All language subtitles for Halloween Commentary

hi I'm John Carpenter and here begins Halloween

Encompass International Pictures release

my third feature film as a director

originally I had

written an opening of the movie

but the camera was dollying down a street

you could see the leaves blowing and the sidewalk

and we become upon a mask lying in a gutter

Osama wasn't as stylistic as the slow track in

on the Glowing Pumpkin

lit inside by Dean Cundy

with the flickering light and candles

credits running on the right

Halloween was universally

across the board panned by every reviewer who saw it

they said it wasn't frightening

they said it was stupid they said it was too low budget

they said it was a dumb idea

Derry Hill sent me a

a fistful of clippings that I read

and got extremely depressed

then strangely enough

there was a review in the Village Voice

that compared Halloween to Psycho

and my work to Hitchcock and all of a sudden

all the reviewers rereviewed it

as if someone had just told them

you didn't see this movie correctly

won't you look at it again

and to my shock as the grossest began to climb

all the reviewers who had said it was so bad

now were saying this is great

still to this day I can't tell you

but I think that the audiences

as opposed to the critics created Halloween

hi I'm Debra Hill

and I'm co writer of Halloween with John Carpenter

and producer of the movie

I first met John Carpenter

when he was looking for script supervisor on Assault

Precing 13 John and I hit it off right away

we did a song Precinct 13

and then a few years later

he came to me and said I can't get you out of my mind

and we entered into a love relationship

and we actually lived together

and out of that collaboration came Halloween

the opening sequence is a

apparently a single panaglide shot

pantaglide is a version of a gyroscopic camera

known as a steady cam

it's worn by an operator and it gives a very special

unique visual look

this one long tracking shot was inspired by

of course

the tracking shot we all remember from touch of evil

the Orson Wells film

as I look at the movie

the primary influence on the style of the film

was the work of Alfred Hitchcock

his cock's moving camera would bring you without a cut

from one environment to another

one room to another one set to another

I simply

took my knowledge and appreciation for Hitchcock

and took it one step further

with the Panic Glide this camera that

that glides on its own

that doesn't appear to be a dolly

so it's not quite as stable

it's not handheld

so you don't always see the steps of the operator

cause it kind of a weird sense of floating

but if anything Halloween style was

was ruined by simplicity

the movie had to be simple in order to work

and as we're tracking around this direction

the crew is inside flipping all the lights around

in anticipation of us coming around back of the house

and coming in the other way

there's an incredible noise going on inside

up the steps now we're lit

there's all a little caravan following this camera

and one of the members of the caravan is Deborah Hill

dressed in a clown outfit

and in a minute you're going to see her hand

you are actually listening to Jamie Lee Curtis

talk about Halloween

her first movie that she ever appeared in

the way this house really looked in real life

was

the way that the house looks for the rest of the movie

all decrepit and broken

and this was the last shot of the movie

and the entire crew and cast

spent the day at this house

whitewashing it

furnishing it carpeting it

wallpapering it and making it look like this house

now the way this house is

there are grips hiding in every corner of this room

with lights

because the minute that the camera is passing

they're gonna then move the light out of the room

and put it in another place

cause we didn't have enough lights

this guy what a pig

that was the fastest sex I've ever seen

in the history of the movies ha ha

this is a very narrow house

and it just been painted a few hours earlier

and the parts that we see

were the only parts that were painted

now you going to see a human struggle with a camera

and a very small staircase

we're trying to hold the light up on the left in frame

because the foreground is going out of focus

now up we come

jiggling and bouncing now the operators almost made it

he saved his own life he's at the top of the stairs

he sees a mask as his mask is put on the camera

there's Debra's hand again

we're gonna make a cut

now we're into another shot and another take

and this is really the only

this shot that we're gonna see

is really the only nudity in the movie

um she's um hurt she's bare breasted

there's the bed in which the dirty deed was done

we come back around to the sister

she's going to look right in the camera

now we're gonna do her death in kind of

the only way we could

without really stabbing this girl

we go up and see our own hands stabbing

I don't quite know what that means

but it seemed to work in the film

what you just saw was the splashing shot

was really

probably the only violent shot in the entire movie

I mean

we really tried to do this with really good taste

and stuff

Halloween's reputation is a violent horror film is

only because what the audience thought it was going

to happen much more than what did happen

there is almost no on screen overt violence in the film

that we're all waiting in suspense to see what happens

hopefully

I've been a fan of Donald Pleasants for many years

when he came to town

I had a lunch meeting with him and he said

the only reason I'm here is because my daughter liked

one of your movies is often Precinct 13

and I don't understand the script at all

would you please explain it to me

the time I was rather young and terrified

but I soon found that Donald is a very warm

and funny man and we had a great time together

and a rainy stormy night up in the Hollywood Hills

with an optical flash of lightning

and we're inside point of view

this is around uh Hollywood Dam

there's Donald Pleasants

inside a garage with a lot of rain

you notice

the soundtrack is a little dodgy in this area

because we were in a tin studio

with rain pouring on the car

you ever done anything like this before

only minimum security you know

we didn't have a lot of money

so we didn't have a lot of lights

I mean imagine

all the night scenes in this movie

being lit by the equipment that's in a V W bus

the only thing that ever bothers the wolf

they're gibberish

so you can imagine how difficult it was

so John used the panic light

he used the rain to set up mood and style and scares

just trying to understand what we're dealing with here

don't underestimate it

don't you think we could refer to it as him

I mean so you see like

you know in a film that I might make now

or even Escape From New York

which we made together

you'd be able to see outside those windows

and you don't see outside those windows

you see just see inside the car

John Pleasant was really fun

he was sort of an older statesman

here we were these kids

you know working with other kids

you know teenagers sort of out making this movie

and I think he was astonished at it

you know and sort of slightly amused at it

I mean you know

we we had one truck called the Movie Van

and for the five days that he was with us

we had win a bagel for him

I mean here's a man who made big studio pictures

where you need you know

all these drivers and big trucks as a caravan

never

then why are we taking him up to Harden County

if you just gonna leave because that is the law

we are

but also two one of the things that we loved about

the idea of someone with an English accent

playing these characters

because he gave such true importance to these words

that John had written

and we at first offered the role

to Christopher Lee and he passed on it

years later I ran into him at Aqua Embassy function

he came up to me and he said

I'm really sorry I didn't say yes to that movie

because it created Donald Pleasant's

a whole new career

shouldn't we go on up to the hospital and wait

that was actually Nick Castle

leaping up on the top of the car

Nick has become a director of many big budget movies

he played the shape in this film

you know we have a little struggle going here

all done

the process except for the shot through the window

cut extremely well by Tommy Lee Wallace

who edited the movie

now the window is smashed

you will be able to see if you look carefully

a wrench in his hand

Nancy Stevens is a actor who wrote John

and I really liked

and she went on to marry Rick Rosenthal

who was the director of Holland 2

and Nick Castle jumps in the car and drives away

it's extremely cold and wet night

and it wasn't a lot of fun to shoot this

and Donald wasn't in a good mood

cause he had to be out in the rain

and we much prefer to be in a restaurant

having some wine the evil is gone

the evil is gone give me a break

the evil is gone I mean what a perfect setup

in Haddonfield Illinois is a fictitious place

but I'm from Haddonfield New Jersey

graduating from Haddonfield High School

named the fictitious town after my old high school town

and years later after Halloween was so successful

there was these rumours in my Old Town

that this was really a true story

and this house existed

the very first shot we took in this movie

began on a Wednesday I believe

was this one here

it's a little square in South Pasadena

Jamie Lee's about to make her appearance

that's my old Cadillac I used to own there

with a little thing stuck on the side saying

real estate tried to avoid palm trees

and tried to give the movie a sense of

being in the Midwest

and sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we failed

the day after I finished this first day of work

I literally thought I would be fired

I got home

like any actor was neurotic and crazy and thought

I'd be fired I won't

John Carpenter

that night I was at home and I had a roommate

and she picked up the phone said Jamie

it's for you it's John Carpenter

and I literally thought

I was gonna get that phone call of Aah Jamie

it's just I saw that

you know what we're gonna find somebody else

that's a normal actor's neurosis is that there

you know it's a weird job we do

we put ourselves out there in a strange way

when Jamie Curtis came to interview with me

the legacy of her having a famous mother

who was so famous and psycho

I mean it really worked from

I think a spin kind of point of view

and I was sort of young and naive

but I knew that has been there's a story in there

there's a people magazine

there's Liz Smith I mean

you know whatever

coming over tonight same time

same place and so I really wanted her

and she was not John Carpenter's first choice

John wanted the daughter of the person on Lassie

you better hurry up now

we're moving down the street to the Myers House

which is the old fashioned Howard house

that appears in most small towns

where something terrible happened one day

the dialogue here is looped in later

because of the squeaking of the dolly track

in the street

the Myers house the Myers house

there's the haunted house

looking like we first found it in the opening shot

we shot the last day of shooting

and this shot we shot on the first day of shooting

because we needed the time to take this

sort of haunted empty

run down house paint it

wallpaper it and make it work for the opening

you're about to hear one of my musical stings

that permeate the movie

I would say rather crashly but effectively

there it is

the introduction of someone inside

Lori's gonna be set up as a lonely kid

probably won't get out of the 6th grade sweet

virginal alone

Louis was heavily criticised for

some aspects of this idea

that the other girls in the movie

since they had boyfriends were uh

somehow morally uh

deserving of dying from the hands of the shape

and Jamie Lee because she was a virgin

more was the heroin that I let live

which is absolutely untrue

the whole point of it being

that the girls who were involved with their boyfriends

were too busy to notice what was going on

I'm not responsible Sam

oh no

when I heard that they were gonna

that Donald Pleasant was in film

I was not familiar with him

I was an 18 year old idiot

I had no real film knowledge

and he was the big score for the film for them

he was the quote name actor in the piece

and they brought him over from England

and I think put him up at the Chateau more mall

you know he was lovely

I I have very little work with him in the film

in fact

the only work I have with him is

right at the end of the film when

when

you know all hell is broken loose

and I was gonna say the shit hit the fan

but I thought maybe I shouldn't swear

and the book ends

I've never gotten very used to looking at myself

in the movies I don't cringe

but I've never been very attached to what I look like

and never really

particularly cared about it all that much

no matter what course of action Collins took

I don't really look at any of my past work

and look at my lost youth and oh

I was beautiful and young coz

I don't think I was very attractive

I in fact

think I'm much more attractive now than I was

when I was younger

I just think I've come into myself a little more

and so I don't look at this and

and sort of I look at

wonder how thin a face could be on film

I think it's

I think it's the thinnest face ever photographed

on film

answer the question oh um

this is the South Pasadena High School

the idea that

she's the one who

only one who can see the shape comes from the idea that

because of her repression

perhaps her her shyness

she has the instincts and the ability to watch

she's a watcher just like the shape is

John wanted to establish as he watched this movie

we opened very very wide on his shot

and as you watched the film

John uses lens as we go on

that are closer and closer and closer and closer

to sort of build tension to build suspense

but to also build a kind of feeling of claustrophobia

I believe this was the second scene we filmed

the first day it's always very difficult to

to work with kids yeah

we eat candy but they did a great job

kind of a difficult scene

nowadays in the society we live in

they would probably all pull out guns

and shoot each other

but I was trying to evoke a small town

and time and place it's very far away from here

Nick Castle asked me

how seriously to play the mental illness

and he has a certain stance and move that I

I think was never captured in the other films

the movies used actors or stunt men

that

didn't quite have the Grace of movement that I felt

Nick did

here wide the shape is watching

but as the film progresses

and the shape gets closer and closer to Laurie Strode

it becomes more intimate and scarier

so that's why we use these really long

wide lenses in the panic light

as you see

and if you notice

the picture is shot in anamorphic lenses

which means it's wide screen

that's a John Carpenter thing

I mean he

all of his pictures are anamorphic

and he really believes that it's bigger than life

it engages the viewer who's sitting in

in the audience

into the movie by having that wide screen persona

and we wanted to sort of build

it's a beautiful little community

a sleepy little community

Nick Castle uh

was a classmate of John's at U s

C who's gone on to direct Dennis the menace and uh

his co producer and hook

this is a scene that we shot out in city of industry

we actually plucked this phone booth and this sign

which had had Anfield

but we have this train which goes by which we captured

which was production value

that we never thought we would get

because I know him

I'm his doctor you must be ready for him

if you don't it's your funeral

I had another bit of dialogue written for Donald here

where he's calling his wife

who's very concerned about him

and Donald rejected the dialogue

said he didn't wanna have a family or a past

and since I was so in awe Donald at the time

I agree with him totally I was afraid to

afraid to contradict him

my friend Barry Bernardi at the time was the um

craft service person and he had a red pickup truck

and he would arrive with like

coffee and doughnuts and bagels

and he's gone on to be he became the location manager

associate producer on escape from New York

um he was producer on Star Man

um he was

and very involved with John for a number of years now

as his own company that's his red truck

and that's when it wasn't in the scene

it was the craft service truck

this is Barry Bernardi here drenched in blood

one of the few times

we see a little blood on some characters

Jamie Lee Curtis

it was so much like gorilla movie making

it was done on such a low budget

we were all sort of working for the common good

everybody was very young I think

John and Deborah were the oldest people on the set

they were 30 so

they were all these young grips

and young electricians and young actors

and we were all working toward this

and the dance is eight common thing totally

it's very rare that you have that opportunity

in the movies um

I think so often

we feel like we're working for some big brother

and that we don't have a connection to the peace

and it was also I was 19

I had basically no cares and it was wonderful

it was just really a magical time

lying around on grip blankets at lunch

the caterer wasn't a normal horrible movie caterer

it was a friend of John and Debra's

we were working so hard on such long hours that lunch

everybody would fall asleep on these grip blankets

lying out on the lawns in West Hollywood

in South Pasadena in the spring of 1978

can't come over Debra Hill

now this for me was the really fun writing

which is the girls together

they're talking like they're in the girls bathroom

they're talking about boys

they're talking about makeup

and they're talking about wardrobe

and they're having fun you know

this is what a teenage girl's life is like

and so I was able to sort of relive my childhood

I was a babysitter

was raised in a small town called Haddonfield

relatively safe

and there's always this idea of evil working

I don't think so

I think it's cute

hey jerk

speed kill

what's ironic to me about Halloween is that

when John hired me he had a choice between three parts

and obviously you were casting a cheerleader

a sort of smart aleck and this little repressed virgin

you know Annie

someday you gonna get us all into deep trouble

I don't think you necessarily pick me as a

sort of stereotypical quiet

repressed one

I think you would choose me as maybe the smart aleck

well are we still on for tonight

well one of the pretty things about South Pasadena

the big old trees and the dap

old sunlight and all that kind of stuff

and I think when you have that

it gives depth to the picture

rather than making the picture look so flat

and that's sort of what we were going for

as terms of style once again

you know sort of a

a technique when you don't have any money nowadays

you would take a street like this and it would be

you shoot it in a very flat

like that sort of lighting

and you would put like

a big Cucalorus with a giant 10K down

and you create your own daffled sunlight

but we couldn't do that kind of stuff

John Carpenter

music seemed to be very effective for the film

it was very minimal repetitious

reminding me slightly of

of Dario Argenta's score in Suspiria

to which this movie owes a lot

reminds me also of the Tubular Bells and the Exorcist

I don't know yet

have to get out of taking my little brother

trick treats for Bob

funny

John Carpenter had the music in his head

before he even directed the picture

as we were writing the screenplay

he would call me down to the piano

and he would sit and he play this haunting tune

the idea of the evil character

which is Michael Myers

came from the idea of a man in a mask

and behind that mask

some horrific event was so frozen in the man psyche

that he had to recreate that for himself

and so the idea of that he was pure evil

and that he only got even more evil as time went on

Lori Dear want to talk to you

some cigarette smoke floating through the shot

that was from the director

who was smoking too near the camera

some of the pictures that were inspirational

about the time that we did this picture

were things like dripping deep red

by Dario Argento

where we got the feeling of opening it with

sort of innocence of the children song

because that movie plays you know

there's a children song that plays constantly

all the way through the movie

and that children song is what clues who the killer is

see you later

bye bye now we're into a gag with Charles Cyphers

I've used Chuck several times

beginning an assault on Precinct 13

he's a terrific actor

familiar in the 70s is still working

Jamie looks back

turns and runs into ciphers

excuse me Lord

oh Mister Bracket

I'm sorry Mister Bracket

oh I didn't mean to startle you

I'm sorry

you know it's Halloween

I guess everyone's entitled

one good scare huh

yes sir

nice seeing you Sir

Lee Bracket is one of my favourite writers

she worked with Howard Hawkes for many years

wrote The Big Sleep Eldorado who died a few years ago

you may notice the rain on the streets

in this particular scene

this is another day and it just rained very hard

but

it's supposed to connect up with a scene you just saw

of course this is the way it goes in movies

when we we outfitted Lori

it was so important to me that we go to J C

Penney and really get these separates

and put them all together in these outfits

it gave such a feeling

it was so easy to fall into character

because the clothes helped so much

well kiddo

I thought you had grew superstition

the superstition line that Jamie just delivered

was one that was written by Deborah Hill

that I've never quite understood but it sure does work

again Jamie sees looks

sees the shape back to her

he's gone

it's an Alfred Hitchcock technique

we've been forced now to identify with her

and through her eyes

we're telling the story in terms of what's happening

what kind of cheese ball trick

coming up the phone rings

this was one scene in the film that we had to reshoot

we originally shot this in South Pasadena

but the sequence didn't play

or look as well as we wanted

so Debra had to deliver me some bad news

hello John

we have to reshoot it I dislike reshooting scenes

John reshot the scene and I think it worked better

I think it has to do with

the camera movement to the telephone

to give us that scare of the phone ringing

the idea is that they're playing tricks on each other

it's a holiday that allows you to be kind of trickful

but what's happening is that there really is something

there really is evil so Laura Stow begins to confuse

is this just my friends playing tricks on me

or is this really happening

and

I think that's why the audience has responded so well

because she really loses control

I mean she doesn't have control of the situation

thank you

this is when it really looks like fall

see how many brown leaves are flying

they really just manage with the film stock

and the colour and the way it

you know

and some brown leaves being thrown in front

and look how cold and blustery the day looks

and it's actually March in Pasadena ugly pants

kinda looks like Diane Arbisville a little bit to me

small town with kids and odd Halloween outfits

now look at the trees they're big and green and full

it's full it's supposed to be October 30th in Illinois

everything would be dead

I love the walk I love the way I have to kinda waddle

she does the waddle carrying this thing

it was a pumpkin I mean

it was heavy

second day shooting was the interior of the car

sequence merciless sequences for a director

there's not too much you can do

you have to mount the camera on the hood

it's a Coupe Deville singing at that particular point

Coupe Deville is a rock and roll group featuring myself

Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle

Halloween came about from a conversation I had with

Mustafa Akad when I was in England

he said let's make a movie together

I came back to the United States

and Irwin Milans brought me and said

I wanna make a 300,000 dollar movie called

The Babysitter Murders and uh

can you make it for that little money

and I said yes

I can if you give me creative control

later Irwin called me and told me

why don't we make the movie set on Halloween night

and perhaps why don't we call it Halloween

there's never been a Halloween movie before

this guy was gonna give us $300,000 to write

direct and produce a movie and total autonomy

I mean it was absolutely wonderful

so

we came back and try to throw out some ideas of plot

and things like that when Erwin Jablons

who is credited with executive producer credit called

and he had this really brilliant idea

which is what if we said it on Halloween night

yeah my students Myers

I remember

the night before Halloween is when all the kids go out

and they t P houses and

you know they

in these days they did lots of pranks

this is the graveyard where the sister is buried

what's so interesting is that

Donald knows that something's about to happen

because this is a sign that he's been here

to everybody else it's a prank that the teenagers

you know have done

so the idea of confusing the mythology of Halloween

you know that we all know and love

and the reality of something that's happening

in a small town

you still spooked I wasn't spooked

lie I wasn't

now we hear don't fear the Reaper

one of my favourite songs by Blue Oyster

called Mister Riddle was watching you Lori

Mister Riddle is 87

he can still watch probably all he can do

well one of the things that we try to do

with these teenage girls

is to make them reflect the time

the reality of the day one of the things is

you know besides giving them dialogue about

you know boys and trends and stuff like that

is teenagers do what teenagers do

they experiment and they push the envelope

and they see how far they can rebel

and so that's what these teenagers are doing

they're experimenting with drugs

they're experimenting with sex

they don't know the boundaries

and they're pushing the boundaries

I think it reflected the time of the day that

when we made this movie which is 1978

it was very real and

I think that's one of the reasons why

the audiences responded

because here was a movie that they could go

and they could see themselves

stop laughing what's the matter with you

little square in South Pasadena

in actuality at this time was rush hour traffic

either side of the frame that you don't see

is Los Angeles on their way home from work

very angry that we're taking up their time in space

what happened oh

somebody broke into the hardware store

probably kids you blame everything on kids

well now

all they took was some Halloween mask

a rope and a couple of knives

who do you think

it was hard growing up with a cynical father

the Halloween theme it was just a perfect theme

it's what teenagers do best is have fun on Halloween

they dress up they buy for apples

they do all this crazy stuff and they do pranks

and so what it ended up doing was

enabled us to sort of eliminate the adult

except for the cop and the doctor

and really plant ourselves in a teenage world

of what would happen on a single night

if you had all these kids interacting

Doctor Sam Loomis Peter Bracken I

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

well maybe a few minutes

I gotta take this important

horror movies are usually uh

um extremely dark

we begins in daylight and ends in darkness

we gonna slide you into it very carefully

this is the sequence that was directed by Debra Hill

what's the matter with you

while we were shooting the opening sequence

we realised we were going to be

short on our running time

so Deborah ran out with a camera

and the girls improvised the scene

very pretty sunset coming through the lens scene

and Deborah did a great job of directing

I'm sitting in the back seat with a camera

it's the day that we shot

the opening scene of the movie

which was the last day of filming

and we hadn't yet gotten this conversation

and so John said

take the camera and go out and shoot this

so I'm in the back seat with a cameraman

I'm with Ray Stella and um

we shot it this is like

a transitional shot to go from day to night

at which we need it Ben Traymer

I knew it

see you do think about things like that huh Lori

shut up

there was never a conscious effort to say that the

out of the three girls the one who was

the virgin is the one who is not killed or spared

I think that was something that

never conscious effort on our part to do that

I think that what happened is that critics later on

watching the movie

try to apply some sort of morality that we were

as filmmakers trying to imply

and that was never true

the idea was that Laurie was naive

not that she was sexless

that she hadn't yet found herself

or the other two girls were bolder

and had found themselves and so therefore

they pushed the envelope a little bit further

than what Laurie did Laurie was safe

she likes everything safe

she doesn't wanna ask the boy out

she doesn't wanna go to the dance

she's gonna babysit she's gonna do the right thing

she doesn't wanna get a first kiss

I mean all she was looking for safe

and the irony is that it wasn't safe

we grew up in the 50s and it was sort of very

very safe it was a very different world than it is now

um fear was of communism

which was sort of you know

you didn't see it or hear it or

you know it wasn't like the guy down the street

um we grew up with a fear of the nuclear bomb

which you also couldn't see

we also grew up with fear of invasion from outer space

of some you know

of something and I think that when you built on that

they were like safe fears

I think nowadays filmmakers have to be

really reflective of what's happening

you know on the streets

and I think they have to

understand violence and the nature of violence

because I think it's gone a little too far

but back then it was fun

no time to hearing me

I love this shot because it's very reminiscent of um uh

Chinatown

we actually stole the shot right out of Chinatown

and I love the house

because the house looks like a person

it looks like it's got eyes and a mouth

and I love the way that was lit

this is actually a really scary scene

this place is haunted and maybe like

there was a haunted house

in my small town of Bowling Green

it was out beyond the bypass

out on a lonely road and the legends over the years

about what happened in the house

began to grow and grow with each telling

I think each town has some

some house of tragedy some place that no one goes near

it's almost like a

Old Testament reaction to

what happens when something tragic takes place

still warm

he got hungry

one of the questions that I have been asked

ever since 1978

over and over again by every person

almost every interview that I've ever had is

what scares you there seems to be a fascination with

with in a personal way

what's what scares John Carpenter

and my answer I began by

I think by saying nothing

and then by saying

loss of control or making up something

but I think what scares me

scares every human on the planet

we're all aware of the forces of darkness of

of evil of loss death

we know it as little children

I mean

I think all of this is dealt with in grims fairy tales

I think it's dealt with in horror movies

horror is a universal language

this was the part of the movie Donald didn't understand

but did a brilliant job with

standing on the loan he could have seen inside

cheap trick

now we introduce Donald's gun

he truly is frightened of evil

you must sing me a very sinister doctor

a sinister doctor he says

I do have permit

in that moment when he shows his permit I

I like Donald a great deal

he's a tremendous actor who can play good or evil

I met him 15 years ago I

I was told there was nothing left

the story that Donald tells here

is something I experienced

when I was a student that Western Kentucky University

one of our classes

we made a trip to a mental institution

and I saw a boy that day

who fit the description that Donald is giving

blind pale emotionless face

the blackest eyes

the devil side

the kid I saw the day I went had the devil's eyes

and he stared at me with a look of evil

and it terrified me

so I was able to utilise the experience

in Donald's dialogue here

evil

what do we do

he's been here once tonight

fate is like a natural element as is evil

it's undeniable and will not die

I think that's where a director can

pull the strings of an audience

by tapping into the primal fear of man

the unknown death

mutilation all the things we

we all know in our hearts that can happen

we're just afraid they may happen to us

how now cried Arthur

I had a tremendously important experience

happening when I was 4 years old

so said the night

I went into the movie theatre with my mother

and I saw a film called

It Came From Outer Space in 3 D

not anymore I put on the 3D glasses

and the opening sequence

has this meteor streaking across the sky

it comes directly at the camera

comes out of the screen and blows up in my face

I shrieked as a young kid

and ran up the aisle in terror

I had never experienced anything like that

then I stopped and I realised

you know this is incredible

what a feeling I wanna be able to do that

how can I get that kind of reaction

it suddenly made me feel completely alive and terrified

but there was there was nothing to be terrified of

I was in a movie theatre never mind

I'm sure you are from that moment on

movies thrilled me they took me away from my

my real life which had its problems

my parents were from northern New York

my father was a P H

d in music and intellectual

he moved out of Bowling Green

Kentucky

a very small farm town in the middle of the Bible

built to teach the university

Lindsey get this dog out of the kitchen right now

so inside my house

I was listening to Bach and Beethoven and Mozart

and I would go outside and hear country music

and random preachers

it was two different worlds

I wasn't quite sure where I fit into all this

so I believe I escaped into the movies to find myself

and all the instincts I've developed over the years

basically come from my experience

watching films and understanding them

you probably say you have the wrong number

well

I just talked with Ben Traymer

and he got real excited

when I told him how attractive you were to him

oh and again

if you look at the time

there were low budget horror movies

but none that had broken a threshold in a long time

and Halloween did because it scared its audience

I can't believe horror has a has a job to do

a lot of times people ghettoise horror

that they don't respect it

they think it's like pornography

you shouldn't be doing this stuff

oh you didn't

oh I'm so embarrassed I couldn't even face it

but really there is a function to it

if you can scream and be frightened in a theatre

and safety

you come out into the real world and sleep peacefully

and you've had a catharsis

you've had an experience that's

that's made you a little bit better

you can survive the night

you can survive the terrors of the world

there was never

really conscious decision on the filmmakers part

of the writers part

to sort of separate the girls who kind of had sex

and the girls who didn't have sex

or the girls who were a little more uh

risque with themselves

and would undress in front of the camera

and stuff like that um

later on we came under um some

some real question

as to whether or not we consciously encouraged it

and really the essence of a scene

for instance

where she spills butter all over herself and has to

like get changed

is that we wanted her to

essentially go from one area of the house

another area of the house

slightly to rest in a little risque manner

but it wasn't just it wasn't for the sexualness of it

it was just to make her more vulnerable

and I think

there's a difference between vulnerability

and sexuality

I recall Nick Castle is fairly terrified of this dog

at the point

Lindsay

Lester's barking again and getting on my nerves again

in order to

suggest that the dog was being strangled and killed

the trainer grabbed the dog and held him in his arms

and we roll the camera in slow motion

to get the feel that the dog was

just lost his breath in actuality

he's just dropping the dog down

and now we're in the beginning of

one of my favourite movies of all time

The Thing from Another World

directed by Howard Hawks

this was my print of the movie on

at the time 1 inch videotape

my television set hooked up just for the film

of course you see the flickering

this was before we had to shutter that to take that out

what's so interesting about Howard Hawks

is that Howard Hawks in his film career

made movies like gentlemen prefer Blondes

and the thing and Westerns and uh

I mean incredible movies

I mean his range was so brilliant that uh

I think John would like to pattern himself after

Howard Hawks's career

is there everything which he tells you no

Tommy Halloween night

it's when people play tricks on each other

so I make believe

I think she was just trying to scare you

she begins to be the voice of reason for us now

and she's doing to young Tommy what was done to her

what you see

you didn't really see

often in horror movies

characters will see the little green man landing

or something they'll run up to their spouses and say

I just saw a little green man

the spouses say oh honey

no you didn't

I've always wondered in movies why characters don't say

oh really

let's go find them

let's go

director John Carpenter the laundry room sequence

one of the most difficult

to shoot but one of the most beautifully lit

now we're in uh

Universal City

just above Universal Studios in the hills

the shade on the door will provide a very beautiful

mask for the masked killer on the other side

producer Debra Hill John insisted on Final Cut

and what's very interesting is

you know this is like his second

you know major movie

but I think because of John having done a song

piercing 13 in Dark Star

because of John's forceful personality

because he wrote er wrote

co wrote this and directed it

we got total autonomy John got Final Cut

which it's very interesting

as John has progressed to his career

he's expected final cut

and as he's made movies for more and more money

with major stars and for big studios he's

he's upset when he can't get it

and I think John probably

has walked away from a lot of situations

that would have been really good for him

but he insisted on that final cut

Lindsay

a lot of times in Hollywood

there are tremendous pressures

to make a film that appeals

apparently to everyone to

to appeal to the mass audience

through what we call market research

you screen a film you take out its highs and lows

and make it something like muzaks

what appeals to everyone

the reaction scene is always timed correctly that

that nothing lasts too long

nothing lasts too short everything is clear

the movie is wrapped up in the end

and often

audiences are cheated

because we don't give them the opportunity

to experience a film

with an uncertain or depressing ending

and come out of the theatre

and continue to think about it

because the films that live are the films that

you take away something from the theatre with you

and you mull it over later

whereas if we make

simply make movies to please the marketing researchers

we're making music we hear it

we forget it

creative control has always been a struggle

for every director that I've ever known

and ever talked to from Hitchcock to Hawks Dorsen Wells

I've had my own personal battles with it

the one revenge you can take is to become so successful

that they have to give it to you

which is I think

the dream of every director

it's uh

an enviable position to be in

and every director doesn't have that

that opportunity you lost yourself there I know

we see a very nice shot here

of Nancy Loomis's butt in nice

Lacey underwear the shot that um

of her in the window with the panties

was eliminated during the um

editing of the N B

C version of Halloween I mean

I don't think it's even as sexy as a

underwear commercial but

or an underarm deodorant commercial

part of the criticism of horror movies

especially after Halloween

was a kind of a sick voyeuristic idea that uh

we creep around in the dark

and look at new new bio

young women in their underwear

and then end up killing them

it's been taken to a kind of a extreme extent now

as the country becomes more puritanistic

and prone to censorship censorship

for the very reasons that Washington tries to censor

things I think it's wrong

censorship when it's a collaborative effort

now I don't mean censorship

in a form that there's a board of censors

that are saying cut for morality

cut for sexuality

but let's make the picture better by cutting for rhythm

cutting for character cutting for story

I welcome that I enjoy that collaboration

and especially when somebody's giving you $25 million

as they did on the Fisher King

you know I wanna be able to make sure that they

are happy with what we are presenting them

however

I hate the fact of censorship for arbitrary reasons

for reasons that I don't understand

and I fight it at every at every level

lock your doors

vault your windows and turn off the lights

don't go away cause here's a secret

actress Jamie Lee Curtis

I don't really know if anybody had any pre

thought of why the film would become a classic film

um John may have had some knowledge

that if you tap into this generic

everyday life

that from that

you can create great suspense and great evil

come on hurry up

I admire people who can think

in an overall context about a film

and glean from it

these hypotheses of social behaviour

internal behaviour that's dormant

that is coming out in this film

and that it is the black of our white

I just find it fascinating

hi Tommy

hi come on in

we're making a Jack lantern

I mean you can look at Halloween

and find a metaphor for domestic repression

and what's lurking deep down inside all of us

behind our conservative facades

I again don't think that

that was a pre thought way of looking at the movie

I don't think John and Deper sat there

necessarily saying let's make a film about

you know

the sort of conservative utopian society of suburbia

and what's really lurking there is pure evil

I don't think that was in fact their intent

I think it just happens that you can take that stance

if you want to by looking at the film

if you watch her

I'll consider talking to Ben Traymer in the morning

I am not a great thinker and therefore

don't look at things in that sort of overall context

if I did

I probably wouldn't have done 90% of the work I've done

but I just don't think that way

I admire people who do they usually have bad breath

I think the old Girl Scout comes through again

and again

the pace is beginning to be very slow and deliberate

there's no rushing of things

it puts the audience on edge

I recall being heavily criticised by Pauline Kale

at this point that I had no sense of timing

I may not have had her sense of timing

but this was all deliberately planned

to be as slow and agonizing as possible

you know this guy is going to spring upon someone

the question is when

so you wanna yell at the character

stop combing your hair stop walking around and singing

start dealing with the fact there's a killer out there

horror movies are the most fun to make

everybody gets into them

everybody wants to either be a victim or a monster

George Romero tells me that

film critics will come down and visit him on the set

and immediately wanna be zombies

people love to play in horror films

they're the most fun to make

they're the most fun on the set

this scene is a

a play on the whole idea of fogging up the windows

I mean it's just

in many ways it's sort of like um

it's sort of like the shower isn't seen in cycle

except that you know

where outside the fogged windows

instead of outside the shower

our sound cut with a horn

brings us back to the kids and forbidden planet

attention captain

the crew stand by to reverse polarity

standard Class a

security will be maintained upon landing

and until further those all hands where we're sat on

that is all

we're out of sequence in the Forbidden Planet movie

but the audience didn't seem to care

this is one of the few handheld shots in the movie

coming up as we follow young Tommy to the window

there's a slight difference in feel from panic line

here we go very

you can feel the steps of the operator as he walks

still very well done

slightly different effect

Ramsey

Ramsey

where are you

all the point of views from this house

were shot at the same time

we just lined them up and sent them through

as I had on paper

pretty much planned out how the shooting should go

now Laurie Strode enters to save the day

even with the with what she's seeing herself

and her own doubts about somebody lurking out there

she's taking care of the kids

and telling them that the boogeyman does not exist

and basically she's saying

you're overstimulated

by what you're watching on television

another debate that's going on today

is television violence turn us into homicidal killers

or does real life turn us into homicidal killers

you can pretty much imagine

where I come down on the idea

the notion of a long take on this movie

was

the fact that we had very little time to do coverage

you know the traditional form of filmmaking is

you tell a story by shooting a master

and then covering close UPS and over the shoulders

and then you go into the editing room

and then you figure out stylistically

how you wanna tell your story when you're filmmaker

with not a lot of money

you have to figure out how to tell the story on the set

so that you choose where your camera is

and you choose the ability to move the camera

I think John stylistically

besides his sense of the widescreen and the lighting

I think

his camera movements are always really brilliant

they lead the story

thought it was terrific

glee in his eyes as he does this and gets scared here

Jesus are you alright

yeah nothing's going on except kids playing pranks

trick or treating parking

getting high

thought it was the boatkeeper at the edge of the river

sticks and knows what is in hell

and again gives another very eloquent speech

he's trying to tell the voices of authority

that this evil that stalks the streets

can't be reasoned away psychopathic

sociopathic personalities have no guilt

they're predators of humans in real life

there's something missing in their humanity

they wear the mask of sanity

we believe them to be real and true human beings

but underneath the most chilling thing

is that they don't care about other human life

more fancy talk there's a grain of truth

in every successful horror film

something in it resonates with the audience

one of the reasons perhaps

that Halloween was so popular

was that

came right around the time of the Jonestown Massacre

this is it's often rather horrific and terrible tragedy

and the idea of a sociopath

psychopathic personality on the loose

seemed to hit the audience

now we're with P J

souls and her boyfriend teenagers drinking beer

couldn't get away with that Today

P J's a terrific actress had

had her character completely figured out

before we made the film

I first saw P J and Carrie Brian Palmers film

she did terrific job in terrific nudesy

and she had a lot of presents

and I wrote the part for her hoping I would get her

we tried to get Dennis Quaid by P J

Soul's boyfriend

because they were living together at the time

but we couldn't work out the date

P J

Souls besides doing our picture

um did a picture that our artist directed

called rock and Roll High School

she did a lot of teenage pictures

you know Jamie Lee Curtis

interesting to know went on to sort of be

you know the Queen of screams

I mean she did Terror Train and

you know lots and lots of

of horror pictures

where they went is this shot where you see um uh

P J and

and her boyfriend

is a very conscious recreation of the original shot

it was very difficult shot to do

because if you notice it it requires a dolly shot

where she comes in and we pull back

and then we they kiss

and then they lay down on the couch and we pull back

it was all done in one cut

as we pull back to discover

Nick Castle the ever present boy

you are watching the scene

one of the appeals of Halloween was the

dealing with the rituals of Halloween

pumpkins and trick or treating

and although we only did it superficially

it gave a sense of

time and place to the American public

European audiences don't have Halloween

they were really kind of puzzled at all the goings on

Halloween brought up a lot of imitators

Friday the 13th was a fairly obvious example of

something that imitated it precisely

but they began to become more and more grotesque

and violent and they lost side of character

they lost side of tempo and timing

and became something called splatter movies

I suppose it's blood splattering on the wall

I don't know what to say about him

except that I'm very flattered by the fact that

that I was imitated so much

hi Lori

what's up

I'm just sitting down for the first time tonight

I believe I was influenced by my own movie

that I just made for television

finished it two weeks before we started Halloween

someone's watching me had a lot of phone conversations

people who are isolated

are talking to each other over the telephone

heightens the sense of fear

okay in a moment

you're going to see P J

trip over the dolly track with her high heel shoes

Lindsay is gone for the night now

that's wonderful

here's where P J trips over the dolly track right there

see I don't consider this a splatter movie

I think it's almost without any splatterage

I mean splatterage is splatterages

Natural Born Killers you know what I mean

that's a splatter movie that's just

you know

brain matter being shot out of special effects guns

I mean

you know

Blue Steel is a splatter movie in comparison to this

and Blue Steel is an sort of psychological thriller

there is virtually no blood in this movie

it's so subtle and so beautifully done that it

I think the imitators of this film

just felt that the way to imitate

into

way to get people in is to make it gorier and gorier

and redder and redder

but I don't think that that was in fact

the intent of this film at all

just taking a fuck

I love the idea that

people would have sex in somebody else's parents bed

like you wouldn't know or I wouldn't know

if somebody had been up in our room stripping

you know such a funny idea

my first love making scene

little shadow on the wall

as the lovers consummate their relationship

I'm always uncomfortable doing these

I think it's probably because I get shy

I don't know how much I ask the Astrat actors to do

oh fantastic

luckily they were under the covers at the time

where I really don't think

I would have been able to watch the scene

sex on the screen is is uncomfortable

I think you can find in the film

a moral tale if you choose to

I don't believe it was written as a moral tale

I have never heard John or Debra say that

they were creating a story

where the promiscuous girls

are punished for their promiscuity

and they abstinent girl is rewarded for her abstinence

I don't think that that was designed that way

was really the characters have to be

the ones who are

not paying attention to what's going on

they're more interested in what's going on in their own

sexual life that they don't see it coming

bad choice of words

but I don't think it was a predetermined

sort of moral tale

I don't know when Teen Splatter films came about

we were raised in the 50s

we were raised on all these wonderful pictures

that produced fear and thrills and fun

and all that kind of stuff

and especially as we got older

we were in the drive in and we were teenagers

and you could get

snuggle up to the boy next to you if you were scared

you know I mean

they were like great date movies

I think somewhere along the line

either the audiences got sophisticated

or the studios got scared

and they needed to have more

and more and more graphic violence

and I think that's where the Team Splatter came from

it came later it came after Halloween and had

I don't think a reflection on

the films that John Carpenter and I were making

but on what other filmmakers were doing

I just think it's interesting that people said

it was so bloody and Gore

and in fact the film has very

very little Gore what you would consider Gore

it's really all supposed imagined and very

very little actual blood I mean

I've done films since with buckets of it on the set

where you put your hand in it

I mean oh my god

the sound effects of the knife going into the sky

was made by a knife going into a watermelon

there's a great moment here

it's really one of the scariest things in the film

and the only shot of it is wide toes curling very good

wide shot

now look the way he tips his head like a dog

so cool so unbelievably cool

next idea indicating again

this is a completely deranged individual

now a sequence that Deborah Hill came up with

the bed sheet and the guy's glasses

well did you get my beer

a brilliant uh

idea

I must say

ha ha cute Bob

real cute

we had the conjunction of humour and anticipation

of horror coming here

because we know it's the shape

her boyfriend's dead

she's trying to tantalise him

see anything you like

the audience is saying stop doing that

and why don't you start reacting to the fact

he's not doing anything

what's the matter can I get your ghost Bob

ha ha ha ha ha again

the sequence takes its time doesn't rush

alright alright

come on where's my beer

slow and leisurely

well can't you answer me

okay don't answer me

P J's a terrific actress has tremendous instincts

oh boy I wanna know where Paul and Annie are

this is going nowhere

now we hear the piano start up

a time clock beat that we can tap our feet to

coz

we're leading you right up to the moment that she is

dispatched

hello

ha ha the interesting thing about the shot where P J

souls gets you know

sort of murdered by this telephone cord

wrapped around her

is a little bit of jalamp from murder

but what's so interesting is this telephone

these phone calls

that go back and forth between these girls

you know sometimes it's praying

sometimes it's not it's where

the very thing that teenage girls know and love best

which is a telephone

because it becomes an instrument of death

so it's sort of the irony of that

I'll kill you if this is a joke

this is the first time we see the Captain Kirk mask

close up

although nobody really knows it's Captain Kirk mask

I love the idea that he's gotten this close to her

he's actually on the phone

I think the reason that I made the quote

that I felt more exploited during uh

mainstream films than I did during what would be quote

exploitation films is that in the exploitation films

I really played the characters that weren't exploited

I played the characters that were smart

and strong and capable

and I've

had people bring up the fact that I've been in

movies that exploded women

or so called exploded women

and in the quote

mainstream films films that would be more palatable

sort of studio pictures within the industry

but in fact

it's then that I was relegated to taking off my clothes

and playing prostitutes I just found it ironic that

that I managed to do six exploitation films

without really ever being exploited

I mean the the

the job I got to get me out of being in horror films

was to play Dorothy Stratton

death of a centerfold for television

so it's such an irony that

the way that I became legitimate within the industry

on some level

was to play a woman who took off her clothes

I think that as filmmakers now in the 90s

with so much of life being reflected in art

where art used to imitate life

I think it's the other way around

life is imitating art and so therefore

we have to sort of censor ourselves with

by showing less graphic violence

by showing more human drama and also to

by showing less graphic sex

I think that we have uh

responsibility to the changing times

with violence everywhere with AIDS prevalent everywhere

um we just have to take the responsibilities

filmmakers and limited in our films

and try to find stories that are

driven by characters

who find some sense of good in people

and some sense of fairness in life

and to present those characters as role models

coming up in a second is going to be one of the

longer panglide shots that I've done

the sequence is a typical Hitchcock look

see we begin with Jamie

kind of a medium tracking shot on a panic line

and we cut to her point of view

and we've extended the sequence as long as possible

to build up the maximum dread in the audience

because again

anybody who's watching this knows it's a horror film

they know something's going to happen

they know that

Jamie is going to be menace by this killer

the question of when

all horrors

basically a question of when is it going to happen

I've come to the theatre and I paid my money

and I wanna see it

how long are you going to keep me from saying it

it makes me anxious when you do

well this is what we call the longest walk in Hollywood

um we used to kid about this

I mean John just milked it and milked it and milked it

and I think that what makes this work

is the fact that the audience is like screaming

don't go over there don't go over there

but the music here is just so repetitiousness

what draws you over

sort of from about the middle of the shot

I mean the audiences

start and don't stop till the very end of the movie

jumping in and out of their seats

you've established enough question in her mind

for her to make the big step

and John when he hired me

talked about vulnerability on screen

and I had no idea what he was talking about

and his reference was

if you establish somebody who the audience cares about

long enough for enough time

once you really enter the den of the unreal

the people will actually care enough about you

to be vocal to the screen to

to actually talk back in at the moment

when she leaves the house

to go find out what's going on across the street

from that moment in the movie

people actually stood up in the theatre

started screaming don't go over there

because they cared about her

and I really saw that isn't it

as evidence of that

when John showed the movie to an audience in Hollywood

they just screamed Annie

slowly again

like ponds on a chessboard

you're moving through environments

to the final confrontation through the back kitchen

traditional squeaking door

and sound effects lead you to believe perhaps

that he's in there

again this direction is part of her

directing the audience to one place

and delivering in another

John Carpenter traditionally in movies

you don't shoot your leading actress from a low angle

with a 35 millimeter lens

was Jamie Lee Curtis because she's so beautiful

it was acceptable

Jamie Lee Curtis I loathe horror movies

I won't see one

I watched Natural Born Killers the other day

with my eyes shut my hands over my ears for you know

50% of the movie I can't see anything scary

I don't like to be surprised

I'm fine if I know what's coming

I actually I saw The Silence of the lambs by myself

simply because the makeup man on that movie told me

blow by blow what to expect

when I saw the movie in so much so

that I had it written down on a piece of paper

that said when Jodie goes in garage

shut eyes

until you hear everybody in the audience scream

then it's okay so

I sat there with my little piece of paper by the

smiling and I was very proud of myself

we numbered the terror level for the character

knowing that we would shoot the movie

completely out of context

and out of sequence

so that through my script there are little numbers and

you know I Learned a little bit about the craft of that

and a little bit of the craft of of uh

plotting out where you're going

but the real lesson that John taught me was that

to show vulnerability to allow somebody into you

so to speak is really the key of movie acting

and he gave me that gift by telling me

telling me about it I

I think I associated vulnerability with weakness

and didn't want Lori to be a weak character

and I think his feeling was very much that

if you allow them in that they'll care for you

that if they care for you

that makes the movie work

now this coming up

the sequence where I open the door and look in the room

and walk in the room

this is a scene where John actually said to me

you know I don't really know how to get you in

and around the room

I know I need you to get from here to there to there

so that all of the scares can work

how do you do it and we just talked about how

someone would physically be moved back by

the site of something like that

Debra Hill well

this scene here that we're watching

sort of ties up the missing gravestone

when she walks in she finds all of her friends dead

she has no idea what's been going on

she has no source of where this evil is coming from

I mean this is a girl who spent the entire day

thinking that she saw something and suddenly

boy do they go wild in a movie theatre

and that guy was actually hanging by his knees

arched backwards and just let go at that moment

place has become a ghastly house of horrors

as Jamie rushes out of the room

and backs it into another corner

preparing us for a very

inventive and unique lighting situation by Dean Cundy

Nick Castle is in there on a rear stat

and he's slowly faded up

until we can just barely see his face

so this seems so beautifully done

watch this there he is

just so cool and over she goes

point of view shot that thing means

we dropped the camera on a bungee strip

now it starts from that note of the music

now it starts the whole movie starts

now we're gonna set our time clock again

for the big chase across the street

the piano as heartbeat

the breathing unkillable shape following her

back to the same environment we saw her enter the house

except now she's putting up obstacles

and our attention level should be pretty high by now

because of what we expect to happen

sophisticated all these members can

perhaps see the

pain of phony glass that we had set up for her

to break through as it catches light

slightly differently

I remember this scene

this was like at 4 in the morning out in Hollywood

and they had closed off a lot of the street

for this big wide shot

help

oh God help me please

this is always very strange to be screaming

running up and down the street

hello help me

can you please help me please

can you hear me oh poor little thing

help me please

what Jamie the Curtis does here is similar to what

you know John Wayne did in the searchers

is he went and found the kids

in some sense you know

John is borrowing that

and making her think intelligently

I mean she is a responsible babysitter

I mean that was the whole idea

of building that side of her character

this is a girl who takes responsibility very seriously

she's got these young charges

she's she's gotta protect them

it's the whole idea of her nurturing sense

and where the other girls just want sort of fun

she she responds differently

and she could have just sort of

you know ran down the street and gotten help

what she does is she goes and protects the kids

and she doesn't stop protecting them

I certainly

felt I was representing the best of American women

smart strong capable

tenacious

brave all of which are adjectives

that I would like to describe women as being

perhaps all the sequences in Halloween

are familiar to the audience

they've seen them before in horror movies

and simply being restated

kind of classic horror setups rework slightly

we never really looked at this movie as like

a classic horror picture in terms of

what are the rules we just really sort of looked at it

um do we care about her

will the audience respond to her

will the audience be engaged by her journey

grab that knitting needle baby

now you can see the kind of bad makeup on my hand

and the bad makeup on my arm

alright so cool

so great how he just drops out of frame

this is a haunted house movie

I mean there's no question about it

in many ways it could be like

you know the Three Stooges in a haunted house

it's cliche in many ways

there's really nothing original

except that we took all the cliches about Halloween

and threw him into a movie

and the simplicity of it is what's original about it

it didn't need to be complex

here of course

is

one of the harder things I've had to do in the movies

I actually have to throw the knife away

if I've Learned anything it was that in a wide shot

this is gonna look stupid

if he had shot it close

you would have seen that she's actually sort of

there's revulsion in holding a knife

to me it looks like such a sort of

sort of tossed away gesture

that people did groan when I did it going

oh sure

if it was closer you would have seen that

she was just so grossed out

that she was holding a knife

oh

where were you I went to the Myers house

I found the car he's here where

he's three blocks down

you go around the back of the houses

I'll watch the front go on

when I showed the film to an executive

before it was finished

I screened the movie without the music

the executive said this movie is not scary at all

doesn't work for me

and later after it had come out

she said I was wrong I had to seen it with the music

music is a great deal with the power of the film

it's extremely minimalistic almost sounds and

and beats and yet it carries you through

Tommy Lindsay

there's a term in music when you're singing a song

and you come to the end and you

revamp the melodies and themes that you've been using

into something called the 11 O'clock Shuffle

that's where you restate your theme and internalities

one more time with a new beat

and all of a sudden our 11 o'clock shuffle begins

he can't kill the boogeyman

Halloween bills upon a an idea that I came up with

when I saw Michael Kryten's West World

a robot gunfighter of Eel Brenner

programmed to chase our hero who never quite died

even when he was burned

the audience gotta scream out of this burned robot

coming back to life so

I thought I would take it a step further

and incorporate it with the idea that evil never dies

this is just great John Carpenter

you know put a young girl alone in a closet

with some great lighting and

and uh know that it's gonna be scary

I mean it's so basic and simple

why are there no clothes in the closet I wanna know

I said earlier that the way the picture shot is

it becomes claustrophobic

and we go from really sort of wide open spaces

to claustrophobic camera angles

and part of

adding to those claustrophobic camera angles is

is imprisoning you know

Roy Strode and making her

you know where it just gets smaller and smaller

smaller until she's finally in a closet

each moment is stretched out as long as possible

because the audience wants everything to be speeded up

and resolved

audiences hate uncertainty

they want a conclusion they want the evil to be stopped

but of course he can never be stopped

for the first time in the film

the shape is played by Tommy Lee Wallace

he has an extraordinary job standing in here

as she grabs a coat hanger

and defends herself

with the weapon she has at her disposal

again we have an offscreen moment of violence

almost like an old fashioned movie

now

there is a second moment where I throw the knife away

that I can't explain around

it's just again

sort of a bonehead move on my part I might say

that was a bonehead move

well Jamie

when she read the script I mean

she really loved the script

and she loved the character being so naive

you know it's very interesting in terms of makeup

and hair and wardrobe

and we really tried to enhance that and make her more

more calmly you know

and homely than like glamours

and sometimes actors instincts are to go glamorous

and she didn't

which is really interesting for a young actress

because their instincts are to be

you know made up

now do you understand me

go do as I say

now see

why she doesn't go with them

I'll never know but

the way that he reveals that the shape is still alive

is so cool that it's worth it

boom and watch him turn his head boom

oh man that is so scary

to see him sit up like that

dead straight and turn his head like that so fabulous

ah so great

now the little

so very cool

the interesting thing about Nick Castle

playing the shape

is that he has a sense of rock and roll style

you know having been

his father

being a choreographer and everything like that

and if you look at Halloween 2

it's a stunt man

playing the shape of a guy with the name

Dick Warlock and even though Dick Warlock

you know

watched this movie over and over and over again

it looked at those sequences

he can never quite get the rhythm

for the first moment in this movie

you're going to see the face of Michael Myers

and it appears to us

after this rather incredible struggle

that somehow he cannot survive without his mask

when we were shooting the sequence coming up

Donald Pleasants asked me

how do you want me to react when I look off the balcony

there are two ways

I can react oh

my god he's gone

or I can react I knew he would be gone

it

was the first time an actor had ever given me a choice

and I was stunned by it

so I asked Donald to please play it both ways

and let me decide later

see if you can figure out which choice I made

as he looks down from the porch

let's have a good

scary time and scream till you got home

you know that was what I did my job as

the thing that the movie gave me

which I very much personally needed

was success at that time I'm not particularly patient

and I don't know if had I not been successful early on

if I would have been struggling for five or six years

I don't know if I would have held out for that long

I don't know if I would have just bailed

and gone on to something else

and so for me to have a film

my first film come out

and be such as sort of big time success in a small way

was very satisfying and very helpful

just emotionally and personally

didn't get me another job necessarily right away

but it it gave me something

you know it was

it had its Mark it made its Mark

and therefore

it gave me a foothold that I'd never had before

the movie back then

was the largest grossing independent film in history

it cost $300,000 to make and it grossed $55 million

John Carpenter and I didn't see a lot of that money

I mean we saw very

very little of it because we were inexperienced

naive and we didn't really have a solid contract

because of business considerations

we were forced literally forced into making a sequel

a sequel was going to be made with us or without us

and part of the reason for making the sequel

was to get the money that was owed to both

Deborah and I from the first film

being Nice Capitalists

we decided to go ahead and do that

so from a material wealth point of view

it didn't change me

but from an accessibility point of view

in that the doors open a lot

yes the doors instantly open

because we were proven box office successes

I sat down the right the sequel

and I realised there's no story here

we've done the story all we're doing is Z roxing

it's a little hard

when people expect you to repeat the same thing

over and over again

audiences and critics don't seem to realise that

when you wanna do something different

you never wanna repeat yourself

if you could possibly help it

I don't wanna hear rocks Halloween

Halloween was unique for what it was

it was a movie made by kids

put together with a lot of love and a lot of panash

and a breakneck pace

and you see it on the screen and it works

and we should all leave it alone

but now there's been four or five of them

I believe there's gonna be six it's kinda sad

I really enjoy the work I've been doing

I enjoy everything that's come from Halloween

if there's any point to be made in the film

is that you can survive the night

but I think everyone in the audience would say that

being aware of the possibility of evil

is an important thing in life

all children need to be told that

the world can be bad and dark and dangerous

but with a little luck and awareness you can survive