The 1978 version of “Halloween” is a beloved October classic. In my family, it is a tradition to watch every Halloween night! From the creepy fall in the suburbs atmosphere to the eerie feeling of being watched, this movie never fails to deliver the real fear that Halloween has to offer.
“Halloween” follows a teenage girl, Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), who slowly starts to realize she’s being stalked by a creepy man (famously known as Micheal Myers) wearing an old mask and a jumpsuit. As the movie progresses, the man in the mask steadily creeps into the life of Laurie Strode, making it a living hell.
Throughout the film, the director (John Carpenter) slowly incorporates the aspects of Myers after he escapes the Asylum, to him slowly stalking Laurie and incorporating himself on the screen more and more. However, Carpenter made it clear that the motive behind Myers’ killings had no sense of personal target besides the tendency to hurt after not being able to hurt for 15 years. Laurie was just an unlucky individual.
The aspect of mystery to this move heavily plays on the fear of being watched and stalked with infamous correlations of the holiday into it. For example, one of the main reasons that Laurie wasn’t believed when she claimed to be stalked was that, “it was Halloween night and everyone was dressed up, so nevertheless her mind is just playing tricks on her.”
Nowadays the movie is just an incredibly huge ball of cliches including: no one believing the fact that Laurie’s being stalked, and a guy wearing a mask trying to kill people. However, at the time in which this movie was produced, there hadn’t been many movies prior that carried this same concept of repetitive horror. So that’s one of the reasons that this movie was loved so much, it was one of the well done movies that created this pattern of horror concepts that still goes on today.
With only a $300,000 budget, and only 20 days of writing and shooting, John Carpenter made it look like there was triple that budget. There was an infinite amount of detail added to the set of the movie including: Micheal Myers’ mask that looked like it took hours to perfect, and even the beautiful large decorative furnished houses. The budget was so low that actors were asked to bring clothes from home. According to The Independent, “Jamie Lee Curtis brought her entire wardrobe at JCPenny for probably a hundred bucks.”
As the movie progressed, it grossed 70 million dollars which is now one of the most victorious individualistic films ever produced.
In all, the most interesting part of the entire movie wasn’t just the fantastic plot or the creative atmosphere. It was the fact that John Carpenter was able to craft one of the best movies ever created with an incredibly low budget and making the screenplay and filming the movie all in 20 days.
