Original subtitles

Throughout the years, October 31st had been seen as a night of dark celebration

when the spirits of the dead returned to wreak havoc on the living.

It was a night for mischief, wicked pranks, black cats, and witches.

However, as superstition faded, the night became one of fun, of dressing

up bobbing for apples and begging for candy.

The sinister side slowly faded away until something happened.

This was 1978, the night that he came home.

That night, he tore a bloodline.

But he rampaged through the world of cinema, and

suddenly, trick-or-treating was lethal again.

His name was Michael Myers, and the night was Halloween.

In

the late 60s and early 70s, American low-budget horror cinema began to move

away from fairy tales and gothic monsters and into the modern world.

Films like Night of the Living Dead, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Last

House on the Left pioneered this movement by

bringing brutal threats into realistic environments.

The 1974 film, Black Christmas, also combined

these elements with a night of celebration.

With

films like this enjoying success, it was clear that by the mid-70s,

audiences were ready to face lethal maniacs

and psychotic killers on the silver screen.

It was against this backdrop that the idea for Halloween was born.

We had a company called Compass International Pictures,

and we were distributors of low-budget pictures.

The problem was that we couldn't find any low-budget pictures to distribute.

It became apparent that the only way we could make

any money is if we started to make some pictures.

I was doing a movie line of the desert, a big epic, we spending $300,000 a day.

They came, they said, the whole movie is $300,000.

They said the babysitter to be killed by the boogeyman.

Not the boogeyman that attracted me, the babysitter,

because every kid in America knows what the babysitter is.

They can relate to a babysitter.

And I called John from my bedside.

I'll never forget it.

And I told him the story.

I said, John, I want to make a babysitter.

And I want to make it one night.

I want to call a Halloween.

He got it right away.

He suggested we put it on Halloween night, but play the

whole thing on Halloween night and call the 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 a 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.

A lot of the films prior to Halloween were done by

directors who were not really visual storytellers.

It was a great treat when I realized that John was completely aware of the camera

and how it was going to be a part of the storytelling.

I don't know how you could see that first movie and not

think about that horrifying first scene on Halloween.

Especially if you're the person like me who generally

speaking might sit home and pass out candy to people.

And you're like, my mother's coming somewhere and he's going to stab me.

With the

opening shot, the audience knew they were seen from the perspective of the killer.

But what they didn't expect was that the

killer would turn out to be a six year old boy.

The creative team behind the film is very much aware of cinematic history and the

effects of certain techniques on the viewer.

A lot of that stuff comes straight from European horror cinema and it takes a real

clever director to pick up on those things and incorporate them

into a film that is considered primarily an American product.

With Halloween, the visual style of the film was inseparable from the story.

The innovative photography created a world where danger lurked around every corner

and every empty space had the potential to conceal a threat.

A threat that went by the name of Michael Myers.

One of the things that John wanted to do was always sort of create the tension,

the suspense in the Michael Myers presence or even not being there.

Where was he lurking?

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

He gave Michael Myers that sense of foreboding.

I went down there and asked if I could stick around the set.

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.

Everybody played Michael Myers basically.

Even John Carpenter was done.

Even Deborah Hill did one little scene.

In the original Halloween screenplay, Michael Myers was referred to as the shape.

This is not a human being.

This is a shape.

And just like the word bogeyman evokes something which isn't really human and

doesn't, isn't therefore susceptible to reason.

Isn't therefore something you can argue with

or debate with or even ask for mercy from.

Michael Myers is essentially the bogeyman.

He's the guy who chases you in your dream, who you can't

get away from, who you beat down and he keeps coming.

I think it's not just a matter of new shocks in each movie.

It's the sense that you're dealing with an archetypal figure of some kind.

One thinks of the Frankenstein monster or Dracula.

Certain figures that seem to embody larger forces than the specific character.

No matter what you do to Michael Myers, you can stab him into the neck,

you can poke out his eye.

You can fire six bullets into him and make him fall off

a balcony, and he's still going to keep coming after you.

There's something very kind of...unhuman about

him, even though you know he's a human being.

In the same way that Frankenstein was a monster made of human

parts, Michael Myers was a monster made of cinematic parts.

The camera.

The framing.

White and shadow.

Sound.

And editing.

What was it?

It opened up in the me!

With all the powers of cinema at his disposal,

Michael Myers embodied the means of his creation.

He was death itself.

Like witches and wizards, he was now part of the actual night of Halloween.

Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.

The town in question was Hadn't Field, Illinois, named

after co-writer and producer Deborah Hill's hometown.

Standing in the heart of the town is the home of Evil itself, the Myers house.

The house still stands in South Pasadena

where the majority of the shooting took place.

To Halloween fans, the house is a major attraction, and it

continues to draw visitors today on an almost daily basis.

When you have people walk to the house and

actually walk up the stairs, they start to cry.

That is amazing to have that happen.

25 years later.

The guy is still here.

The house was due to be demolished in the 1980s,

but it was purchased for $1 and physically moved.

It now stands at the end of the same street opposite the location used for the

hardware store, where Michael Myers stole the

knives and masks he would use on his bloody rampage.

I think the fact is that Halloween is set in kind of suburban streets.

And certainly for the first portion of the film, the fact

that it's in broad daylight, I think is incredibly creepy.

And it definitely kind of just nails that it couldn't happen here town.

The typicality of Havenfield is absolutely

to the point of why the movie works so well.

It's every town.

It's every place.

It could be your town.

It could be mine.

It was within this familiar and timeless environment that

the lethal game of trick or treat would be played out.

On one side, the shape.

And on the other side, Lori Strode, Sam Loomis, and a slew of innocent

victims, played by a mix of genre regulars and fresh-faced young talent.

I think Halloween, in some way, has the style and the feel of other 70s films.

I mean, a lot of it, too, was that some of the casting, like it was, you know,

to see PJ Souls and Carrie, then to see her in

Rockerville High School and to see her in Halloween.

Like, some of those type of faces that I just, in my brain, are just so,

I can't think of 70s without thinking of, like, people like that.

That's not true.

I think about lots of things.

Now, why don't we not stand here talking about them and get down to doing them?

She's just out for the privileges, you know?

And I think that that's very appealing.

That's very identifiable.

It's very attractive because we've all been there.

Donald Pleasants play Dr. Sam Loomis, a character directly

opposed to Michael Myers, like Van Helsing was to Dracula.

You fooled him, haven't you, Mike?

But not me.

With Donald Pleasants, so much of those movies

is about him tracking down its Moby Dick.

It's, you know, Ahab and the Whale, and he's

constantly tracking him through every film.

I have to bring myself around to seeing it in his way because it's his film.

I met this six-year-old child with this blank

pale emotionless face and the blackest diet.

It's a little melodramatic, but of course it's not

intended to be real in that awful word realistic sense.

The character was a hit with fans and critics and

became a regular staple in the Halloween films.

He was a gentleman, you know, very professional, but funny at the same time.

He had this way of talking to you that served would draw you in.

To this day, most of the actors from the original

Halloween are still remembered for these roles.

I was a young actor and all I kept seeing was my 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 alec 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.

Jamie Lee Curtis played Laurie Strode, the unfortunate teenager who dropped off a

key at the Myers house and became the killer's intended target.

Michael is much more interested in frightening people than he is in killing them.

The killer spends so much more time in the film setting

up, basically practical jokes, setting up the scares.

The actual kills are just there to give the scares a

free son, to make sure there's actual danger there.

It seems to me that anyone as resourceful as him

could easily knock these people off in five minutes.

What he enjoys is playing with them.

Halloween was the scariest for me because it was about a real man.

It wasn't, you know, a monster.

It wasn't, you know, Freddy was a monster, Jason, the strange hockey mask or,

you know, someone who'd come back from the dead.

It was a man, and it was a man who was going to kill this woman.

All of the elements were in place, and it

didn't take long for the public to catch on.

Totally packed house, totally packed audience, and the Halloween experience in

the theatre was one of the best experience I've ever had in

a movie because literally people were screaming all around.

It was all full of kids, and people were screaming, and it got to the point where I

don't want to hear anybody screaming again.

I thought, oh my God, how can you make something?

Yes.

Everybody in the audience was like stunned.

I saw that film at a director's guild screening, and I had two lady friends on

either side of me, both of whom spent most of the night like this.

Can we look, Tom?

Can we look?

These movies are a lot more fun to make than they are to watch.

I don't think I ever remember this ever happening

with another movie, even with the excesses.

The people coming out from the previous show were

actually warning us in the line about how scary it was.

There was a critic in the village voice.

He said it was the greatest horror movie ever

made, and we were able to put that on the edge.

Open in Kansas City, and the first week was terrible.

Second week was tremendous.

The reviews started coming, and they kept coming.

People, there just seemed to be suddenly a lot of press.

Halloween was a massive hit, assisted in no small part by its groundbreaking

musical score, composed by John Carpenter himself.

I think the strength of John's original score is the simplicity.

I think the music score to Halloween is probably everything.

When you talk about why is the theme so popular, why does it continue on?

I think because it's simple, and it communicates.

It communicates tension.

It communicates something is coming.

It's one of the quintessential examples of the power of music on a horror film.

Well, it didn't work without the music.

I didn't interestingly enough.

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

She said this is not frightening.

There's nothing scary about this movie.

John Carpenter's simple yet evocative score would become as famous as the film

itself, returning throughout the whole series to delight the burgeoning fan base.

The original... it's classic.

Kids now play that instead of chopsticks to

show how they've learned something on the piano.

I mean, it's penetrated the culture completely now.

The huge success of Halloween brought forth

a slew of imitators as soon as the 80s began.

And I suppose, in a way, it just started a new generation of films.

And whilst there'd been other things before, like, Black Christmas,

I think it definitely was the death knell for

Hammer Horror films and kind of Gothic horror.

The immediate thing that happened was about a hundred

other people set out to make exactly the same film.

Friday the 13th is Halloween done again.

There were hundreds of pictures that tried to be Halloween.

Well, we had a lot of, like, Halloween knockoffs after that, with, you know,

a bunch of dumb broads with big tits, you know, running around, dropping their top.

Actually, that's not a really negative aspect.

The lesson of Halloween did seem to be, you know, all you need to make a horror

film is some teenage actors and a guy in a mask.

What I think the imitators missed was that you also needed John Carpenter,

probably Dean Condi, probably Jamie Curtis, probably

lots of other factors that make Halloween work.

There's no question Michael set the stage for Jason.

I don't think anybody could ever argue that.

And there's no question there would be no Freddy Krueger and his importance to the

Nightmare on Elm Street franchise without Michael.

He broke down the door in terms of creating an iconic

solo character to be tied to your horror franchise.

In 1981, three years after the original had broken box office records,

the producers decided it was time to pick up from the shocking surprise ending.

It was time for Halloween, too.

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 mind.

You know, in those days, at the beginning, it's very hard to do a sequel.

Nobody wanted to do it.

The relationship between Laurie Strode and Michael

Myers changed drastically in Halloween, too.

Now it was to be revealed in a twist that she was, in fact, his real sister.

A decision that Carpenter now puts down to a late night and too much alcohol.

Suddenly, he isn't just the boogeyman.

Suddenly, he's Laurie's brother as well.

And this was the era of Luke Kime, your father.

And I think that may well have been the thing that, to me,

has rendered the whole rest of the series really problematic.

This time, Myers was much more demonic.

Portraying the villain was stuntman Dick Warlock.

So I went over to meet the director, Rick Rosenthal, and on the way down the

hall, there was an empty office, and the mask was laying on the desk in there.

So I put it on, walked to his doorway, and just stood there and looked at him.

And he said, who are you?

And I didn't answer.

I just stared at him.

Accompanying the returning characters was the staff of Haddonville Memorial,

the deserted hospital that would provide the stalking ground for the sequel.

I actually am embarrassed to say that I had never seen Halloween 1.

So when I went on the audition, I really had no idea exactly what to expect.

And Rick Rosenthal on Debra Hill very kindly showed

me a copy of Halloween 1 in the office one day.

He said, okay, I want to be part of that.

I got a phone call one day, and he said I'm doing a film called Halloween 2,

and I'd like you to be the security guard.

He wanted me to play the role, and it was written for a 55-year-old white woman.

So I read the script, and I came into audition, and the producer, Debra Hill,

said to Rick, this is not the right person for this role.

She is not a 55-year-old white woman.

And Rick said no, but I think she's got the authority, and I think she can do it.

John Carpenter produced this time, initially handing the role of director to

the original Halloween's editor, Tommy Lee Wallace.

Every bit of enthusiasm and passion and drive, that's

the only way a director should come into a project.

And in good conscience, I couldn't do that with

Halloween 2, and so I just held my breath and passed.

The responsibility went to Rick Rosenthal.

I think the film's held up pretty well.

I mean, I've looked at it.

I think it's still really scary.

It's always interesting to see when filmmaking

works at that sort of primal, atomistic level.

I don't know what credits do, because it's Rick's idea

to have those clogs fall off of my feet the way they did.

It was really fun to do, and it's been such a memorable scene that I've come to

be proud of it more now than I ever was when I first did it.

There was a growing dispute between Rosenball and

Carpenter about what the finished film should be.

Other movies, sort of imitators, had come along

who got their business taken care of by sheer gore.

John felt the pressures of the marketplace, and

so he wrote Halloween 2 to that marketplace.

The original Halloween was the most effective because it kept you completely on edge.

You never know what you were going to see behind the door of a flight of stairs.

And once it happened, it didn't matter whether it was blood or your glory.

Halloween was really the first of its kind.

And after that film, then you had the Tom Savini era with

Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead and George Romero.

And it went from suspense to gore and gross

out in another way to manipulate the audience.

Perhaps the most memorable scene in the film is the dual murder of characters,

Bud and Karen.

I was promised in my contract a closed set.

And there would only be a few people in the hot tub room when we shot it.

Well, I counted 19 people in that teeny, weeny room.

So Rick Rosenfall said, well look, if it'll make you feel any better,

we'll all, you know, get undressed too.

And you know, we'll all do this together.

And nobody would.

The crew refused to not know what person took off so much as a D-shirt.

That's so not true.

I directed that scene in a thong.

So Pam is absolutely not telling the truth because it

doesn't take that much for me to take my clothes off.

And I was ready, willing, and able.

And so I challenged her version of that.

While Bud's death is blood-free, quick, and in the background, Karen's

death is prolonged, grisly, and shot in close-up.

Characteristic of the time, it's an uncomfortable mix of sex and death.

Those are the people that are having cheap sex, you

know, and the one that stays alive is the virgin.

Is it intentional that the girls who get killed in Halloween are promiscuous?

Absolutely.

There's no good sexism, but you have to tolerate a certain amount of it.

You know, it clearly appeals to males somehow.

So I don't understand it.

I think the men tend to get it a little bit quicker.

But I think the reason they get it a little bit quicker is that they're kind of

one-dimensional and not really worthy of anything more complex than that.

Whereas the women in these films tend to be either by design or through fate as the

story unfolds, tend to be stronger, smarter.

And as we see more often than not in these films, the women

tend to be more worthy opponents to Michael and the men are.

It's not always seem scary, too.

Women can scream really well and stuff, but if you had some guy running around

screaming like that, you'd be like, this dude's problem, you know?

Screaming like a chick.

I get more excited, frightened, whatnot, if I see some hot chick being

chased by a killer in Tennessee, I see some fat dude running around.

Because she's a hot chick, so I'm involved right there just on that basis.

I think a lot of guys connect with Michael Myers

just because, you know, he's the guy with the knife.

We all realize the phallic symbolism of the knife, of course, right?

I think people are reading a little too much in this house.

I think that's a stretch.

I think that everybody has an understanding of what it would be like to be stabbed.

It's a very primal fear that everybody has.

The formula of the modern horror film was now taking

shape, and Halloween's fan base began to grow.

The success of Halloween, too, made a third chapter inevitable.

The producers now had to find a direction.

Deborah called and said there was an opportunity here to do Halloween III,

and was I interested?

They came to us with a third sequel.

I mean, that was not known.

I mean, what do you mean, a third sequel?

I said, people get tired of seeing the same character again.

I said, don't worry, we'll take him out.

I couldn't imagine that this opportunity would ever

present itself, and so I said yes with great enthusiasm.

They felt original, and the sequel was enough.

If it was going to be more Halloween's, let's kind of open the door wide open and

make it sort of a Twilight Zone or a Tales of the Crypt

kind of scenario where we could do anything with Halloween.

And Halloween III was that experiment.

We loved this guy, Nigel Neil, who'd written the Crater Mask movies,

and so we wanted to work with him.

Nigel wrote a wonderful script, but it's darkness, and it's kind of cynical sense.

There was something missing, and so there was a certain point at which he withdrew

from the project and left it to John and me to reshape it.

Halloween III was set in a town named Santa Mira,

named after the setting used in the 1956 classic film.

I have always categorized Halloween III as a pod movie, as opposed to a knife movie,

which the original Halloween was very much.

Whereas Michael Myers had been a villain who could appear in any home, this time

the villain already was in every home, the television.

It has occupied a place in the center of every household,

and we don't question at all whether it should even be here.

Halloween III was kind of like that.

It was like these little kids are glued to the TV set, and the fact that something

can manipulate and destroy them or change them in some way is scary.

Our Halloween did not have Michael Myers.

The story line was a wack-o-mad man, businessman, rich guy, factory owner,

manufacturer of Halloween masks.

For some unknown reason, wanted to kill every living child in the world on

Halloween night with these booby-trapped masks.

The weapon of choice was a simple commercial,

one with a familiar jingle and a lethal effect.

I think that was it.

Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Happy Happy Halloween, Silver.

That shamrock's on, man.

I wanted to shoot myself in the head.

These things happen inside the mask at the magic moment and destroy people's heads.

And when you pull the mask off, there were just terrible-looking sockets

and orifices out of which were crawling bugs and sundry-many-legged things.

I mean, this is all demented.

Like I said before, whoever wrote this stuff needs a therapist.

The strong satirical elements and new concepts in Halloween 3 didn't translate

well to the audience, who wanted something very different from the film.

It was a complete bomb in its day.

It made no money.

It pissed off a lot of Halloween fame.

Halloween 3 was a good movie, but it's not a stunt

Halloween franchise, but it was good by itself.

It should have been released as Season of the Witch,

no association whatsoever with the Halloween franchise.

And I believe it might have found its audience.

As a viewer, I would say, what a horrible ending.

I think it's sad that society wants to see things

like that and society wants to see blood and gore.

My ending to Halloween 3 is a tribute to Don Siegel because that was how he ended

Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy, looking into the camera.

No!

Stop it!

No!

Stop it!

The Year of 1988 saw a huge shift in the horror trend.

You had a lot of sequels in 1988.

And it was getting to the point of access and also marketability.

They're not meant to be good films.

They're just meant to cash in on a franchise because they know horror fans

are so desperate to watch horror movies and love them so much that they will go.

I mean, everyone I know will go see a sequel knowing it's a piece of crap.

It was into this climate then that a CODS company, Trankas International,

released Halloween 4, the return of Michael Myers.

I just went back to the basics of Halloween 1 on Halloween 4.

And it was the most successful.

The producers to their credit knew they had made a mistake, felt they had to

reintroduce the whole idea of Michael Myers.

And his journey through Haddonfield.

Initially John Carpenter and Deborah Hill championed a script by Dennis Etchison,

who under the name Jack Martin had previously

penned the novelizations of Halloween 2 and 3.

Halloween was banned in Haddonfield.

And I think the basic idea was that if you try to suppress

something, that will only rear its head more strongly.

By the very attempt to erase and repress the memory of Michael Myers, they were

going to ironically bring him back into existence.

It was at this point that the legal battles began at

stake was the ownership and direction of the series.

The legal specifics, I'm not sure of.

I know Carpenter pretty much divorced himself from the

whole Halloween idea and the studio for a number of years.

I received a call from Deborah Hill and she said, Dennis, I just wanted you to

know that John and I have sold our interest in the title Halloween.

And unfortunately, your script was not part of the deal.

Mustafa Akad gained ownership of the series with the

intention of producing something more traditional.

There was no doubt in the minds of fans as

to who the star of their beloved films was.

Jamie Lee Curtis is very important in the movie, but I think what most people really

are looking for is what Michael is going to do

and how is he going to kill people and stuff.

Walking around in a mask, in a jumpsuit, not talking, all he does is stop people.

That's got to be the main attraction.

I remember when Halloween 4 came out.

I was in line to read for the lead, I think in Nightmare on Elm Street.

And I was glad I got this one.

Truly.

It was great.

The late 80s brought forth the special effects era, and even though Trankus

initially wanted to bring back the almost bloodless style of the original Halloween,

audiences were demanding a bit more.

Halloween 2 is the last time you've seen him and he's

still just more or less a human being with a butcher knife.

And in Halloween 4 suddenly, he's killing people by shoving guns up through them and

he's lifting people and crushing their necks.

I know that when we pulled apart Earl's neck, Mustafa, who was a stickler for,

we don't want too much blood.

This is not a Friday the 13th movie.

This is a Halloween movie.

I understand that when we were doing Earl, he kept saying...

Everyone keeps on thinking there's a dummy or a prosthetic something put on my face.

Then there wasn't.

It was just George and lighting kind of doing this

thing and he was just like sticking his thumb in there.

They were tweaking the lights and kind of like, yeah, that looks creepy.

And then they added sound effects.

And then you see the movie, you're like, oh

my God, that didn't cost him anything to do.

The budget necessitated one major change.

Jamie Lee Curtis was now a big Hollywood star, so they

needed to find a new character from Michael Myers to pursue.

The story was written so that Lori Strode had been killed in a car crash,

survived only by her daughter Jamie.

The killers knew Target.

I was banging on doors for someone to help me, help me, help me after I got lost,

trick or treating or something.

So four o'clock in the morning, they're hearing a little girl screaming

through the streets and somebody called the cops.

The cops came and then the story ended up in the

enquirer that I was almost kidnapped off of the set.

For the first time due to rising production costs in California,

the filming took place in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Donald Pleasants returned to play Dr. Loomis, ably supported by a strong cast.

Michael.

This is my first lead role that I was reading for.

For Daniel Harris and I, that film was a bootcamp in many ways, because I think the

total shoot was maybe 41 or 42 days, and we might have worked 38 of them.

So it was a long arduous project.

From Pennsylvania, a lot of how we were for this guy right here.

It's good, Jan, right here.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of how we were.

My step-son for the first time.

I would choose like 10 years old.

So it really can't sound.

He's little.

Whatever.

This time, more soap opera elements were added to the mix,

including a love triangle between the teenage characters.

So when Sasha and I, when the day came for us to do the make-out scene in front of

the fireplace, a couple nights before Sasha goes, you know we need to rehearse.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

So what do you want to do?

Kathleen was a wonderful flirt.

And the boys all loved her.

She was very good on set and very bad on set.

Do I, little, made us go behind the trailer and practice?

I was like, practice what?

He just said, you know, he just wanted it to

look like, you know, we had smooged before.

It's not an easy feat, folks.

I don't care how cute he is.

It's hard.

It's hard to get in front of the whole, you know.

Actually, Sasha did admit that yesterday.

What?

What did he say?

No, that it took some doing, that he was actually the provoker.

He was really active?

Yes, that he is.

Kathleen?

You and LA played rivals on screen.

Did that kind of carry off screen?

Well, you don't see that little bitch here today, do you?

No, I'm kidding.

The ending of a deliberate cliffhanger also shocked audiences.

It seemed that Michael's intended victim was to be the new killer.

You know, that's what I thought was going to happen.

I thought I was going to come back and I was going

to be the killer, which would have been awesome.

A little frightening, but awesome.

Or at least a sidekick.

You know, something kind of crazy.

I love the ending of number four.

It was chilling.

It was interesting that she had actually touched hands with Michael Meyer's soul.

We were meant to believe that the evil was passed on

to her, and then she commits the same kind of act.

The draw of the Michael Meyer's name in the

title proved why audiences were returning.

Halloween 4 was a huge box office hit, going straight to the top of the charts.

It was two weeks, consecutive number one in the nation.

There is less gore and the loss of suspense.

The sudden success meant only one thing, another sequel.

Halloween 5 was rushed into production before the script had been perfected.

It debuted only a year later in the fall of 1989.

That's a mistake we made.

I mean, we beat four because it was so successful.

Alright, let's hit them with five.

When we competed ourselves, because by the time the next year five come out,

Halloween 4, 4 TV, video, we competed with ourselves.

There should be at least three years between one and another.

I think it was released too soon.

And even for the die-hard fans, I think it came along too quickly.

Hi, I'm Sheriff Mika.

And this is the Halloween you don't want to miss, because

I'm going to get this guy, or else I'm going to die trying.

Can I give you an image?

The audience is going to be... Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Mirroring the events of Halloween 2, the issue of

explicit gore and violence was again a problem.

I believe at the time they were fighting and x-rating, because of the violence.

This time, however, it was the director, Dominique, Ethan,

and Gerard, who wanted more blood, something opposed by a cod.

Dominique had a very specific vision in mind of what he wanted.

I remember one specific instance where we were talking about a specific effect.

It was a cop that gets killed sitting in the car in front of one of the houses.

And I remember saying, well, I think that you should do this, and the camera could

do this, and then you'll reveal the dead guy.

And he said, well, what do you know?

You're the makeup effects guy.

Halloween 5, there seemed to be a little bit more attention on this set.

There were new characters, character types being introduced.

The script was a bit rough.

The story seemed almost there, but not quite there.

The director was fairly untried.

There's some new angles this year.

There's some couple of different type of characters.

The story takes a different turn.

They sent me the script for Halloween 5, and I read it, and I didn't love it.

Not just because they killed me off, because I was surprised I lived through four.

I mean, I think for any character to live through these films from start to finish

is something pretty cool, but it was the way

that they killed off Rachel in the first...

in the first go-around.

I was supposed to get scissors shoved down my throat, and I said, no way.

So they rewrote it, and they sweetened the deal, and I said, I'd do it.

There was some disagreement.

You knew that certain things were going on.

We shot scenes and then had to reshoot them.

And, you know, to me, I was there to do a job.

I would say 5 would be considered the least effective of the series.

I'm one of like three people that actually survived throughout the whole movie,

which is nice to know.

Don't kill the child.

It's not right, but I do get run over by a car.

Why is there a mute kid in this movie, man?

Why is there a mute kid in the Halloween movie?

I got her by Tina.

You don't even know where she is.

What I do.

Can I have the bro, please?

Me playing Tina is like, you know, taking all those things in me and putting

them out all the wildness and all the kind of rebelliousness, but yet total fun.

And putting them into one person.

Tina, the character of Tina, in all of my experience with horror films, the

character of Tina has been the only character where... I wanted to choke her.

Choker a lot.

This character in particular, I think, is different than other characters.

In horror movies and just her sense of fun and values and craziness.

I would say it's a good catch for a role.

She just loves to be the center of attention and loves to have people watch her.

The characters are common characters that everyone lived, what they're living in

this film, except that there's the pressure of Michael Myers behind them.

Audiences could be drawn to a villain that has no dialogue, no personality,

no anything, because all the surrounding cast was full of it.

Full of personality, full of life, and you're really

drawn into Jamie Lee's character and Donald Pleasance.

So you could have this faceless killer and it was terrifying.

But once they started making all the other people faceless too, then you had faceless

victims and faceless killers and faceless movie.

It is a question of cat and mouse.

And we see the cat and we see the mouse and the mouse knows about the cat.

And the cat is going after the mouse.

When Michael Myers is after me, Jamie sort of

feels like scared and frightened very much.

But in myself, you know, I really like going and trying to play as Michael Myers.

Unusually nice guy, but sometimes it's scary.

You know, just to think about if it was really happening to you.

Easy, girl.

You all right, sweetheart?

Halloween Five was the least successful entry in the series so far.

Outside of North America, the film went straight to video.

And for the recent stars, problems began in the real world.

I actually was stalked for a while.

He was really pissed off and said he was going to find me.

There was about two weeks when he was staying somewhere in Hollywood at the

Hollywood bungalows that were pretty uncomfortable.

And I was actually sleeping with a gun underneath my bed during that time.

Coming out.

Coming to get you.

It allows for expression rather than perhaps deviant behavior in real life.

So I think it's provided an outlet for people through

the years that perhaps they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Halloween Genji, my life.

He's the best.

He's a king of war and always will be.

I've been a fan ever since I was a kid and I saw the first one.

I've been loving the franchise ever since.

Me and my brother have probably watched Halloween over 50 times

and every time you watch it, it still has the same effect.

Without a doubt, without a doubt.

I'm the biggest Michael Myers fan of them all.

I said I'm the biggest Michael Myers fan of them all.

A lot of people have tattoos.

They put them on their shoulder, on their back, on their legs.

Up here on the arm.

People can't see them.

I put mine right out in the open where you could see it year-round.

I have a stalker.

I do.

I hit some contact with me in a while, but I do.

I think it's done from back in the beginning of my

career, which would have been the Halloween movies.

He hired a private investigator when I was 18 and found out my home address and drove

with his father and his father's girlfriend from Houston, Texas to my home.

I knocked on my front door with a nine

millimeter and a sawed off shotgun in the trunk.

Some people, their whole education is movies.

That's what they do.

They sit at home and they watch TV.

They look at the news and say, oh, I saw it in the news.

It has to be true.

But he really, really freaked everybody out.

And he freaked me out.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been watching these movies.

In the early days, I did have some negative experiences with fans.

And I really just don't want to remember those

times and I don't want to think about them.

It's a given that these films work on a number of levels, but I would hate to

think you're going to have people saying, well, anybody that goes to see a Halloween

movie really wants to be Michael Myers and kill a bunch of people.

I think that's crap personally.

It's sad that that's what people want to see.

We want to see destruction and death and the kill and the suspense and this and that.

It's not going to make us murders.

But it may make one person murder.

And if you make that one person into a murderer and says, oh, I saw this film and

that's how I'm going to go kill my brother in Denmark, then the person responsible

for making that film can almost be responsible for inspiring that person to kill.

Do you want that on your shoulders?

I have a real hard time listening to that crap.

When I go to the movies, I'm not looking to have my world moved.

I want to entertain.

I want to get away from my problems with my girlfriend, my problems at work,

or my mom's really bugging me lately.

I want to go sit in a dark room and be taken away into a world.

That's why these movies work.

That's why they never go away.

And if you think they're the downfall of society, you're never going to get it.

You're never going to get it.

Should psychoanalysis come into the evaluation of these movies now?

Strictly entertainment.

I think all the blood, guts, violence, and a spider movie is a good thing.

You know, it's just entertainment.

Only way it's not a good thing is if you're already a psycho to begin with.

I guess you do have to rely on the fact that most human beings have good heads

upon their shoulders and are going to be like, oh God, cool guy wears masks,

stabs people, chases people around.

I don't think horror movies are bad.

I think they're what they are.

They're horror movies.

They're fake.

He said he wanted to take me away with him, and if

I didn't go, then all shit was going to hit the fan.

I get nervous.

Like, I don't do many of these shows because I'm so afraid that this is publicized.

I mean, how would he not know?

This is a Halloween show.

He could very well come here and nobody would know.

I would have to have never seen him face to face.

So he could come walk right up to me and ask me to sign an autograph.

And then follow me to my car.

Five years passed, and there was still no news about a continuation of the series.

And there was this gap where Michael Myers was kind of forgotten for a while.

And then Freddy Krueger came in the picture

at Nightmare on the Street in Jason Vories.

I was going around going, yeah, but what about Michael Myers?

He's the king.

The rumors flew.

John Carpenter was making the new film, and

it involved sending Michael Myers into space.

Curtis would be returning.

Quentin Tarantino would be writing and directing the new installment.

Quentin Tarantino took a stab at writing the screenplay for Halloween 6.

He wrote an original version that they ended up not shooting.

None of these rumors came true, and another

battle took place for the direction of the series.

When we finally went to Halloween 6, there were bits by Miramax and New Line,

and Miramax got the bit.

The new film in the franchise was to be a major studio

release for the first time under Miramax's Dimension Wing.

The responsibility for the story, however, wouldn't be falling to a studio

writer, but to a long-term die-hard fan, Daniel Farrens.

I was 12 years old when I was sitting on the living room in my house in 1981,

watching the first NBC showing of Halloween, the original movie.

I sat there alone in the dark and watched this and was terrified and riveted,

and from then it became a thing where I was completely engrossed with these films.

Farrens had the task of tying up the numerous

loose ends from the previous installment.

He also decided to go further and do something that many were apprehensive of.

He was going to provide an explanation for why Michael Myers would not die.

After having seen all the sequels, the stuff you've been

told about Michael makes the first film less interesting.

What's interesting is that he is a complete blank.

The Boogeyman should always remain an enigma.

The Boogeyman should have a lot of speculation, but no firm answers.

You can't keep him mysterious for six, seven, eight, nine episodes.

I mean, you have to give in some so that you can

exploit some new characters so that you develop stories.

Otherwise, he stays mysterious and then you lose interest.

The filming did not go as planned.

Director Joe Chappelle had his own unique take on what he wanted to do with the

film, which greatly conflicted with Farrens' vision.

Joe Chappelle had no interest in Halloween 6.

He had an interest in getting the three-picture deal of detention,

and that was his sole purpose of doing this horror film.

I met with one of the Weinstein's.

He had wanted a big makeup effects extravaganza.

I was happy to do that, you know.

That's great.

However, in the subsequent weeks, the producer kept cutting back the

effects, wanting less and less and less and less.

And I'd hired the best crew in the world to create the

most complex over-the-top special effects you've ever seen.

And they were frustrated on set because they weren't

really allowed to do anything but stab people.

The disputes didn't stop there, and they extended to the casting.

Lead actor Marion Hagan nearly wasn't given the role as Cara Strode.

He said, uh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, Miramax did not like you at all.

Well, first of all, they thought you were way too thin.

And he said, and they also didn't like your chin.

And I said, what?

They felt it was too pointy.

So I basically continued the movie like this and every shot.

Like I became so self-conscious about my chin.

Perhaps the most controversial casting decision made was

the replacement of Daniel Harris with actress JC Brandy.

I was happy for the work, and I didn't find

out till after the fact how fond the fans were.

Of Daniel, but, um, you know, she's adorable in those movies.

So I understand why they like her.

I know that some of them felt I looked a little too old to be her at 15.

We tried her to bring her back that on six.

I didn't care for the script.

I didn't really like the way Jamie Lloyd died.

I had a lot of fans that sort of loved me and for her to go out like that.

I thought it was pretty crappy.

So I went and met with the director, and we sort of talked about different

things and ways we can kind of work stuff out and wasn't really seeing eye to eye.

So then it became, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to make a little bit of money.

Maramax basically said your character is a scale plus 10 character because you die in

the first act, which is about what I made on

the first Halloween about eight years before.

So I said, okay, it's the way you think about me, even though this would be my

third movie, then I don't think I'll be doing it.

Some actors did return, however.

There was the ever loyal Donald Pleasance in

what was to be his final on-screen performance.

Press reports at the time speculated on his health.

Donald Pleasance passed away in England on February 2nd, 1995, shortly after

completing additional dialogue for the film.

I was in Vancouver working on the Outer Limits TV series when I heard that he had

passed away, and I was in the car and it said on the radio.

Oh, you know, Dr. Loom is from the Halloween

series, Donald Pleasance has passed away.

And I remember going back to my hotel and calling John Carpenter immediately and

just saying, I'm really sorry, because John, they were really tight.

How about working with Donald Pleasance on the last one?

How was that for everybody?

Great.

Really wonderful, an honor.

It is amazing.

And this series is not the same without him.

I have to say.

For his final showdown, Loomis' nemesis was again

played by George Wilbur returning from Halloween IV.

Mr. Codd decided that I was good enough to do number six.

I was it.

I was just privileged to be picked for number six by Mr. Codd.

No longer independent, the Halloween series was

now subject to the ordeal of the test screening.

An obvious part of making a studio film is you have to do a test screening.

For better or for worse, some people don't like it, some do.

Some filmmakers don't like it, some tolerate it.

The test screenings were filled with mostly like 14-year-old boys, I think.

But I've heard one very articulate 14-year-old

boy said on the Q&A afterwards, the ending sucked.

I wouldn't have wanted someone to ask me, well, my opinion

of how Josh should have been re-edited when I was 17.

I would have ruined the fucking movie, you know?

Geez, how could I have made the wild bunch better when I was 14?

Halloween 6 did not perform well in the test screenings, and the film was suddenly

rushed back into production without Donald Pleasance

and without creative input from Daniel Farrens.

What resulted was a drastic overhaul, leading

to almost a third of the film being shot again.

Halloween 6 had an original cut.

Director was happy, but this was the first time Miramax was sandwiched onto the deal.

They looked at it and they wanted a different ending, and had to be more

extravagant and a little crazier and a little more psychedelic and a little more mad.

The mention had other ideas about how it should

end and the whole cult sequence was eliminated.

Despite the background from Miramax, the film was again a critical failure,

and the future looked bleaker than ever for the series.

However, the late 90s also saw the rise of the internet, and the fans continued to

hunt out information, forming small but devoted online communities.

From those on the official Halloween website, Halloween Movies dot com,

to smaller fan sites like the Myers Museum and One Good Scare.

Fans began to interact with each other through message boards.

I seriously have it open every day, nine through five.

The difference between the American Pie fans and the Halloween fans.

Certainly, no one is dissecting the psyche of the characters of any of the American

Pie films, whereas Halloween fans are wondering why Michael walked by that room

while a girl was holding up her shirt, and

wondering if he was repressed sexually as a child.

So there's definitely a big difference.

Whenever I'm traveling, I will run into a Halloween fan, and they want to know all

the details about the knife and the mask, and what was Jamie

Vee like, and how were the other actors, and was I terrified.

The emergence of an organized internet fan base with new tools to communicate would

be a major influence on the future of the series.

The producers asked the fans to vote on what direction the next film would take

via a poll on their official website, and fans

even wrote and filmed their own Halloween sequels.

One of the most popular fan films, Des Shaw's Halloween

Inferno, even played in a Canadian theatre for a week.

Without a film in circulation, the demand for merchandise still grew

voraciously, spawning comic books, novels,

clothing, and toys, a collector's dream come true.

I don't really know the total number of items I've got.

What I paid for it so far is by 20,000.

Similarly, it would be the fans that would

unearth the original version of Halloween 6.

Known in bootlaking circles as The Producers Cut, it spread quickly through

the fan base and became the collectable to have.

I'm happy to go to eBay and buy it from you because

everybody's been buying it there for the past eight years.

I mean, I just don't understand why the studio

doesn't release this other version in the movie.

It's a better version.

I really would like to see the producers cut come together and that's something

that we're trying to look into here at the company.

Depending on which version of Halloween 6 fans opted for, they saw two distinct

endings, so speculation was rampant over which

storyline would be followed for the next film.

To everyone's surprise, it was neither.

In 1996, Miramax had a huge hit on their hands with

Scream, a film that was inspired by the original Halloween.

Years later, Miramax bought the rights to the Halloween franchise, and Jamie

actually had the idea of reuniting us again for it.

And I met with them.

Everybody wanted to do it except me.

God bless all of you here, but no thanks.

The idea was to go back to the roots of the franchise, and although Donald

Pleasance would be missing, Jamie Lee Curtis

returned to the role that made her famous.

The storyline of Halloween H2O is centered around Jamie Lee's character, who just got

a dark secret, Michael Myers, and he's always trying to kill her.

We wanted Jamie Lee to do one way before that, but she wouldn't do it.

You know, I guess for a career or whatever it was.

And finally, they got her to do it.

Payed her a lot of money.

They got her to do it.

The producers decided to not treat H2O as the seventh

installment, but instead as a direct sequel to Halloween II.

That was kind of sold as if it was the first

Halloween sequel, as if forget all the others.

So that was a kind of franchise kick-starting thing.

Yeah, trying to make you forget that they'd ever done it.

The idea was to treat H2O as if it was Halloween III.

I think the reason that we did that is because Jamie Lee was back in the series

and it just sort of presented more of a level of continuity for the entire franchise.

H2O turned a dying franchise into a massive success.

And 20 years after his debut, Michael Myers was now a pop culture phenomenon.

For the most part, yes, the Halloween movies at this

point, 20 some years down the road are products.

But I think there is room within them to make them creative endeavors and to

respect the fans and to respect the audience

and make them as entertaining as possible.

Despite the popularity of H2O, there was still

controversy with two disputes becoming public.

The first involved the score for the film composed by John Ottmann.

A lot of the scenes I just cringe because they weren't the way I had scored them.

I mean, there was one piece in this hall.

This hallway, it's this low angle shot of Michael Myers.

And I had just, that's where I had pulled out the stops of the theme going...

You know, it was great with the choir.

And that was replaced by... The second dispute revolved around the infamous mask.

The original mask of the killer was actually a customized William Shatner

Captain Kirk mask adapted for the film by Tommy Lee Wallace.

With Michael Myers, the mask really is part of the defining look of what he's about.

There's something terrifying about that.

Just two holes in a fairly blank surface.

I guess it goes way, way back to the primitive

messages in our DNA about masks in general.

And every culture has its masks.

The absence of personality allows the audience

to put into that absence what they will.

And probably what you put behind that mask and what I put

behind that mask are going to be completely different things.

H2O would ultimately contain no less than four variations of the shape mask.

The mask controversy for Halloween H2O.

They purposefully didn't want it to look exactly like the masks in the other films.

I know that there were some rights issues at one point where they didn't want to

have to go through the estate to get the rights to the shape mask.

So they said, give us a close approximation

that won't get us into any legal problems.

Steve Miner just was against this mask.

For some reason what he envisioned that the original mask was was a completely

white face with no expression, no features.

Which really is not what the mask was, but in his mind that's what he wanted.

And I'm sure that's what he told K&B that he wanted.

From what I heard, there was a screening of dailies and somebody stood up in the

middle of dailies and went, that's not Michael Meyer's mask.

And it all panicking soon.

And everybody started freaking out.

Oh my God, what are we going to do with the mask isn't right.

So a call went out to me to sort of reinvent

the Michael Meyer's mask from Halloween 6.

But we had to sort of make it look like some

of the material that had already shot on H2O.

So we sort of lengthened the neck a little bit and did some minor changes to it.

I just know halfway through the film they said, we want to change the mask and

everyone was a little bit stunned because we had done a test and a lineup with all

of the masks from all of the films prior to this.

About three weeks before we started principal photography.

And they had chosen very specifically the mask

we were using for the first half of the film.

Unfortunately, I think that they had gone behind Steve Miner's back and he wasn't

happy with seeing another mask appear on set

without having approved or looked at anything.

So basically he went to some of Stan Winston's people and had them sort of

re-sculpt to hopefully encompass what he liked about the K&B mask.

and what Miramax liked about my mask.

All of these masks can be seen in the final version of the film alongside a CGI

mask that was used for the close-ups and scenes that could not be filmed again.

It wasn't like we were hired and then fired and then John Beakler was hired and

fired and then Stan Winston was hired and fired.

It was more like the mask took on a life of its own.

The ending of H2O appeared to be very final and brought closure to the series.

But as the film had been a huge hit, this would not be the case.

John Carpenter had stated in the past that one of

the key themes of Halloween was that evil never dies.

And several films later, this still held true.

As long as Michael Myers doesn't die, he's not chopped, he's not bombed,

he's not destroyed, then anything is possible.

You got to let this dry for a minute, Justin.

I knew we weren't making the film of the series, but I

knew from day one that they had planned the next one.

Because I knew kind of what they had intended at the end to leave it hanging,

and obviously it's a franchise.

Just as H2O's production was monitored under the watchful eyes of the World Wide

Web, so too with the next film, Halloween Resurrection.

Ironically, the film itself was a product of the internet age.

Michael goes to return home only to find that this webcam operation run by Buster

Iams has been set up in his house, and of course, Michael

shows up and have it ensues and lots of blood and guts.

Heads rolling.

Miramax had wanted to take Michael Myers out of it,

and Mustafa insisted it be another Michael Myers piece.

So there was a lot of going back and forth between Miramax and Trancus.

Having learned this lesson with Halloween III, Trancus

International was opposed to the idea of a Meyerless sequel.

The fact that Michael Myers was beheaded in H2O was hardly an obstacle.

In our movies, there's always a way to explain the ending of the previous movie.

There's always a way to explain in the first five minutes of the next movie what

happened in the last five minutes of the previous movie.

I had for a while been interested in doing kind of a reversal of the 1938 War of the

Worlds, Orson Welles broadcast where people

took a fictional event and accepted it as real.

And for a while I thought about with the advent of internet and kind of the

voyeuristic look into people's lives that you see on the internet.

I like the idea of doing something that people would

watch and assume it was fake and it turns out to be real.

One theater that I was in, people were actually yelling at the screen.

I really think that that's something that's truly specific to horror films.

You don't go in a theater and like, you know, a Jim Carrey

movie and have people be like, Duh, that's a big body!

You know, it's just laughing.

Not only was Michael resurrected, so was Rick Rosenthal, director of Halloween II.

What I wanted to do was I wanted them to release the movie with four different

endings and not tell the public which ending would be and what theaters.

Which I think would have been a really cool idea.

Rick never mentioned the four different endings to me, but I do say that the man

is a saint for putting up with what he had to put up with.

Because I swear to God, it was like every two weeks they were like, oh no,

we have a great new ending.

Jamie Lee Curtis returned once again to play Laurie Strode.

This performance, however, would be her last as both

her character and storyline would be laid to rest.

Hello, Michael.

I knew you would have come from me sooner.

You know, Laurie obviously has changed over the years.

It's not like she's this little repressed virgin anymore.

I mean, she's a weathered, tired, beaten down human being

because of all of the things she has suffered through.

Originally, they'd wanted her to commit suicide.

Jamie Lee didn't feel comfortable with suicide.

Frankly, I didn't either.

And so it's a much more dramatic kind of invention that we came up with,

but it was always understood that she would be killed.

The death of Laurie Strode restored a certain purity to the series.

No longer a boy hunting his sister, Michael Myers was

now closer in concept to how he was in the first film.

Less defined in his motives, he was now again truly the shape.

However, many felt that the concept didn't pan out

and Michael had lost his sadistic and playful side.

He was reduced to a simple stalker, diluted and

undifferentiated from other on-screen slashers.

That's when they totally forgot about filmmaking.

They just said, you know what, let's just do a product.

We got a target audience.

What do you teenagers, I love Michael Myers, love?

They love Busta Rhine.

I didn't know who was Busta Rhine.

Myself, I went home, I have my son, he was at the time 14 years old.

And I said, I'm Busta Rhine.

Busta Rhine?

Oh, yeah.

So let's put Busta Rhine in there and have him be cool and hip.

Fuck this grip.

Fuck this suspense.

Busta Rhine should not be karate chopin, Michael.

I have a real problem with that.

While the film's comedic elements didn't sit well with the devoted fan base,

mainstream audiences welcomed them.

The storyline warranted that the Myers house would again

appear, and this was reconstructed in a studio in Vancouver.

This time the actor wearing the coveralls and holding

the butcher knife was Canadian stuntman Brad Lauri.

Gentlemen from Fangoria Magazine interviewed me and he said, Brad,

do you have any idea what your in for once this film comes out?

Brad would get really nervous when he was doing

stunts, and when he got really nervous he would fart.

You'd have this very serious stunt where he has to fly backwards out a window and

smash, and you literally would hear him right before he started the stunt is going.

Ultimately, the one constant factor in the films is Michael Myers.

Exactly why are audiences so fascinated with a silent mass murderer?

Well, I didn't really feel this way until I saw the whole series, you know,

went through eight, but pretty much he's so masculine, and I saw this picture of

him, and Jamie Lee Curtis just doing a little lip kiss, and it just turned me on.

It was really sexy.

And, you know, he's just, he's never been thought of that way.

It's always kill, kill, kill.

This is always a way to me.

Why do people pay money?

They know they get scared.

I asked my son, he was 17.

Why do you go and pay money to get scared?

You're not going to be scared.

Said that, I take a girl to the movies after five

minutes, either she's grabbing each other and hold us.

And then the next day I take a new girl.

I believe the desire to be frightened is as universal as the desire to be loved.

We want to take the journey that allows us to survive what the

people with whom they're taking the journey do not survive.

I think Halloween taking this full circle is one of the

best, has remained one of the best for what now 25 years.

2003 marked the Silver Anniversary of the franchise, and

even though the studio had nothing planned, the fans did.

To celebrate 25 years of Halloween films, a convention was held in South Pasadena,

the shooting location of the original film.

Halloween Returns to Hadenfield gathered together cast and crew from the whole

series and almost 3,000 fans from around the world.

The internet fan base was now the size where

it could support such an event with ease.

And ironically, it was Michael's internet adventures in Halloween

Resurrection that accidentally started the ball rolling.

It wasn't until June of 2002 where the Resurrection premiere was happening.

And the company that was putting the premiere party together, they said we have

30 seats to fill, and we'd love for you to help us out.

They gave away 30 tickets on my site.

In six hours I had about 2,000 people send in

requests, people from all around the world.

I got all the winners, and I called them the next day,

and it was like telling someone they won the lottery.

The screening, the jumping up and down.

Oh my God, thank you, thank you.

The first person who went tickets to the Resurrection premiere was Paul Swarringen.

I called Tony to thank him because I didn't meet up with him at the premiere.

Just started the conversation.

I said, you know, we should do something up in South Pasadena.

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

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

What's interesting are the people here.

The people here are the most interesting people I've met in a long time.

These people tonight are some of the nicest

people, but the most diverse people I've ever met.

There's actors, there's speedwriters, there's people that are following the

movies and his love book to be a part of the movie.

And that's a fun part.

I'm here at the 25th anniversary convention

for Halloween, and I'm having a freaking blast.

See anything alike?

Most conventions, horror conventions, there are all these different things,

and this one is poignant just for Halloween.

25 years, it's incredible.

Everyone that was there felt like you felt.

They're there for the Halloween series in general, so it was a great time.

I couldn't say nothing about it.

Some of the actors that you remember, the kid brings

back that moment of fear when you first saw the movie.

Sheriff Rocket, ladies and gentlemen, Charlotte Sipper, right here.

Morning!

But wait, do you hear the voice?

The voice told him, kill your whole family.

You know, it's totally insane.

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.

The dance is a gig.

I'll be totally gig.

Sounds like you don't have enough to do tomorrow.

Totally.

Not only were many cast and crew reunited, but the whole city of South Pasadena

rallied around the event, from the authorities to

the drama students of South Pasadena High School.

So how was school?

It was fine.

Annie, look.

Look right.

Over there.

It's the guy who drove by so fast and you yell at him.

And is reaching out to the kids, and they were just so excited.

And it just made for such a different school year.

There's Annie and Laurie.

Hey, buddy!

Hey, Annie.

Right there.

This is the drama department at Handfield High School.

I've never been to a horror convention before, so I don't know what to expect.

So everyone's really interested.

Continuing the tradition, the fans didn't only want to celebrate the past.

They wanted to look forward to the inevitable next installment.

I was wondering if you could tell us about the plot of Halloween 9?

Well, obviously we cannot tell what we're going to do.

Come on, we're all friends here.

You can tell us.

Many of the fans submitted videos explaining why they wanted to be in the next movie.

Now you've watched Halloween and all the sequels again and again and again.

I can tell you obscure facts about every Halloween movie.

Who played Michael Myers?

Information about the soundtrack's filming locations and you name it.

As you can see by my hair, I wake up with the

same hair that Michael Myers has in the movies.

Just like Brothers.

See anything you like?

See anything you like?

And one lucky winner was selected by random at

the convention to receive an actual walk-on role.

We have

sequels that people enjoy because of the first film that creates it all.

You never really can improve upon that or beat that,

but I don't think that's really the point of it.

I think it's a matter of its entertainment for

people that fell in love with the first one.

And it's because of the first one that they did.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and now nine.

I do sometimes wonder whether that kind of style of the slow burn and the long

build-up to the ambiguous endings, whether that would play with today's audience.

It'll be interesting to see if somebody can

come back now with pure suspense and horror.

I think personally what they should do in the next sequence,

have the mask come off and it is William Shatner underneath.

It's been a real challenge to figure out where to go with the storyline from here.

I've heard upwards of 50 or 60 pitches on this

movie, you know, from a couple of dozen writers.

And some are interesting.

Some are really bad.

You know, ranging from, you know, Michael being on a research vessel out at

sea, because the government is trying to harness his evil,

you know, to use as like a super soldier or something.

After the box of a success of the Freddie versus Jason film in 2003, we naturally

explore the idea of combining any of the franchise icons that we had internally.

One of those ideas, of course, was to do Michael Myers versus Pinhead.

I was kind of stoked by the idea of taking

John's, because John was going to direct it.

I was going to write it, John was going to direct it.

And I called up John, I said, what do you think about this?

Because if you don't want to do this, I won't do it.

He said, no, I'll do it.

I think at this point Michael is still so viable

that you don't need to combine him with anyone.

You don't need to use that trick to introduce him to a larger audience.

Even after 25 years, Michael Myers shows no sign of falling in popularity.

As the films continue, so does he, his popularity

and enigma, just as his refusal to die.

As the shape defies analysis, an unexplainable monster, it is this mystique

that continues to make him a part of the night of Halloween.

The success of the Halloween movies over 25 years beats

the shit out of me, lieutenant, the flight chief man here.

Anchor Bay has been distributing the Halloween's for seven years now,

and always it's been one of our top sellers.

Strangely, Halloween is one of those few films which is perfect.

You wouldn't want to change anything.

So many people were focused on getting the film made and putting

all of their efforts into what would show up on the screen.

Everyone was on that wavelength.

You know, even though some of the things that have now become kind of movie cliches

like the indestructible killer coming back three

times, Halloween is where it was done first, and best.

Halloween has become an icon.

The movies have become an icon, and Michael Myers has become an icon not

only because of the screen persona, but because of

all the graphics that have accompanied the movie.

All the sales, the campaigns, the slicks, the one sheets, the newspaper ads.

To put your finger on it and to try to define it,

I think is doing a disservice to what it really is.

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.

Probably till the end of time, these movies are going to be on cable.

You're going to hear that music.

You're going to see those masks going around trick or treating.

There is no question about it.

It is simply part of Americana now.

In 25 years, Halloween has become a vast commercial

enterprise, and in no small part, fueled by our movie.

And the fans just want to see, oh, what are the filmmakers going to dream up next?

It's us looking, being able to look in a safe way at the dark side of ourselves.

He gets killed every movie 10 different times

in 15 different ways, but he keeps coming back.

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.

I met some people who came through from other states and so on.

How can I sit here and fade you?

I promise I am going to make it worthwhile.

I hope it's a big burden on me, but I promise I do my best.

As long as Halloween is celebrated, audiences worldwide will find themselves

scared of the boogeyman, scared of the dark

shadows that lurk in every street and every house.

Scared of the noises that creep forth from the night, and scared most of all by the

monster that stares silently back at them from

the screen with an unflinching murderous gaze.

It's great that we all gathered together for this 25th anniversary of Halloween,

and all of us here.

It's been great.

It's been a great ride, and thanks for coming, and happy birthday!