason, must go in there,

it's about anticipation.

Where's it going to happen?

John often likened it to the idea of a Jack in the Box.

When you're playing this tune, which is awfully friendly, but suddenly it goes.

..

As far as filming it and at the time it being scary, it just wasn't.

We'd always end up laughing and even my death scene where I'm getting strangled by

the phone, I had to beg him to do it harder.

I said, you know, don't kill me, but just do it a little harder because all

you're doing is tickling my neck and I can't die this way.

All right, Annie.

First I get your famous chewing, now I get your famous squealing.

And you're all right.

John was very, very acutely aware of his being how you build suspense.

The great moment, Jamie Lee's running in the house.

She runs upstairs and is hiding in a corner where

she thinks she's safe and it's sort of dark.

And John said, how can we accomplish the idea that our eyes are sort of getting

used to the dark and we're starting to see

the fact that Michael Myers is hiding there?

And I said, oh, well, this would be fun.

So we set it up with a small light on a dimmer.

I gradually turned the light up so it began to just barely expose the film.

And then you start to notice something.

She's back there and there's no exposure on it.

This is black and then slowly he just turns it up so you barely begin to see a

little exposure on the face and then he comes out.

As the end of Halloween's filming approached, spirits on the set stayed

surprisingly high as cast and crew rallied each other to make it to the finish line.

Okay.

John clearly knew what he wanted.

There was no waffling of a sort of first time movie director.

There was just no time to question it.

When you make a little budget movie like this, it forces a director into committing

and being creative, trying to be creative about

how can I do this so the audience will watch it.

Rather than being really bored with it.

I think that's one of the strengths of Halloween

is in the sense that this pace is different.

It's not the cutty pace that you're used to.

We didn't have enough time.

And there's one shot where Jamie runs from one

house up to another's screams in her neighbor.

He runs all the way across the street and we're just we're

panagliding with her right into the door as she bangs on it.

We worked our butts off to do that.

Tommy!

Tommy, it's me!

I'm gonna get upstairs.

What is going on?

Get in there, come on Tommy.

Now lock the door!

If you watch the picture, it builds and builds and builds and builds and builds.

The shots of the shape, they get an hour and an hour and an

hour until the end of the movie where Jamie's in the closet.

It's a really tight, you know, close up kind of movie.

You're in there with her and this guy's coming after her and you're going,

oh my God, what's she gonna do?

Grab the hair!

I mean, yeah, you get frightened.

At the end, of course, Jamie Lee is always dropping the stupid knife.

He wanted her to be a very vulnerable little

girl so that you as an audience cared about her.

Come here.

Just listen to me.

When you go down the stairs and out the front door, I

want you to go down the street to the Mackenzie's house.

I want you to tell them to call the police and tell them to send them over here.

During the shoot, John Carpenter was also busy working on another ingredient,

the music score, which the keyboard playing director composed himself.

I had three days to do the score and my father bought me a pair of bongos,

believe it or not, when I was a teenager, which I'd never particularly learned how

to play, but he taught me five, four time on them.

Five, four time, it became the Halloween.

That's all that is.

It worked.

I just did it on the piano, octaves, and put some synth strings and so forth on it.

And right off the bat, you are at a balance.

It's almost as if your whole mind is being short-circuited and played with because

you're getting this fast, crazy, erratic music.

With the music, it went to an incredibly other dimension.

I mean, it was another movie completely.

It was so effective.

Now, you say, how long could it take?

Well, how long could it take?

John had four weeks to prepare the film.

He had four weeks to shoot it and four weeks to finish itself.

He probably did it while he was shaving.

Well, it didn't work without the music.

I did it interestingly enough.

I showed it to an executive from 20th, but I didn't have the music on it.

As she said, this is not frightening.

That's nothing scary about this movie.

Fate caught up with several lives here.

No matter what course of action Collins took, he was destined to his own fate.

Did not have music.

It's not taught me a valuable lesson.

It wasn't effective because it was all silent.

Fate caught up with several lives here.

No matter what course of action Collins took, he was destined to his own fate.

He was destined to his own fate.

People would scream when Michael is unmasked in the hallway there,

Jamie unmasked him.

What you're seeing is nothing.

He's just a guy under there.

But you're so built up to it, people would scream at it.

John and Deborah wanted a certain look for the person that was

going to eventually be Michael Myers when the mask came off.

They didn't want someone really handsome like me.

So they said they wanted someone that looked more angelic, kind of against type.

But I'll let the audience decide if they actually made a good casting decision there.

I think I would have been much better, frankly.

The movie's final minutes were also enhanced by the

sensitive contribution of co-star Donald Pleasance.

Donald taught me a lot about acting.

There's a scene in Halloween after Michael Myers has been shot off this balcony.

Donald's character sees that the body's gone.

He said I can play this two ways.

I can play this.

Oh my God.

Or I can play this.

I knew this would happen.

I said, I didn't know.

I didn't know what to say.

So I said, can you do it both ways for me?

And he did.

And we used, I knew this would happen.

That was the one.

That was the one that was chilling.

The final montage of the movie was actually made in the editing room.

I don't think that it was certainly not in the script.

And all these like shots of places where he had been or could have been.

The ending means he's not only gone, he's everywhere.

This guy is a human, but he's not.

He's more than that.

He's not exactly supernatural, but maybe he is.

Who knows how he got that way.

It makes the ending more surprising.

If you don't say he's been, you know, cursed

by some, you don't give much of an explanation.

So your imagination works much more.

That's more terrifying.

It was very funny because people who saw the

picture thought we had set it up for a sequel.

And you know, that wasn't, it was the furthest thing from our minds.

Carpenter put his finishing touches on Halloween.

Distributor Erwin Jablons was fighting a different battle.

With help from his longtime business partner, a former

entertainment lawyer turned film distributor named Joe Wolfe.

Together, Wolfe and Jablons struggled to get their low-budget film into theaters,

either by releasing it themselves or best of all, by

convincing a major studio to provide distribution.

I had invited Warner Brothers, Columbia, Paramount, all

of the majors to come to the screening, none of whom came.

In those days, this before they even paid attention is kind of pictures.

So I sat down with Joe and I said, we're going to strip this picture ourselves.

I need to get some prints.

Erwin said to me, I need a lot of prints.

I said, well, how am I going to get them?

I said, well, I'll call MGM and see if they'll give them to me.

Just what happens is that I've done a favor for MGM.

And I walked in and got, oh, I ordered 400 prints.

They said, yes.

The distribution was not on a national level, it was just town by town.

Erwin Jablons, he was really very good at that selling it theater by theater,

town by town, city by city.

We had been asked to go to USC and John, who being an alumnus of the school.

We ran the film and then got up and were being grilled by the film students.

John took the film back to his class at SC, because people and I said,

why are you making that piece of junk?

One of the students raised a hand and got up and he said,

you know, I have to ask you people, why in the world?

If you're going to make a movie, why in the

world would you want to make this kind of movie?

I mean, a disgusting horror film.

Why would you want to make this?

And we all kind of looked at each other and said, well, what we really tried to do

was to take a genre that hadn't been done for a while.

But to do something sort of fresh with it, to do something stylish.

And Deborah said, yeah, we can always hope that

someday it would become kind of a classic film.

And the guy said, why you people, you think

this film is ever going to become a classic?

Why, how pretentious of you?

I think that's absolutely ridiculous, you people.

And he left.

First time I served was in a class at UCLA.

I would say 35, 33% of people walk out.

And, you know, I looked over at my wife and said, well, you

know, 33% of people aren't going to like a horror picture.

With no movie stars and no studio backing, the

future of Halloween seemed frightening indeed.

But what happened next was more surprising and

shocking than anything John Carpenter had imagined.

Halloween night.

A small American town.

15 years ago.

In October of 1978, after 20 days of filming and a total cost of just $320,000,

Halloween opened in limited release.

The very first engagement of the picture in a paying

situation was in Kansas City in four theaters.

And I remember sitting by the phone that night waiting for the receipts.

And I got the figures $200 and $300.

They were not impressive, but they were not disastrous.

I was never smart even yet.

It was released in October, November of 1978, and he wasn't doing great.

And then Deborah Collins said, it looks like we bombed.

Don't underestimate it.

The next day, I got a phone call.

They were double.

The next day, they were triple.

By the weekend, they were ten times.

I've never...

A few people got it.

A few people knew that it was special.

It was well made.

It was a good piece of cinema, as well as a good popcorn movie.

Off a lot of other people just shrugged it off or didn't like it at all.

It was something that built over, you know, three or four months.

And even then, it wasn't like I walked down the street

and people were going, Hey, Louis Strand, all right.

The amazing thing is how this movie built.

Erwin Yabons, who released the picture through Compass International,

truly had a plan.

The plans to take you to the Chicago Film Festival.

It wasn't until the picture opened at the Chicago Film Festival that we realized we

had a critical and commercial success on our hand.

The picture was reviewed wonderfully, and the

audiences were just lined up around the block.

The pictures, normally they open up and they go down.

You know, the people who go and see them.

This picture was amazing.

It kept on going up and up and up.

Like Philadelphia, like Boston, you know.

And basically, weeks stayed.

People had told two other people, four other people, five other people.

They told ten other people.

It was almost like the game of telephone.

Oh, that's fabulous.

The reviews were over a period of eight weeks.

This film just killed them.

We couldn't believe it.

I'll kill you if this is a joke.

You know, I used to come up to sit down with Erwin and we'd say, well,

what do we do now?

Everybody's coming up saying, ooh, what are you talking about?

You know, well, it's a big hit.

No, it's not.

Yeah, it is.

I had no idea.

Suddenly, the movie No Studio had wanted was a box office blockbuster.

Halloween surpassed everyone's expectations to become the most profitable

independently released film to date, grossing over

$70 million worldwide in its original release.

It was, you know, the new indie sensation that everyone had to see.

What said Halloween apart from other horror films of that time?

I think it was just a skill that John Carpenter brought to the material.

Subjective shots from the killer's point of

view really hadn't been done that much before.

He came up with a very memorable score, you know,

that had John Edge right from the beginning.

He had good actors and the victims were also sympathetic,

so many of the slasher films that came out after Halloween.

You know, these characters are just set up to die,

but you cared about the characters in Halloween.

First time I saw it in a movie theater was amazing, because they suddenly started

picking up on all the characters, and particularly, you know, screaming to

Laurie Stroe, don't go there, don't go in the house, don't cross the street.

I mean, it was very much, you know, an audience participation, and

particularly when they realized that the character PJ played had this kind of the

way she talked where she said totally all the time.

So when she would finish the sentence, the whole audience would scream out totally.

I totally promise.

Totally don't blame you.

So it was like really, really fun.

And then, I mean, I just kept going the whole opening weekend.

I went multiple times to different theaters, and by the end of the weekend,

it was like Rocky Harshow.

People were screaming and yelling lines back and interactive.

It was really great.

It was really great.

In her very first movie role, Jamie Lee Curtis

had established herself as a star to watch.

It gave me a movie career.

I tried to point out the irony that in those exploitation movies, I was

intelligent, forthright, fought back against adversity.

And she got to do all this great stuff.

She got to be frightened and screamed.

She got to be caretaking to the kids.

She got to fight the monster.

I mean, she did all kinds of great stuff.

And that's a dream part.

Halloween also launched the careers of its talented makers behind the camera.

Most of the people, you know, in Halloween, man, people have become major

contributors to the film industry from this film.

Everybody has been successful.

Dean Country became one of the top cinematographers in the town.

They've become an ace producer.

The castle became a director.

You know, lots of times you hear about the curse of something.

This is one movie where I can't really think of anybody who was cursed.

Everybody benefit.

Everybody has been successful.

It's been only a positive story.

By virtue of the contract that I had as the

writer-director, I had a net participation profit deal.

And I got the biggest check I had ever seen in my life from Halloween.

It was stunning.

I couldn't believe it.

The film's simple plot also became fodder for serious

analysis by many of the nation's top movie critics.

Some saw a conservative agenda in a story that

hinged on the murder of sexually active women.

But its director disagreed.

The teenagers that were victims are the more sexually active.

But that misses just the essential point of the film.

The movie's about the revenge of the repressed.

And Jamie Lee has a connection with the killer because she's repressed, too.

It's tragic.

You never go out.

You must have a small fortune stash from babysitting so much.

Guys think I'm too smart.

To me, these kids are just engaged in normal teenage behavior.

They get killed because they're not paying attention.

They're involved with their boyfriends and they don't think anything's going on.

There's no Christian right morality.

And psychiatrists and academics tend to read a little too much into Halloween.

You know, Carpenter just wanted to make a scary movie.

I asked my son, he was 17.

Why do you go pay money and go and see these scary movies?

He said that I take a girl to the movies after five minutes.

Either she's grabbing me or not grabbing her.

And this is so, next day he will take a new girl.

Jerk, I've got a shirt on.

That's all you ever think about.

Soon after Halloween's success, John Carpenter's creation received the

ultimate Hollywood compliment of imitation.

Now, the same studios that had turned the movie down

began making a series of blood-stained imitators.

You know, the first of the horror movies, you know, everything came after that.

Friday the 13th, night in Marin Allen Street, which I was involved in.

I created a whole, you know, industry of slasher films from

Friday the 13th and any holiday that wasn't safe anymore.

You know, you had New Year's Evil, Silent Night, Deadly Night, April Fool's Day.

It should also add that a lot of mainstream movies, I think, imitated the

slasher tropes, films like Fatal Attraction and Sleeping with the Enemy,

you know, films like that where they took, you know, show they dressed it up with big

stars and big production values, but those

are really slasher films under the surface.

And again, they also owe that to Halloween.

As other movie monsters got into the act, Michael Myers himself returned to screens.

Dino De Laurentiis with Universal came, they wanted to do a sequel.

A sequel, I thought, my God, I mean, that's not television, never heard of a sequel.

They said, no, no, we want to do a sequel and I said, well, I don't know.

They said, don't worry, we'll give you a profit in advance.

I said, okay.

1981 saw the release of Halloween 2, produced

by Debra Hill and co-written by John Carpenter.

John Carpenter and I agreed to write Halloween 2 and produce

it, and we wanted it to be a continuation of the night.

And it was very difficult for that movie to be fully realized because we,

not until after we were in the midst of shooting it.

We realized we had the lead character of Laurie Strode, Comatose in a Bed.

She was not proactive and it really didn't work in my opinion.

I will say that what got me through writing that script was Budweiser,

six pack of beer a night, sitting in front of the

typewriter saying, what in the hell can I put down?

I have no idea.

We're remaking the same film.

Only not as good.

The film was a box office hit, and it paved the

way for a seemingly unstoppable series of sequels.

I've only seen one or two.

Halloween 2 was okay.

Halloween 3 was a horror.

It was just a terrible movie.

Halloween 3, when approached to do a sequel, John and I

decided we wanted to do something completely different.

We loved this guy, Nigel Neal, who had written the Crater Mask movies,

and so we wanted to work with him.

And essentially we found out that the audiences really wanted to see Michael Myers.

Do you know the Laurentis with the Universal?

They don't want Michael Myers.

Let's make a horror story, but without Michael Myers.

I don't like that story.

I was not in favor of this, but I was like out voting.

We tried it.

It failed.

So number four, I get them all out, and I did number four.

Going back to the basic elements of one, we

always, always go back to the basics and the tools.

Ultimately, John and I didn't want to make any more

sequels, and so Mustafa Codd started making them.

Mustafa, he's like Mr. Halloween.

I'm the godfather of the Halloween.

I preserve its continuity.

I preserve its element.

I will keep doing it.

And I'll stop at 22.

That's what Donald Pleasance said.

One of the press were asking him, come on, Donald,

you're going to keep doing these Halloween's?

He said, no way, no way.

I'll stop at 22.

So I like to follow his advice.

Mustafa Codd has kept the franchise alive, because he believes it.

Years later, Miramax bought the rights to the

Halloween franchise, and they had the idea.

Jamie actually had the idea of reuniting us again for it.

And I met with him.

Everybody wanted to do it, except me.

God bless all of you here, but no thanks.

The one that is closest to Halloween 1 is H2O.

I think that the filmmakers, and certainly Jamie, tried to

stylistically keep it as close to the original as possible.

And for that, I'm extremely grateful.

Thanks.

I have this lots of fight with scriptwriters all along

this series whereby I don't want him to be killed.

Okay, he can be shot.

He can be wounded.

But not have him in a dynamite blow up or chop his

head or do, because it means, you know, he's dead.

How can we get him back?

Actually, I'm still involved in how we make another one sequel.

I get the benefit of being paid some money.

Which is wonderful, because I'm a capitalist and enjoy that.

But still it's Halloween 1 that brings them all in.

And when people go and buy and they buy Halloween 1.

NBC wanted to buy Halloween and put it on TV, but it wasn't long enough.

They had a running time of, I forget what it is

now, and we were two minutes under or something.

So I had to shoot additional footage, carpet footage, I call it.

Michael Myers is the most dangerous patient I have ever observed.

Doctor, there is no diagnostic evidence to support that statement.

He's covering up.

This catatonia is a conscious act.

There's an instinctive force within him.

He's waiting.

For what?

I don't know.

But we got ways so made a lot of money from it.

I hold out.

I hold right out.

Hurry up!

Hurry up!

Shut the door!

Shut the door!

Some guy is following me.

I'm sure?

I think it's a guy that passed us in the street in that station wagon.

I couldn't see him very well, but I think it's Steve Todd.

His brother has a station wagon.

He was parked outside the school today.

Right outside the window he was staring at me.

Steve Todd was staring at you.

Somebody was.

A while ago he was in my backyard.

Well, maybe he just wants a date.

Or shut up!

Well, someone could want a date.

I think they sort of left it the way it was, but

NBC required these changes and they were made.

What's amazing to me as a writer of it and producer of it is that 20-some years after

we made the picture, there's still a huge fan base out there.

People adore it.

You know, it's like Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It's like any of the movies where people can

dress up as the characters or get that mask.

Alright!

It did inspire merchandise and merchandising over the years.

You know, there's been Halloween masks.

Posters and dolls.

I have all the little action figures at home.

I am actually an action figure.

That's kind of exciting.

There's Luke Skywalker.

There's, you know, than me.

You know?

So that's a lot of fun.

Goddamn tids.

They do anything for Halloween.

I suppose there's one thing about Halloween that I hold very dear and precious.

And that is that...

much like the killer himself, Halloween seems to never die.

People constantly coming up and say they saw the film and they remember when they

saw it, when they were kids or they've seen it on TV.

And that is really neat.

Halloween would go on to make another fortune

in its many incarnations on home video and DVD.

And it's still selling tremendous amount of video cassettes.

And it's going to be on television every year.

It's fantastic.

You know, it's one of those things that may happen once in a lifetime.

As for its creator, John Carpenter would go on to other triumphs that established

him as one of the top horror and suspense directors of his generation.

Halloween got me branded as a horror director and they had sent me down in a

career making fantasy and science fiction and horror.

But hey, I got to become John Carpenter.

How cool is that?

Despite John Carpenter's other successes, many still

consider Halloween his ultimate accomplishment.

And it endures today as a chilling horror classic.

And a still inspiring example of filmmaking ambition and imagination.

And it wouldn't do that.

This is not a man.

And it's still a scary movie.

Because they allow you to do all the thinking.

You don't need all that blood and guts and gore.

Because you know what's going to happen.

Create that atmosphere and you've got an audience.

You know, Halloween.

I guess everyone's entitled to one good, scared him.

Fear is an interesting thing.

We all are afraid of the same things.

We're the black man's outside.

Look!

That's what makes these movies so universal.

That makes them play in every country.

We're all afraid of death, loss of identity, loss of a loved one, disfigurement.

All the horrors of humanity we all have.

We can all relate.

If it scares you and you can sit on the couch and get a little closer to your

girlfriend and put your arm around her and make her feel a little better.

You know, and comfort her well.

She's squealing in the chair there then.

That's a good movie to see.

Have a good time.

We definitely will.

And I advise some of these from the merit.

Take a husband and put a tape of Halloween and watch it.

I think it will bring out some emotions.

Or some intimacy.

Oh, fantastic.

I love Michael Myers.

To me everybody hates him, but I am going to keep him alive as long as I can.

Are you weird?

It definitely stands the test of time.

It hasn't dated unlike a lot of other films, you know, from the 70s and older films.

It's the, you know, a real primal experience.

It's, you know, lean, mean, fighting machine.

By Hitchcock, Carpenter was really able to mind those

feelings that nobody's safe no matter where you are.

You know, you leave the big city and you go out into the suburbs.

But there's evil lurking out there too.

Hey, I can't kill the boogie man.

He's everywhere.

Evil still lives.

He will always live.

He's in the shadows.

He may be in your house.

He may be in mine.

Oh, no.

Cute, Bob.

Real cute.

Come on out.

What's the boogie man?

As a matter of fact, it was.

Oh!

Ooh!