Original subtitles

Trick or treat. Halloween night, 1978.

The world watched in horror…

as this spine-chilling…

…blood-splattering…

"I don't want a lot of blood. I don't want gore."

Wait, there's no blood? No blood.

Okay.

Well, the making of this bloodless horror classic…

You know, it's Halloween.

…wasn't without blood, sweat, and tears.

None of that's true.

And was less horror and more family comedy.

Nancy was married to Tommy Wallace.

That's my brother-in-law.

Barely held together by enthusiasm…

We were Scotch tape and chewing gum.

…and inexperience.

Our high school days were just in our rearview mirror.

However, these novice filmmakers…

"We'll have this mask, put it on and be the killer." I went, "Yeah, okay."

…went on to reshape a genre.

It's about stretching things out.

And proved… Theater of the mind.

…that what you can't see…

In the springtime, it's very hard to find pumpkins.

…is probably scarier than what you can.

You can see the wrench. You can just see it.

Totally.

This is the story of how this young team

executed one of the greatest horror films of all time.

It just started turning into this monster.

Under the guidance of a creative visionary…

Direct, write, do the music, everything.

…who was practically a crew unto himself.

It's real unusual.

When you haven't got any money, it's... it's not unusual.

These are The Movies That Made Us.

Here's a pleasant neighborhood.

Just any old street in America where teenagers gossip…

I hate a guy with a car and no sense of humor.

…kids are annoying…

Can we make jack-o'-lanterns? Sure.

…and men in masks stand near laundry.

It's Halloween.

That's right. Halloween, or more precisely,

John Carpenter's Halloween.

It's a simple, shocking tale…

…of a babysitting shift gone horribly wrong.

I'm not about to let anything happen to you.

We'll see about that.

It's the story of a small, cold-blooded killer…

Michael!

…who, after murdering his sister on Halloween night, which is illegal,

settled in for a long life of high-security institutionalization.

He hasn't spoken a word in 15 years.

But one stormy night…

…the patient escapes and returns home…

…to begin the systematic slaughtering of all teenagers he can get his hands on.

But hot on the heels of this troubled villain, aka Michael Myers,

aka The Shape,

is his old physician…

I'm his doctor.

…who understands the true nature of his ex-patient.

Death has come to your little town.

And along with the bravery

and professional resilience of this babysitter…

Do as I say! Hurry! Is it the boogeyman?

…the Shape gets his comeuppance.

Which does him in for the night

and leaves everyone completely unsettled,

wondering where on earth he went.

The end. Sleep well. Good dreams.

But despite being far from your average Hollywood blockbuster,

the inception of this iconic horror film, well, it does start

amidst the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown, also called…

Los Angeles.

And… Hollywood.

Where the lights shine bright and the stars twinkle.

From the red carpet to the...

Well, actually, it all gets quite unglamorous very quickly after that,

because making movies is a lot of hard, sweaty work,

and our story begins with one of the sweatiest of all.

I found myself a job at Warner Bros. Actually loading trucks.

In those days, we still used 35mm cans.

A print of a film was two cans of a hundred pounds of film.

And with this kind of strength, it didn't take Irwin long to lift himself

out of the lifting business

and into the booking business.

Eventually, they took notice of me and offered me a chance to become a booker.

A booker was the guy who physically booked the films into the movie theaters.

It was logistical more than anything else.

But in the '60s, anything else may have been a better choice…

…because the movie industry wasn't doing well.

It was dying.

Everybody said, "Why are you in the movie business?"

"It's a dying business. Get into television."

We hope you have a wonderful time.

The movie business was doomed, everyone thought.

Doomed and dying…

Irwin navigated the ghoulish cinematic landscape.

That became a long progression of different jobs for Warner Bros.

One of which eventually became

actually a quite important part of the moviemaking process.

I was responsible for setting up sneak previews.

Before a film was finished…

try it out with an audience…

see the reactions, and make some decisions.

And after those sneak previews…

They'd always turn to me and ask what I thought.

My wife would be with me a lot of the time and she thought I was… I was brilliant.

One day, we were driving home from one of these.

You know, she said, "If you know so much about making movies,

why not make 'em?"

So, thanks to the love of his life…

She should be here to hear this.

…Irwin got to work on creating a career he was passionate about.

I knew that in my heart, beat the heart of a filmmaker.

I knew that's what I wanted to do.

Now, speaking of true love… Hello.

…elsewhere in Los Angeles at the time…

All the girls were clustered around this guy playing the guitar

and I was like, "I see."

And this heartthrob to which Tommy Lee Wallace refers…

Shut up. He's cute!

…is his buddy John Carpenter,

who he grew up with in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

So, I went and harmonized with him, then the girls clustered around me, too.

But really, it was John, Tommy, and Nick…

Hi. Yes, hello.

…who creatively clustered around each other.

I met John Carpenter at USC.

We loved music. We loved rock and roll. We were both in bands.

And we would start doing music for each other's projects.

But these troubadours made more than just beautiful music together.

I worked with John on some shorts.

Some of which Irwin is now wearing.

Short films. Short... Short films.

But with his time at USC coming to a close,

John Carpenter put on his big-boy pants

and directed his very first feature film…

Dark Star.

…with a measly $60,000 budget.

He enlisted the help of me and lots of other buddies.

Kind of Scotch tape and chewing gum

out of the trunk of our cars on the weekend.

Are you with me? It was all hands on deck.

I moved props. I helped behind the camera.

I was supple enough, I guess, to get behind it

and do this and pretend like it was breathing.

That's right. Nick was also…

This crazy little beach ball monster.

Here, boy! Painted like a tomato.

Nick was this tomato.

And while these guys squeaked out this low-budget feature,

Irwin Yablans's dream of making movies

with the encouragement of his wife…

"Why don't you make it?" …had stalled.

Now I've got this company, and I got about $50,000 in the bank…

but I don't have any movies. Not like he hadn't been warned.

"Why are you in the movie business? It's dying."

Well, not so fast, because around that same time,

in another part of town, John Carpenter's momentum was building.

After John did Dark Star,

and it was very good, actually, got a little bit of recognition…

I told him you were one of the best.

…he got some money to do this modern-day Howard Hawks movie,

which is one of his favorite directors of all time.

It was a take on the 1959 movie, Rio Bravo, titled…

It's a goddamn siege.

Right. Now just lose that first part.

The Siege. That's it.

Made for about $100,000 of some friend's dad's money,

The Siege fizzled.

Jesus! Come on.

But it also introduced a pivotal member of the Carpenter filmmaking family.

His script supervisor on that show was Debra Hill,

and in post-production, Debra was along as assistant editor.

And after they'd done their editing and assistant editing…

We all felt we'd done a pretty good movie, but...

But nobody else really did,

and Carpenter couldn't find any major studio to distribute The Siege.

This can't happen.

A reality that coincided with Irwin's predicament.

I don't have any movies.

Which was about the time his phone rang.

I got a phone call from an agent.

Hello?

He said, "Irwin, I have this young man who's just made a movie."

"He's looking for distribution."

I said, "Sure, send him over. What's his name?" "It's John Carpenter."

And after watching The Siege…

It would be a privilege if you'd walk outside with me.

I was astonished. This is an incredibly good movie.

I said, "Amazing that no studio is willing to take a chance on this picture,

let alone this young man."

And so, Irwin took a chance on both.

Hello?

I said, "Fellas, I think your movie is brilliant,

and I'd like to distribute it." I'll kill you if this is a joke.

It was no joke.

I know how to distribute a movie. I'm a one-stop Warner Bros.

And so, Irwin's one-stop studio started.

I said, "I wanna change the title."

Assault on Precinct 13.

I made the trailer.

I designed the poster. And most importantly…

I had a relationship with the exhibitors, so I was able to call in old favors,

and I got the picture distributed.

Right. Bye.

And finally, John Carpenter would have an audience.

Assault came out, and…

No.

Sorry.

…didn't do anything much.

That is, until…

Until it went to England.

Because Irwin received another important phone call.

And I answered the phone. "Irwin Yablans?" "Yes."

"My name is Michael Myers."

"And I'd like to enter your film in the London Film Festival."

He got my attention.

Someone in the central office wanted to give you something special.

He did indeed enter it into the London Film Festival.

It won the first prize.

Suddenly, it's the darling of UK-London cinema.

That sure got around fast.

Inexplicably, it was a hit in England.

People just went wild for it.

And I think that had some echo effect back here in the States.

But, as with all echoes, they fade.

And so, with a degree of urgency, Irwin thought…

I gotta find something for... To make with John Carpenter.

And immediately began bouncing ideas around in his head.

I'm racking my brain. "What can we do? What kind of movie can we make?"

And out of nowhere, I thought, "Why not make a movie about babysitters

being terrorized in a single night?"

Hey, now that's wonderful.

But not just any old night.

"Why not make it on the scariest night of the year?"

And he's not talking about Valentine's Day.

Halloween.

Diane was in bed, my wife. He woke her up.

I told her the story. She said, "Sensational."

Cute, Bob. Real cute.

"Call John right now." And I did. I got him on the phone at night.

I said, "Can you meet me tomorrow?" I told him the story. He got it instantly.

And when they all went back to bed, they could rest easy

knowing that Irwin Yablans

had just created the movie that we'd all come to know as…

The Babysitter Murders. Okay, fine.

And with this simple idea…

A horror film set on Halloween,

called Halloween. So, not The Babysitter Murders?

No, none of that's true.

There was no such thing as Babysitter Murders ever.

Well, that's not what the internet says, so…

No. Remember, I'm the sole source, because it came right from here.

That's the idea.

But Irwin's magnificent idea was a horror,

which is funny to think, at the time, John Carpenter wasn't known for.

I enjoy suspense

and action and thrills.

And I enjoy comedy. I guess, mainly, the genres.

Exactly. Carpenter had no interest

in making your average 1970s horror movie.

You know the ones.

God is dead!

Hail Satan! Satan lives!

And as it happened, Irwin saw Halloween differently, too.

Ma'am? Answer the question.

A vision he laid out to John Carpenter at lunch.

I remember I had a tuna fish sandwich.

And I said, "John." I said, "I'm the last of the radio generation."

When I was a kid, I would listen to Inner Sanctum and Lights Out,

radio horror shows.

And I wanna tell you, I would get under the covers with the radio,

and nothing you could possibly see on a screen

could match what I would conjure up in my mind.

And I want this movie to play like that.

Theater of the mind.

Which meant less of this.

"I don't want a lot of blood. I don't want gore."

And more of this.

I want the audience to be frightened, not repulsed.

Drag their eyes to the right and scare them on the left.

But hang on. How would the director take this direction?

He would've made a movie about my tuna fish sandwich.

The Tuna Fish Murders? He just wanted to make a movie.

Ideally, not about tuna.

But it wasn't quite that easy.

John Carpenter did have a couple of demands.

John says he wants $10,000.

As just a deposit or something?

Now this is, direct, write, do the music, everything.

And his next request…

John asked if Debra Hill could produce the movie.

Because since Assault on Precinct 13…

She and John got to know each other much better.

They were together. Professionally and personally.

I said, "Sure, she can produce, if you think she's up to it, go ahead."

But there was one last thing.

He said to me, "Can I have my name above the title?"

Which I thought was a hell of a request from a novice filmmaker.

And I remember what I said to him.

"If you can do this movie for $300,000 the way I like it,

you can have anything you want."

Except a free lunch, because for all Irwin's promises…

I didn't have the 300,000.

Well, maybe this guy did.

Moustapha Akkad,

a moviemaker who, at this point, had joined forces with Irwin.

We became fifty-fifty partners. Fifty-fifty?

Actually, he got 51 percent.

Of course, because? He had access to a lot of money.

But Moustapha wasn't exactly an open checkbook.

Based in London, Halloween wasn't exactly his cup of tea.

Moustapha said, "I worry when a movie is too much money."

I said, "Moustapha, if $300,000 is too much,

we'll skip it. We won't make the movie."

"No, no, no, no." His pride.

And just like that… He agreed to the 300,000.

Okay.

Three hundred thousand.

Not to burst the bubble, but it really wasn't a lot of money

compared to movies of the day.

Nevertheless, it was time to kick this low-budget movie into high gear,

beginning with the script,

which John Carpenter wrote with Debra Hill.

The heart and soul of Halloween is John and Debra.

Halloween was originally written by Debra Hill,

and then John came in and layered in the mythology of…

Evil.

You know, the nature of evil, how you can't kill evil.

The blackest eyes.

The devil's eyes.

It also didn't stretch too far beyond a relatable domestic experience.

The fact that this could happen to anyone, anywhere.

It's a normal town.

John knew absolutely what he was doing

and all the tricks that go with creating an atmosphere of unease.

But it was Debra who basically shaped Laurie, her friends.

You totally never showed. That's not true. Here I am.

About two weeks later… They presented me with a first draft,

and that was it.

And as casting began,

John Carpenter and Debra Hill began considering

who their murderous Michael Myers would be.

"My name is Michael Myers."

As a thank you for giving Carpenter a start

with Assault on Precinct 13.

His wife was upset for years, because they had no participation in the movie.

She felt they were owed something.

Bit awkward. But, anyway, the character did have another name.

The Shape. Yes, The Shape.

There's very little mention of him as Michael Myers in the script.

He was always The Shape.

Well, anyway, they'd come back to that one.

But in the meantime, John and Debra focused on casting Dr. Samuel Loomis.

Johnny came to me and wanted Christopher Lee.

Christopher Lee.

Prestigious, seasoned and even bloodthirsty.

Count Dracula.

But despite his unquenchable bloodlust…

Christopher Lee turned it down.

Take it away!

Just as well for Irwin, because…

I had seen a movie called Will Penny. Starring Charlton Heston.

And while Charlton Heston's unyielding dispersal of pain

was rather terrifying…

Get up!

…it was another performance in this 1968 Western

in which Irwin saw a potential for Halloween.

Merry Christmas. Well, close enough.

Donald Pleasence had played the insane patriarch of a bunch of crazy brigands.

You ain't seen the last of me! And he's not wrong.

In fact, this seasoned star of stage and screen

had been seen in countless films.

Hello.

Having evaded Nazis with Steve McQueen in The Great Escape…

Almost evaded.

…to tormenting James Bond in…

You only live twice.

He knows.

I said, "If you get Pleasence, you'd get gravitas to the part and the movie."

But would Carpenter agree?

John agreed.

He agreed. That's right.

With the Loomis role cast,

attention was turned to filling the role of the film's lead teen, Laurie Strode,

for which Carpenter and Hill wanted the relatively unknown actress…

You buy that here? …Jamie Lee Curtis.

Unknown to everyone except Columbo.

I can come back.

And she was a charming, polite young lady.

And clearly impressed... Didn't impress me one way or the other.

I'm really terribly sorry.

While her résumé wasn't that impressive, her pedigree very much was.

When I found out who Jamie Lee Curtis was,

I wanted her immediately.

Well, Jamie Lee came from impressive stock.

The daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

Yes, that Tony Curtis.

I'm Spartacus!

And, yes, that Janet Leigh.

Meaning…

Her mother had starred in Psycho.

Curious. That was good enough for me.

And if John thought she could cut it, that was good enough for me.

Having found their wholesome and thoughtful Laurie,

it was then time to cast her decidedly less wholesome and thoughtful friends,

Annie and Lynda.

So, here it says, "Lynda says, 'Totally, '

and Lynda, 'This is totally silly.'" And…

Luckily, Carpenter and Hill found the total package with…

P.J. Soles. She was just adorable.

And this young actress was also no stranger to the world of horror.

They saw her in Carrie and thought she would be perfect for Lynda.

Totally. And for the role of Annie,

Carpenter and Hill hired from within when they cast…

Dr. Sam Loomis. No!

Nancy Loomis. A Loomis.

Loomis.

Loomis... Well, besides the fact... No relation to the doctor.

She'd had a part in Assault on Precinct 13

and was perfectly happy to go on and do the next film, Halloween.

But she'd be carpooling to work.

Nancy was married to Tommy Wallace.

And Tommy Lee Wallace…

Hello. …well, he'll tell you.

I did a lot of jobs on Halloween.

Most significantly, production designer and film editor.

But Nancy Loomis's husband

wasn't the only multi-hyphenate in this Hollywood power couple.

Since she and I were together,

she was part of the art department, doing the costumes.

It was really a family affair.

A bit of a friend affair, too. We were all friends from other movies.

For example, take script supervisor, Louise Jaffe.

The first film I worked on, Nancy Loomis was the wardrobe person,

and we became great friends.

But Nancy Loomis also knew makeup artist, Erica Ueland.

Nancy'd been a friend of mine for many years.

Which makes sense when you consider that…

Louise is my roommate on Gower Street. Yes.

Or cinematographer Dean Cundey, who knew best boy, Steve Mathis.

Dean and I go way back. I did several movies with Dean.

And second assistant camera operator, Krishna Rao.

Dean trained me to be a camera assistant.

That's my brother-in-law.

Consider the point made.

Debra had assembled a crew that was young…

Our high school days were just in our rearview mirror.

…hungry…

This was a real movie for all of us, it was cool.

…and one more thing…

We were all young, hungry, and poor. Cheap, which was just as well,

seeing as how this was a very moderately-budgeted…

Scotch tape and chewing gum.

…type of operation.

But there was one line item on the budget

that Carpenter insisted they not skimp on.

I was the cheap part. No, not Dean Cundey.

The one thing was Panavision equipment.

Of the $300,000,

we spent almost 70,000 of that at Panavision.

A sizable chunk was spent on… The Panaglide.

…a high-end camera rig that would help this low-budget film look…

Like a zillion bucks.

Because while most cameras of the day were pretty stationary,

the brand-new Panaglide camera, as demonstrated by Dean Cundey himself,

could move around quite freely.

John saw the camera as the audience's eyes.

So, I think that any time you can play a shot in one,

it's better because it's moving the audience smoothly,

as if they were actually walking through a scene or a moment.

Which would be the perfect touch for a film like Halloween.

The only problem was…

It was maybe the second film to use the Steadicam.

So, while Dean and his team learned how to be smooth operators…

In the parking lot of Panavision. Yeah.

…Tommy Wallace was grappling with his own daunting assignment.

So, my assignment was, go find a mask.

But not just a mask, the mask.

The script described it as a kind of blank face.

So, Tommy headed straight to the epicenter of creepy, blank faces.

Down on Hollywood Boulevard…

…at a magic company that sold a lot of masks and costumery…

Up on the shelf were these full face masks of people like Richard Nixon.

Well, I'm not a crook.

And down at the end was a Mr. Spock mask.

Fascinating.

And right next to it was this kind of blank-faced

Captain Kirk.

Come on. The lovable Captain Kirk?

I'm Captain Kirk!

He is terrifying.

So, I grabbed one of those,

and I grabbed an Emmett Kelly sad-sack clown mask.

And so Tommy headed back to his shop and began customizing.

Opened up the eye holes.

Took off the eyebrows.

Took off the sideburns, which sort of punkafied the guy.

Painted the face appliance white,

and I darkened the hair down. Looked pretty good.

But John and Debra would be the judge of that.

We tried out the clown mask first.

We all agreed, "that's strange, that's eerie."

Strange and eerie. Captain Kirk, anyone?

I'm Captain Kirk!

As soon as the second mask came out of the dressing room,

we were all, "Fuck me."

That mask looked so creepy.

It's just something about that blank face.

There's no personality. It's just purely evil.

And so we knew we had a movie.

What they still didn't have was a Shape.

However, as principal photography was gearing up

in sunny South Pasadena, California,

standing in for a dreary Haddonfield, Illinois,

lurking amongst the suburban shrubbery was

Nick.

Nick was in the bush.

It was very close to, where I lived.

But not being specifically involved with this project,

their old buddy said…

"You know, John, you know what'd be cool? If I could just hang."

The words hung in the air.

The broad-shouldered Nick Castle awaited John Carpenter's response.

"Okay, no problem."

But having a useful contributor just standing around

like a nosy neighbor,

didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Or did it?

He needed someone to do all of these walking, lurking shots.

So, John Carpenter said…

"Wait a minute, why don't you just put the mask on

and walk around and be the killer?"

And I went, "Yeah, okay."

And by simply putting on this mask and walking about,

Michael Myers, aka The Shape, came to life.

And Nick had a good walk.

His father was a dancer and choreographer,

so Nick just naturally had a good gait about him.

I think that's kind of bullshit.

John and I really didn't discuss anything about,

you know, what I was supposed to do.

Basically, what's my motivation? You know, I was... I'm suddenly an actor.

But Carpenter wasn't looking for a murderous method actor.

He only needed a shape.

He just said, "Walk towards me."

Or, "Stand there."

"Now tilt your head to the right."

It was this direction… "What's this supposed to mean?"

…that left Nick scratching his tilted head.

And it wasn't until I kind of looked at the dailies

and went, "I see. He's kind of admiring his work."

"That's cool. What a great idea!"

And thus, this newly minted thespian found his motivation.

Just do whatever John says.

While directing Nick was a walk in the park,

or wherever he was walking,

the production's big-name actor had other ideas.

He was kind of annoyed that he had to be in this movie.

In other words, I think the script is a bit overwritten.

That's... I don't know, it's difficult to find an expression other than that.

But any misgivings Pleasence had over the role didn't show.

He was a good actor after all. He handled it like a pro.

He was drinking a lot of wine.

Yeah. Are you all right?

Well, it's a good thing he wasn't driving.

The night that we were out in the rainstorm,

he had a bottle or two of red wine in his trailer.

I was worried that he wasn't even gonna be able to walk down the steps.

It was a very difficult scene, because all those people were out

and walking around in their robes, all the people from the sanitarium.

And for Donald Pleasence's character,

actually a really important scene.

And he had in-the-car dialogue with that nurse, and it had to be coherent.

You haven't anything to worry about.

No, John Carpenter had plenty to worry about.

Donald Pleasence just opened up on John.

"You're making me look like an ass."

It's a little melodramatic.

And there, with his entire crew watching,

and his star two bottles of red wine in,

the novice director was put to the test.

John was beyond his years

in terms of his ability to handle people and handle situations.

And that night, he handled Donald Pleasence.

Wait.

During a scene when sobering coherency was, well, key.

And it was totally coherent, even though he was…

In a rush to get back to his trailer?

While the angry yet oddly coherent words of Donald Pleasence cut like a knife,

the next challenge of the night involved a blunt instrument.

Yeah, the window was tough to break.

But, as the movie's art director,

Tommy Lee Wallace knew what to do.

He's up on top of the roof of the station wagon and, bam!

If you look, you can see the wrench right here.

Taped with flesh-colored tape. You can just see it.

After a grueling shoot…

That was possibly the most difficult day of the entire shoot.

…they prep themselves for more.

And the worst was yet to come,

because Tommy Lee Wallace faced a… pumpkin shortage.

Believe it or not, in California in the springtime,

it's very hard to find pumpkins.

We only had three pumpkins.

There's one.

There's two.

And there's…

There's three. God!

John did it on take one.

Well, worst case, Nick had experience

puppeteering fruit and veg, so, you know.

For the rest of their pumpkin needs…

We found some kind of South American gourd

that was dark green, so, naturally… "Paint department!"

Would that be you?

But pumpkins weren't the only thing this production was short on.

I just kept wondering, "Where's the blood? Where's the blood?"

It didn't need blood.

Because true to Irwin's original direction…

Theater of the mind.

…John Carpenter was drawing from earlier master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

It's like Psycho. You never see the knife hit Janet Leigh.

As a viewer, you were able to use your imagination more

and it makes it more horrifying to imagine

what happens the other side of the window when Annie's being killed in the car.

But more than just leaving things to the imagination…

Carpenter was going for something

that was a little bit more nuanced.

And here's a good example.

There's a scene in the film where Jamie Lee is at the top of the stairs…

And there's a shadowy area.

Which John uses that empty space as like, what's there?

Well, Nick was there. Hi.

He was everywhere.

John said, "How can we make Michael Myers sort of appear?"

There in the dark? Well, the answer was…

By using lighting.

And I said, "How about if we put it on a dimmer

and we'll have a light on his face?"

And I wanted the audience to feel like their eyes are getting used to the dark.

And the light comes up.

And that's when I realized…

"God, this is real scary shit."

The stabbing.

I had the blood, if they needed it. They didn't.

And when it came to Jamie Lee Curtis…

the crew found themselves falling for her.

It was fun acting with Jamie.

Hang on, "acting?" Isn't Tommy the art director?

We only had money for one of these fake doors.

And he said, "I'd better do it because if I screw up, then, yeah, it's my fault."

"I don't want you to screw up." And you know, then I...

Look in there and do The Shape. Yeah, that was fun.

And as for the lead actor…

Jamie, from day one, was kind of the girl scout next door.

She was just great.

She loved the crew, she carried camera cases when she wasn't too busy

doing her… day job, you might say.

Day job or sometimes, night job.

But as production neared its end…

We had one day left to shoot.

…this one would be an all-night job.

And it all came down to one last shot.

Which, in itself, was a long shot in every way.

… just to be clear, it was really long.

And he said, "We want to walk up to the house."

Move up, around to the side, look through the window.

There's the couple there. Michael's around someplace.

We look at the window, the light goes out.

And as he described it, we would walk it.

But as they walked it,

the challenges they'd face pulling this shot off

became more and more apparent.

In the film, the house is in good shape at the beginning and deteriorates.

Anybody live here? Not since 1963 when it happened.

But we shot in reverse.

We shot all the deteriorated stuff and then just painted what we would see.

Low-budget filmmaking at its finest.

And one of the reasons that budget was so low

was because of that fancy Panaglide contraption

that Dean Cundey was expected to lug about for this epic shot.

It gives you a great deal more flexibility of how you can move the camera.

But it also gives you a much smaller film magazine,

limiting their takes to four minutes and 26 seconds.

Somebody was timing it as they were practicing,

and it was clear that we weren't going to get the whole shot.

Terrific.

Debra jumped in and said, "Well, we need a cut point."

It was a lot of fun to devise that.

And the solution?

We'll block the lens with a mask.

We'll put the mask on in exactly the right spot for the eyes,

and we'll continue the shot.

And so, after the first take,

they did another take,

and then another one.

A lot more takes.

Reset everything, get it going, so we could do another take.

"Move this couch. It was in the way of going up the stairs,

but we wanna see it coming down. Move the lights."

And so you'd see people jumping out of windows,

and standing on balconies with their lights.

I was there with a bucket of blood.

Now there's blood.

With crew dangling from balconies and doing anything to clear the shot,

they did a lot of takes.

Did over 20. We wore Ray Stella out. Dean put the rig on. We wore Dean out.

We just kept doing it, the same shot over and over and over and over.

I'm convinced that if it was still night, we'd still be shooting.

But of course, the sun did eventually rise

on a very exhausted but happy crew.

I'm very tired, but I can see that this is going to be

a significant moment for the film.

The revolutionary Panaglide camera rig

proved well worth its steep share of the budget.

Each take was gold. It was this thrust for 15 or 16 hours.

Nobody thought about whether we were tired or whether we weren't tired.

We were just resetting and going again.

It was actually a beautiful way to end the film.

And with that…

John turned to everybody and said, "I got my shot."

…Halloween finished shooting.

Right, then. Time for editing.

And to do that, they brought in a serious...

Hello. It's just... Tommy just did it.

Along with assistance from Charles Bornstein.

And together, the two refined the film's dreadful pacing.

In a good way.

Tommy and John always likened it to a rubber band.

How far could you stretch the rubber band…

…before you knew it was going to snap?

And it's just about stretching things out

to make it so that when you know that something horrible is gonna happen…

it creates this horrible dread, and you just want it to be over.

They even found a way to stretch that dread…

past the ending of the film.

How about having them go out of the theater

dreading to go to their car, because that empty street

could have the boogeyman hiding behind a telephone pole or something?

Or the bushes. He does seem to like the bushes.

But the idea was born in the cutting room.

Well, the original ending was from Loomis's point of view,

from inside the house.

Loomis's point of view,

"The backyard, the neighboring yards, the street, all are empty, quiet, dark."

"There is only the sound of the wind swelling in the trees."

"Michael is gone. Period. Fade to black."

"Roll end titles."

But to change perspective this late in the game was a big challenge.

We just didn't have

a bunch of establishing shots of places to work with.

Establishing shots like this. But luckily for them…

I saved a lot of the stuff that normally you would throw out.

Tommy would go through and he would find

a piece of the empty staircase

before the slate came in, shots of just empty locations.

We just stole every,

absolutely every little shot we could find to put that montage together.

A spine-tingling end to a distressful thriller

that for John Carpenter, was far from over.

John was the composer.

He was Bowling Green Symphony Orchestra,

which is credited on the screen.

All the music came from John.

And it all came rather quickly.

I think he did it in, like, three days or something.

The thought of which is almost as terrifying as the main theme itself.

You know the one.

So simple. The riff is repeated and repeated and repeated,

but it isn't repeated the same way.

Music tells you how you're supposed to feel about this stuff.

John's music for Halloween was masterful with that.

And after masterfully marrying that music to picture…

It was like another movie. I jumped out of my chair.

As for the movie's financial investor…

And Moustapha came with me to screen the movie,

I'll never forget, we came out of the screening

and Moustapha was quiet, pensive.

What's the matter with you?

And he turned to me and said those immortal words to me.

"I don't see my name anywhere on the screen."

Easily fixed. But more importantly…

At that moment, I knew we had a big, important movie.

And so, things came full circle

when Irwin arranged a sneak peek preview screening of his own movie.

And I invited all the studios to come.

But they didn't. The studios never sent anybody.

Instead, a bunch of college students did.

Is that any help?

The big studios weren't interested in making horror pictures.

That was déclassé for them.

You're not doing very much to prove me wrong.

And as for those college kids…

The screening was a howling success.

Jamie Lee Curtis drops the knife a number of times.

And the last time she dropped it,

some wise guy from the audience yelled, "You deserve to die!"

Despite what the studios thought,

Halloween didn't deserve to die.

So Irwin fell back on another talent from his past.

Loading trucks.

No, what he did after that.

A booker. You got it.

And he distributed Halloween himself.

I decided that I would open the movie in a small city.

If I got good reaction, I could use them to my advantage.

If they weren't that good, I could bury the news

and go on to the next market.

So, stealthfully and silently,

the film crept up on moviegoers five days before Halloween

at an AMC in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1978.

And I settled back that weekend and waited for the result.

And by the end of the first day…

You know, it wasn't great, but it was respectable.

"Respectable." There you go. Take that, studio.

But the next day, it was double.

And the third day, exponentially double again.

That means that everyone who saw that movie

was on the phone when they got home.

Halloween was going viral, late '70s style.

So now that I knew I had a movie that people really wanted to see,

I thought I'll take a chance and take it to a big city

where I might get a decent review.

Next, taking the movie to Chicago.

Beat out every movie from every major studio and ran for two months.

With rave reviews from Roger Ebert

and Tom Allen from The Village Voice.

More theaters got added, and then more theaters got added,

and it just started turning into this monster.

And, like The Shape, Halloween left audiences…

Screaming. Laughing together.

Talking to the screen.

Can't you answer me? As if the third wall had broken down.

"Don't go in there, you crazy woman! What are you doing?" You know?

They weren't watching a movie. They were experiencing this movie.

Without the big studios behind him,

audiences had to wait their turn.

It wasn't a hit right away.

It sort of rolled out slowly,

and just kept building and building.

And perhaps the momentum may have fizzled

if it hadn't been for one key detail.

Identification with the holiday is what made this thing work.

Yeah. Halloween comes 'round every year.

If we had made this movie and called it "The Babysitter Murders,"

I don't think we'd be sitting here.

So, by Halloween of 1979,

The Shape resurfaced in theaters.

Then again in 1980, and then in 1981…

Halloween II.

…came along, and by then, it had firmly cemented its status as a horror classic.

Word of mouth. You can't buy it. By the end of its run,

Halloween grossed over $70 million,

which was just a little bit more than that $300,000 budget.

It's like winning the Kentucky Derby, I suppose,

or hitting a grand slam in the World Series, that's how it felt.

It's a film that changed films.

Halloween just puts it all together for the first time and becomes

the root of, like, every slasher that would come after it.

But the success of Halloween didn't just inspire imitation.

Made lots of people raise hand and say, "I wanna do that." Including myself.

And today, a whole new generation of fans-turned-filmmakers

are keeping the sick and sordid saga of Michael Myers

just as successful and relevant as it was over 40 years ago.

A fun mythology to be invited into the world of.

And as for the man who created that mythology,

John Carpenter took the extraordinary success of Halloween

and built it into a multi-decade career,

directing over a dozen films including Escape from New York and The Thing,

often collaborating with the same family of filmmakers

that helped him make Halloween.

Tommy and Nick would go on to direct their own movies,

and Debra Hill became one of the top producers in Hollywood.

She was head of production at Paramount.

Producing hits like Clue and The Fisher King.

And…

Man, then she passed away.

And while her life was tragically cut short,

her legacy lives on in those characters she brought to life.

The success of the characters,

especially the female characters in the movie,

could really be attributed to Debra Hill.

Not only female film characters,

but female filmmakers.

Debra was especially conscious of women's role in filmmaking,

helping women step up and get more opportunity.

And while the passage of time

has spread the Halloween family far and wide,

the house where it all began keeps the memories alive.

Here, in South Pasadena, where every day is Halloween.

Especially when The Shape himself returns to haunt the grounds,

and who to this day is still armed with his razor-sharp…

memory?

This was Judith Myers's room.

This original Halloween house

has been preserved as a California Registered Landmark,

including a small museum out the back.

Let's go see what it's like.

It's locked. Probably for the best.

It happened in here.

I'm sure that you get a lot of fans out here.

Hey, guys.

What's going on? Please, please, up, up. No!

I've done a lot of movies on my own,

but this is the one I'll be remembered for,

being behind a mask.

And it's just... That's the way it goes in Hollywood.

They kept it pretty good?

But even before The Shape first stalked these halls…

Many moons ago.

…there was one guy, following his dream.

"If you know about making movies, why don't you make 'em?"

Who rolled up his sleeves, put on his shorts, and got it done.

Look, my whole life, in a sense, could be defined by Halloween now.

It enabled me to move on to other things and make more movies.

And, in fact, it did the same for everyone.

It gave careers to people like John Carpenter, Debra Hill,

and that whole host of brigands, those wonderful kids that made that movie.

This was our big break.

And the fact that we got it and it turned out to be a good fucking movie

is just icing on the cake.

From their microscopic budget to a pumpkin shortage,

the team that made Halloween weren't handed much.

It took so many things to go right with that movie to make it what it was.

But when you combine a great group of friends

with some scary costumes,

maybe a few bottles of wine,

well, that's all you need for a perfect Halloween.

Fifty Halloweens from now, people will be watching this movie.

"Fade to black. Roll end titles. The end."