It’s no secret that the 70′s was a good time to be a horror fan. George Romero upped the ante with Dawn of the Dead. Tobe Hooper freaked everyone out with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. William Friedkin had people fainting in the aisles at The Exorcist and Wes Craven grossed out the world with Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes. I’m leaving out the gross majority, I realize but that’s a big menu of flicks to mention since it was the 70′s after all. None, however, would haave the kind of lasting impact that John Carpenter’s Halloween had. Halloween, following in the set ‘em up and knock ‘em down stylings of Psycho and Black Christmas, sent shockwaves through movie studios who all jumped hungrily on the gravy train.
Originally entitled, The Babysitter Murders, Halloween was made on a paltry budget of $320,000 in the spring of 1978. John Carpenter was approached by financier, Moustapha Akkad (who is still very much involved in the movie’s legacy) and producer, Irwin Yablans after seeing Assault On Precinct 13. Carpenter took no fees but negotiated 10 points on the box office and made off like a fucking thief in the end! What gives Halloween such a lasting appeal, though, is that combines everything that scared kids before the internet came along and debunked every popular urban legend. You get the escaped lunatic, the local haunted house, babysitters in peril and this idea of unstoppable evil that draws on the season’s roots as the night when the spirits run wild. Word of mouth spread like wildfire and the movie reviewed well. This resulted in lines around the block, waiting to get in. Weeks of sold out shows!
The film’s killer, Michael Myers, credited as The Shape, was actually played by three men: Nick Castle, Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace, since you can slap that mask (a heavily modified version of a Captain Kirk mask which cost two bucks) on anyone and voila! They become an unstoppable killing machine. Haddonfield, Illinois, was actually South Pasadena, California tricked out in the Spring to look like the midwest in the fall.
Though stylistically minimalist from start to finish, including the amazing score (which I use as my ringtone), Halloween set a new box office standard and proved the financial viability of horror movies, which have always been Hollywood’s ugly troglodyte children, wheeled out and hated on even though they make stupid bank at the box office. In the next five years, the box office would be dominated by a deluge of slasher of movies stealing every one of Halloween’s moves and even the movie itself would be forced into a profitable franchise. By 1983, most of the blood had been squeezed out of the slasher wave and only a few kept on limping into the 90′s and Halloween was one of them.
It’s a truly special flick. Put it on this Halloween and show it to someone who has never seen it.
