Halloween 1978: The Origins Of Michael Myers.

The original Halloween, released in 1978 and directed by John Carpenter (director of the 1978 film Escape from New York) was a huge hit. The plot follows a young couple who encounter Michael Myers on their way home from a wedding reception that they had just attended. When Michael Myers is the villain and most people focus on him, the killer never really gets to show off his true colors. It is always a quick flash of his mask, or his dead-eyed stare. The one moment where you really get to see what he is made of comes in Halloween 1978 — an amazing time for horror films — with Michael Myers as the main character.

Michael Myers, seen in the 1978 film of the same name, is one of the most iconic villains in horror film history. His mysterious nature and ability to jump from his victim at will have made him a fan favorite for years. He has been recreated in countless other films, but that does not mean he ever gets old.

General Information About The Famous Movie.

Halloween (1978), directed by John Carpenter and co-written with Debra Hill, stars Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut as Laurie Strode, who must survive an onslaught of masked psychopaths while fighting for her life. Donald Pleasence appears as Dr. Sam Loomis, while P. J. Soles and Nancy Kyes appear in supporting roles.

Filming took place in Southern California in May 1978; the film premiered in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, at the AMC Empire theatre in October 1978, whereupon it grossed $70 million, becoming one of the most profitable independent films of all time. Its success was mainly due to director Carpenter’s skillful direction and score, but many critics credit it as the first in an extensive line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), and Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974). It is considered one of the greatest and most influential horror films ever made. In 2006, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.

The Halloween franchise, comprising thirteen films, helped construct an extensive backstory for its antagonist Michael Myers. A direct sequel to the film was released in 1981; a remake was released in 2007. The eleventh installment of the franchise, which serves as a direct sequel to the original film that retcons all previous sequels, will be released in 2018; this is followed by two direct sequels: Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022). In addition, a novelization and video game series have been based on the film.

How Did It Happened?

On Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers stabs his teenage sister Judith to death with a chef’s knife. For the next fifteen years, he is incarcerated at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. On October 30, 1978, Dr. Samuel Loomis and his colleague Marion Chambers arrive at the sanitarium to escort Michael to court for a hearing; Loomis hopes that the outcome of the hearing will be that Michael will be locked up for life. However, Michael steals their car and escapes Smith’s Grove, killing a mechanic for his coveralls on the way back to Haddonfield. Upon arriving there, he steals knives, ropes, and a white mask from the local hardware store.

On Halloween, a high school student named Laurie Strode drops off a key at the Myers house that her father is trying to sell. She notices Michael stalking her throughout the day and tells her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda Van der Klok what she has seen, but they dismiss her concerns. Loomis arrives in Haddonfield in search of Michael and finds Judith’s tombstone missing from the local cemetery. He meets with Sheriff Leigh Brackett, and they investigate Michael’s house, where Loomis tells Brackett that Michael is pure evil. Brackett is doubtful of the danger but goes to patrol the streets while Loomis waits at the house expecting Michael to return. That night, Laurie babysits Tommy Doyle while Annie babysits Lindsey Wallace across the street.

Michael follows his victims, spying on Annie and killing the Wallace family dog. Tommy sees Michael from the windows and believes he is the boogeyman, but Laurie does not believe him. Annie later takes Lindsey over to the Doyle house to spend the night so she can pick up her boyfriend Paul. When she gets into her car, Michael appears from the back seat, strangling her and slitting her throat. Soon after, Lynda and her boyfriend Bob Simms arrive at the Wallace house and find it empty; after having sex with each other, Bob goes downstairs for a beer where Michael pins him to the wall with a kitchen knife. Michael then poses as Bob in a ghost costume and confronts Lynda, who teases him to no effect. Annoyed, she calls Laurie to find out what happened to Annie.

Michael continues to strangle Lynda with the phone cord while Laurie listens on the other end, thinking it is a joke. Meanwhile, Loomis discovers the stolen car and begins searching the streets. Suspicious of the phone call, Laurie goes across the street and finds her friends’ bodies, as well as Judith’s headstone in their upstairs bedroom. She flees upstairs in terror, where Michael suddenly appears in the dark and slashes her arm with a knife. Laurie falls over a stairway banister and barely escapes his attack with only minor injuries. She manages to make it back home but loses her keys on her way there. Tommy lets her into their house; though scared out of their minds by this point, both Lindsey and Tommy help hide her safely away from Michael.

She stops Michael from attacking her again when he breaks in through the window by stabbing him in the neck with a knitting needle. Laurie rushes upstairs to check on the kids, believing he is dead. When she discovers Michael is still alive, she is horrified and moves in to retaliate. Laurie is hiding in the bedroom closet while the kids are instructed to hide in the bathroom. Michael discovers Laurie and enters via the closet door. With his own knife and a coat hanger, Laurie stabs him in the chest and eye. She instructs Tommy and Lindsey to go to a neighbor’s house down the street to make a police call. Michael awakens once again after they depart and moves slowly toward Laurie. Loomis sees the kids running from the house and decides to go to investigate, finding Michael and Laurie fighting upstairs.

Laurie rips Michael’s mask off, temporarily distracting him as he seeks to put it back on. Loomis shoots Michael six times, knocking him off the balcony. Laurie asks Loomis if Michael was the “boogeyman”, which Loomis confirms. Loomis walks to the balcony and looks down at Michael, who has vanished into thin air. He stares off into the night as Laurie begins to sob. After listening to Michael’s breathing in a montage of locations where he had recently been, one can infer that he could be anywhere.

The Legacy From One Of The Best Slasher Films.

Halloween is a seminal film in the horror genre. With its slasher subgenre, Halloween was responsible for popularizing many tropes that would become synonymous with the genre. The final girl trope, the use of a theme song for the killer and having characters who are substance abusers or sexually promiscuous have become so established that historians argue that Halloween is responsible for a new wave of horror. Due to its popularity, Halloween became a blueprint for success that many other horror films, like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, followed, and that others like Scream satirized.

According to film scholar Pat Gill, there is a theme of absentee parents in Halloween (1978), but slasher films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th feature the parents becoming solely responsible for the creation of the killer.

There are several films that predate Halloween, including Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Black Christmas (1974), which contain prominent elements of the slasher genre. While these films feature similar themes to Halloween—such as a group of teenagers being murdered by a stranger in a rural setting—they do not mark the first use of this genre or its final girl trope. Rockoff notes that it is “difficult to overestimate the importance of Halloween,” noting its pioneering use of the final girl character, subjective point-of-view shots, and holiday setting. Rockoff considers the film “the blueprint for all slashers and the model against which all subsequent films are judged.”

Interesting Facts About Halloween 1978.

1. The Script For Halloween Was Written In Less Than Two Weeks.

Director John Carpenter originally intended to call his movie The Babysitter Murders, but producer Irwin Yablans suggested that the story may be more significant if it were based around a specific holiday, so the title was changed to Halloween. The film’s script was written in 10 days by co-screenwriters Debra Hill and Carpenter.

2. Halloween, A Film Set In The Midwest, However, Was Not Actually Shot There.

The film Halloween was shot on location in South Pasadena and Hollywood, California. If you look closely, you can see palm trees in the backgrounds of some shots—for example, the scene above where Laurie walks Tommy Doyle to the Myers’s house. Haddonfield is named after co-writer and producer Debra Hill’s hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey.

3. Halloween’s Production Was Surprisingly Short.

The 20-day shoot began in the spring of 1978 and saw release in October of the same year. Seasonal restrictions required some interesting hurdles—dozens of bags of fake leaves painted by production designer Tommy Lee Wallace were reused for various scenes. Others may notice that the trees lining the streets of Haddonfield are fully green instead of autumnally colored. Carpenter initially wanted to somehow change them too, but budget restraints kept him from making them seasonally correct.

4. Horror Film Halloween (1978) Features Jamie Lee Curtis In Her Feature Film Debut.

Jamie Lee Curtis was initially cast as Laurie Strode in the 1978 film Halloween because she loved John Carpenter’s 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13 and auditioned for the part three separate times. Carpenter originally wanted actress Anne Lockhart for the role, but cast Curtis after her final audition, where she nailed the scene of Laurie looking out her window to see Michael Myers in her backyard. Curtis has reprised her role as Laurie several times in the 40-plus years since Halloween’s release and lent her voice to an uncredited appearance as a phone operator in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (the pseudo-sequel that did not feature Michael Myers). In 2018, she played Laurie again with David Gordon Green’s reboot of the series; she is set to do so again in its upcoming sequels: Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.”

5. The Halloween Script Did Not Specify Any Kind Of Mask.

The mask for Michael Myers, the antagonist of the film Halloween, was only described as having “the pale, neutral features of a man,” and the design was boiled down to two options: white latex masks bought at local toy stores by director John Carpenter. One was a replica mask of a clown character called “Weary Willie” popularized by actor Emmett Kelly; the other was a stretched-out Captain Kirk mask from Star Trek. Carpenter chose the whitewashed Kirk mask because of its eerily blank stare that fit perfectly with the Myers character.

6. John Carpenter, Who Wrote The Screenplay For Halloween, Named Several Of The Characters In The Film After Acquaintances Or Influences.

Michael Myers was named after a character from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, while Laurie Strode is named after one of his ex-girlfriends. Tommy Doyle is named after a character from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry, and Sheriff Leigh Brackett is named after sci-fi novelist and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who wrote classics like The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and The Empire Strikes Back.

7. John Carpenter Completed The Entire Score For Halloween In Just Three Days.

The director often takes on the role of composer for his own films, and his theme for the movie came from a simple drumming exercise his father had taught him when he was a child.

8. A Character Named After A Different Famous Movie Character Was Featured On Halloween.

Donald Pleasence’s character, Dr. Sam Loomis, was named after the character of the same name from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Curtis’s mother Janet Leigh appeared in Psycho as Sam Loomis’s girlfriend Marion and was killed in the film’s famous shower scene. Carpenter originally wanted either Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee for the role of Loomis, but both passed on the film because it was beneath their standards. Pleasence would go on to appear in four sequels to Halloween, concluding with Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers released after his death in 1995.