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Halloween (also known as John Carpenter's Halloween) is a 1978 independent horror film set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween. Original drafts of the screenplay were titled The Babysitter Murders. The film was directed by John Carpenter and stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle as Michael Myers (listed in the credits as "The Shape"). It centers on the escape of Myers from a psychiatric hospital, his murder of several teenagers, and the efforts of Loomis to track and kill him. Halloween was produced on a budget of only $325,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, making it one of the most successful independent films.

The film is generally considered the first of a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The movie originated many of the clichés seen in countless low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, although first-time viewers of Halloween may be surprised by the fact that the film contains little actual graphic violence or gore.

Some critics have suggested that Halloween and its slasher film successors encourage sadism and misogyny. Others have suggested the film is a social critique of the morality of young people in 1970s America, pointing out that many of Myers's victims are sexually promiscuous or substance abusers, while the lone heroine is depicted as chaste and innocent. While Carpenter dismisses these analyses, the perceived parallel between the characters' moral strengths and their likelihood of surviving to the film's conclusion has nevertheless become a standard slasher movie trope.

Plot

Template:Spoiler On Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers murders his seventeen-year-old sister Judith at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. Michael stabs her with a kitchen knife while wearing his Halloween costume. He is sent to Smith's Grove-Warren County Sanitarium in Illinois and placed under the care of psychiatrist Sam Loomis. After years of treatment, Loomis begins to suspect that there is more to Myers than meets the eye and plans to have him committed indefinitely. Loomis uses choice words such as evil to describe Myers, sensing that a tremendous amount of rage and emotion stir behind his blank stare. Loomis's efforts are to no avail and after spending fifteen years in a state of catatonia, Myers escapes from Smith's Grove while being transferred and returns to Haddonfield with Loomis in pursuit.

In Haddonfield, Myers begins stalking Laurie Strode (who is his younger sister, though this is not revealed until Halloween II). Laurie is troubled by the man in the white mask whom she catches glimpses of from her classroom window, behind a bush while walking home, and in the clothesline from her bedroom window. Later in the evening, Laurie meets her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes) who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where she is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). After arranging to pick up her boyfriend, Annie sends Lindsey to stay with Laurie at the Doyle house but is murdered by Myers (who had followed them). Tommy sees him carrying Annie's body into the Wallace house and thinks Myers is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses the boy's terror and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Myers later murders Laurie's other friend Lynda (P.J. Soles) and Lynda's boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) in the empty Wallace house.

Laurie becomes worried after receiving a strange phone call from Lynda at the Wallace house. She walks across the street to discover the three bodies and Judith Myers's missing tombstone. She is attacked by Myers but escapes back to the Doyle house. Laurie manages to stab Myers variously with a knitting needle, clothes hanger and knife, but he continues to pursue her. Eventually, Loomis spies Tommy and Lindsey running from the house and finds Myers in the upstairs hallway. Loomis rescues Laurie, shooting Myers six times and causing him to fall from the house's second-story balcony. Upon looking out the window for Myers' body, however, Loomis discovers that he is nowhere to be found.

Production

After viewing John Carpenter's film Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to direct a film for them about a psychotic killer that stalked babysitters. In an interview with Fangoria magazine, Yablans stated, "I was thinking what would make sense in the horror genre, and what I wanted to do was make a picture that had the same impact as The Exorcist." Carpenter and his then-girlfriend Debra Hill began drafting a story originally titled The Babysitter Murders, but Carpenter told Entertainment Weekly that Yablans suggested setting the movie on Halloween night and naming it Halloween instead.

Akkad fronted the $325,000 for the film's budget, considered low at the time (even though Carpenter's previous film, Assault on Precinct 13, had an estimated budget of only $100,000). Akkad worried over the tight schedule, low budget, and Carpenter's limited experience as a filmmaker, but told Fangoria, "Two things made me decide. One, Carpenter told me the story verbally and in a suspenseful way, almost frame for frame. Second, he told me he didn't want to take any fees, and that showed he had confidence in the project." Carpenter himself only received $10,000 for directing, writing, and composing the music, retaining rights to only 10 percent of the film's profits.

Because of the low budget, wardrobe and props were often crafted from items on hand or that could be purchased inexpensively. Carpenter hired Tommy Lee Wallace as production designer, art director, location scout, and co-editor. Wallace created the trademark mask worn by Michael Myers throughout the film from a Captain Kirk mask purchased for $1.98. Carpenter recalled how Wallace "widened the eye holes and spray-painted the flesh a bluish white. In the script it said Michael Myers' mask had 'the pale features of a human face' and it truly was spooky looking. It didn't look anything like William Shatner after Tommy got through with it." Hill adds that the "idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless—this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not." Many of the actors wore their own clothes, and Jamie Lee Curtis's wardrobe was purchased at J.C. Penney for around a hundred dollars.

The budget also dictated filming location and time. Halloween was filmed in 21 days in the spring of 1978 in South Pasadena, California. An abandoned house owned by a church stood in as the Myers house. The crew had to work to find pumpkins in the spring and artificial fall leaves had to be reused for multiple scenes. Local families dressed their children in Halloween costumes and trick-or-treated them for Carpenter.

Writing

Yablans and Akkad ceded most of the creative control to writers Carpenter and Hill (whom Carpenter also wanted as producer), but Yablans did offer several suggestions. According to a Fangoria interview with Debra Hill, "Yablans wanted the script written like a radio show, with 'boos' every 10 minutes." Hill explained that the script took only three weeks to write and much of the inspiration behind the plot came from Gaelic traditions of Halloween such as the festival of Samhain. Although Samhain is not mentioned in the plot of the first film, Hill asserts that

the idea was that you couldn't kill evil, and that was how we came about the story. We went back to the old idea of Samhain, that Halloween was the night where all the souls are let out to wreak havoc on the living, and then came up with the story about the most evil kid who ever lived. And when John came up with this fable of a town with a dark secret of someone who once lived there, and now that evil has come back, that's what made Halloween work.

Hill wrote most of the female characters' dialogue, while Carpenter drafted Loomis's speeches on Michael Myers's evil. Many of the details of the story were drawn from Carpenter and Hill's adolescence and early career. The fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, came from Haddonfield, New Jersey, where Hill grew up, and most of the street names were taken from Carpenter's hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Laurie Strode was the name of one of Carpenter's old girlfriends and Michael Myers was the name of an English producer who had earlier entered Assault on Precinct 13 in various European film festivals with Yablans. Carpenter also pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock with two of the Halloween characters' names. Specifically, Tommy Doyle is named after Lt. Det. Thomas J. Doyle (Wendell Corey) of Rear Window (1954) and Dr. Loomis's name was taken from Sam Loomis (John Gavin) of Psycho, the boyfriend of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh).

Casting

The cast of Halloween included a motley crew of veteran actors such as Donald Pleasence and then-unknown actresses like Jamie Lee Curtis and Nancy Kyes. The low budget limited the number of big names that John Carpenter could attract, and most of the actors received very little compensation for their role. Pleasence was paid the highest amount at $20,000; Curtis received $8,000; and Nick Castle only earned $25 a day.

English actor Pleasence has been called "John Carpenter's big landing." Pleasence's daughter supposedly saw Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and liked it, thus encouraging her father to star in Halloween. Americans were already acquainted with Pleasence as the villain in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967).

In an interview, Carpenter admits that "Jamie Lee wasn't the first choice for Laurie. I had no idea who she was. She was 19 and in a TV show at the time, but I didn't watch TV." He originally wanted to cast Anne Lockhart, the daughter of June Lockhart from Lassie, as Laurie Strode. Lockhart, however, had commitments to several other film and television projects. After learning of Jamie Lee's relation to Psycho actress Janet Leigh, Debra Hill says, "I knew casting Jamie Lee would be great publicity for the film because her mother was in Psycho." Halloween was Jamie Lee Curtis' feature film debut and launched her career as a "scream queen" horror star.

Another relatively unknown actress, Nancy Kyes, was cast as Laurie's promiscuous friend Annie Brackett, daughter of Haddonfield sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers). Kyes had previously starred in Assault on Precinct 13 and happened to be dating Halloween's art director Tommy Lee Wallace when filming began. Laurie's other promiscuous friend, Lynda VanDerclork, was played by P.J. Soles, an actress familiar for her supporting role in Carrie (1976) and her minor part in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). According to one source, "Carpenter realized she had captured the aura of a happy go lucky teenage girl in the 70's."

The role of "The Shape"—as the masked Michael Myers character was billed in the end credits—was played by Nick Castle, who befriended Carpenter while they attended the University of Southern California. After Halloween, Castle became a director, taking the helm of films such as The Last Starfighter (1984), The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), and Major Payne (1995).

Direction

Film critics contend that John Carpenter's directing and camera work made Halloween a "resounding success." Roger Ebert remarks, "It's easy to create violence on the screen, but it's hard to do it well. Carpenter is uncannily skilled, for example, at the use of foregrounds in his compositions, and everyone who likes thrillers knows that foregrounds are crucial ...."

The opening title featuring a jack-o'-lantern placed against a black backdrop sets the mood for the entire movie. The camera slowly focuses on one of the jack-o'-lantern's eyes while the main music for Halloween plays in the background. Film historian J.P. Telotte says that this scene "clearly announces that primary concern will be with the way in which we see ourselves and others and the consequences that often attend our usual manner of perception."

During the conception of the plot, Yablans instructed "that the audience shouldn't see anything. It should be what they thought they saw that frightens them." Carpenter seemingly took Yablans's advice literally, filming many of the scenes from a Michael Myers point-of-view that allowed audience participation. Carpenter is not the first director to employ this method or use of a steadicam, for instance the first scene of Psycho offers a voyeuristic look at lovers in a seedy hotel. Telotte argues, "As a result of this shift in perspective from a disembodied, narrative camera to an actual character's eye ... we are forced into a deeper sense of participation in the ensuing action."

The first scene of the boy Michael's voyeurism is followed by the murder of Judith Myers seen through the eye holes of Michael's clown costume mask. According to one commentator, Carpenter's "frequent use of the unmounted first-person camera to represent the killer's point of view ... invited to adopt the murderer's assaultive gaze and to hear his heavy breathing and plodding footsteps as he stalked his prey."

Another technique that Carpenter adapted from Hitchcock's Psycho and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was suspense and murder without blood and gore. Debra Hill states, "We didn't want it to be gory. We wanted it to be like a jack-in-the box." Film analysts refer to this as the "false startle" or "the old tap-on-the-shoulder routine" in which the stalkers, murderers, or monsters "lunge into our field of vision or creep up on a person."

Carpenter worked with the cast to create the desired effect of terror and fear. According to Jamie Lee Curtis, Carpenter created a "fear meter" because the film was shot out-of-sequence and she was not sure what her character's level of terror should be in certain scenes. "Here's about a 7, here's about a 6, and the scene we're going to shoot tonight is about a 9 1/2," remembered Curtis. She had different facial expressions and scream volumes for each level on the meter.

Music

Another major reason for the success of Halloween is the musical score, particularly the main theme. Lacking a symphonic soundtrack, the film's score consists of a piano melody played in a 5/4 time rhythm composed by John Carpenter. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated," but admits that "Halloween's music is one of its strongest assets." Carpenter stated in an interview, "I can play just about any keyboard, but I can't read or write a note." In the end credits, Carpenter bills himself as the "Bowling Green Orchestra" for performing the film's score, but he did receive some assistance from composer Dan Wyman, a music professor at San José State University.

Some songs can be heard in the film, one being an untitled song performed by Carpenter and a group of his friends who formed a band called The Coupe DeVilles. It is heard as Laurie steps into Annie's car on her way to baby sit Tommy Doyle. Another song, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by heavy metal band Blue Öyster Cult, also appears in the film.

Reception

Template:Infobox Film rating

Halloween premiered on October 25, 1978, in Kansas City, Missouri, and a few days later in Chicago and New York City. Although it performed well with little advertising—relying mostly on word-of-mouth—many critics seemed uninterested or dismissive of the film. The first glowing review by a prominent film critic, however, came from Tom Allen of the The Village Voice. Allen noted that the film was sociologically irrelevant, but applauded Carpenter's camera work as "duplicitous hype" and "the most honest way to make a good schlock film." Allen also pointed out the stylistic similarities to Psycho and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Following Allen's laudatory essay, other critics took notice. Renowned critic Roger Ebert gave the film equal praise in a 1979 review for the Chicago Sun-Times. Once-dismissive critics were impressed by the simplicity of the film's camera work and music and surprised by the lack of blood, gore, and graphic violence.

The film grossed $47 million in the United States and an additional $8 million internationally, making the theatrical total around $55 million. While most of the film's success came from American movie-goers, Halloween premiered in several international locations after 1979 with moderate results. The film was shown mostly in the European countries of France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Iceland. Admissions in West Germany totaled around 750,000 and 118,606 in Sweden, earning SEK 2,298,579 there. The film was also shown at theaters in Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Peru, Argentina, and Chile. Halloween grossed AUD 900,000 in Australia and HKD 450,139 in Hong Kong.

Halloween was nominated for a Saturn Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA, for Best Horror Film in 1979, but lost to The Wicker Man (1973).

Criticism

Negative reviews by film critics of the early 1980s are near impossible to come by, and in 2006 Halloween maintained a rating of 100 percent "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes. Many compared the film with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, although TV Guide calls comparisons made to Psycho "silly and groundless" and a growing number of critics in the late 1980s and early 1990s blame the film for spawning the slasher sub-genre that rapidly descended into sadism and misogyny. Almost a decade after its premier, Mick Martin and Marsha Porter critiqued the first-person camera shots that earlier film reviewers had praised and later slasher-film directors utilized for their own films (e.g., Friday the 13th (1980)). Claiming it encouraged audience identification with the killer, Martin and Porter also pointed to the way "the camera moves in on the screaming, pleading, victim, 'looks down' at the knife, and then plunges it into chest, ear, or eyeball. Now that's sick."

Many criticisms of Halloween and other slasher films come from postmodern academia. Some feminist critics, according to historian Nicholas Rogers, "have seen the slasher movies since Halloween as debasing women in as decisive a manner as hard-core pornography Critics such as John Kenneth Muir point out that female characters such as Laurie Strode survive not because of "any good planning" or their own resourcefulness, but sheer luck. Strode, in fact, is rescued in Halloween and Halloween II only when Dr. Loomis arrives to shoot Myers.

On the other hand, some feminist scholars such as Carol J. Clover argue that despite the violence against women, slasher films turned women into heroines. In many pre-Halloween horror films, women are depicted as helpless victims and are not safe until they are rescued by a strong masculine hero. Despite the fact that Loomis saves Strode, Clover asserts that Halloween initiates the role of the "final girl" who ultimately triumphs in the end. Strode herself fought back against Myers, wounding him on several occasions. Had he been a normal man, Strode would have defeated him.

Other critics have seen a deeper social critique present in Halloween and subsequent slasher films. According to Tony Williams, the films of the 1980s spoke to the conservative family values advocates of Reagan America. Williams says Myers and other slashers were "patriarchal avengers" who "slaughtered the youthful children of the 1960s generation, especially when they engaged in illicit activities involving sex and drugs." Other critics tend to downplay this interpretation, arguing that the portrayal of Myers as a demonic, superhuman monster inhibited his influence among conservatives. Carpenter himself dismisses the notion that Halloween is a morality play, regarding it as merely a horror movie.

Influence

Although a Canadian horror film directed by Bob Clark titled Black Christmas (1974) preempted the stylistic techniques made famous in Halloween, the latter is generally given credit by film historians and critics for initiating the slasher film craze of the 1980s and 1990s. First-person camera perspectives, unexceptional settings, and female heroines define the slasher film genre. Riding the wave of success ushered in by Halloween, several films that were already in production when the film premiered, but with similar stylistic elements and themes, also became popular with audiences. The Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, and countless other slasher films owe much of their success (if not inspiration) to Halloween.

The unintended theme of "survival of the virgins" seen in Halloween also became a major trope that surfaced in other slasher films. Characters in subsequent horror movies who practice illicit sex and substance abuse generally meet a gruesome end at the hands of the killer. On the other hand, characters portrayed as chaste and temperate face off and defeat the killer at the end of the film. Director Wes Craven's dark comedy Scream (1996) details the "rules" for surviving a horror movie using Halloween as the primary example: no sex, no alcohol or illicit drugs, and never say "I'll be right back." Keenen Ivory Wayans's horror movie spoof Scary Movie (2000) likewise parodies this prominent slasher film trope.

Despite Halloween's influence on the genre, critics have recently questioned the film's staying power. Audiences have become desensitized by the blood, gore, and violence of later slasher films and to many modern viewers the slow pace and suspense of Halloween is no longer frightening, and may seem tame, if not boring. Film critic Herb Kane, while praising the historical significance of the film, notes:

I agree ... I literally laughed throughout the movie. Face it. We've seen this all before - in countless copycat slasher films! Some of the scenes now are just plain cheesy and funny to me like when Loomis finds a dead animal in the old Meyer's house and refers to Michael, "He got hungry"; or dialogue repeating the word "TOTALLY" over and over again. Simply watching Michael appear and disappear in certain scenes is hilarious! The scene where he walks into a bedroom dressed as a ghost wearing a white sheet and glasses put me in tears - TOTALLY!

Television version

Television rights to Halloween were sold to NBC in 1980 for $4 million. After some debate between John Carpenter, Debra Hill and NBC's Standards & Practices over censoring of certain scenes, Halloween appeared on television for the first time. To fill the two-hour time slot, Carpenter filmed twelve minutes of additional material that include Dr. Loomis talking to six-year-old Michael at Smith's Grove, telling him, "You've fooled them, haven't you Michael? But not me." Another extra scene features Dr. Loomis at Smith's Grove examining Michael's abandoned cell and seeing the word "Sister" scratched into the door. Laurie also has a flashback in which her adoption by the Strodes is discussed. Finally, a scene was added in which Lynda comes over to Laurie's house to borrow a silk blouse before she leaves to babysit. The new scenes were shot during production of Halloween II. The television version of the film was released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment in 2001 as Halloween: Extended Version.

Sequels

Halloween spawned seven sequels (with an eighth film, tentatively titled Halloween 9, scheduled for release in 2006). Of these films, only Halloween II (1981) was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Halloween II begins exactly where Halloween ends and was intended to end the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. Carpenter did not direct any of the other films in the Halloween series, and Michael Myers is not even featured in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982).

Despite that the sequels were filmed on larger budgets than the original, they more closely resemble other examples of the slasher sub-genre, featuring explicit violence and gore, and are generally dismissed by serious film critics. In point of fact, in contrast to Halloween's modest budget of $325,000, Halloween II's budget was around $2.5 million, while the most recently released sequel, Halloween: Resurrection (2002), boasted a budget of $25 million.

Halloween's sequels also develop the character of Michael Myers and the theme of Samhain. Even without considering the third film, the Halloween series is also plagued with a number of storyline continuity issues, most likely stemming from the different writers and directors involved in each film.

References

Notes

1. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=halloween.htm
2. ^ HalloweenMovies.com Cite error: The named reference "halloweenmovies" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
3. Irwin Yablans, Fangoria interview, quoted at HalloweenMovies.com.
4. ^ John Carpenter, Entertainment Weekly interview, quoted at HalloweenMovies.com. Cite error: The named reference "Carpenterinterview" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074156/business
6. Moustapha Akkad, Fangoria interview, quoted at HalloweenMovies.com.
7. ^ Debra Hill, Fangoria interview, quoted at HalloweenMovies.com. Cite error: The named reference "Hillinterview" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
8. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/cast/dp.htm
9. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/cast/nl.htm
10. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/cast/pjs.htm
11. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/cast/nc.htm
12. Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 111, ISBN 0195168968.
13. ^ Roger Ebert, review of Halloween, Chicago Sun-Times, 31 October 1979, at RogerEbert.com. Cite error: The named reference "Ebertreview" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
14. J.P. Telotte, "Through a Pumpkin's Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror," in Gregory Waller, ed., American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. 116, ISBN 0252014480.
15. Telotte, "Through a Pumpkin's Eye," pp. 116-117.
16. Rogers, Halloween, p. 111.
17. David Scott Diffrient, "A Film is Being Beaten: Notes on the Shock Cut and the Material Violence of Horror," in Steffen Hantke, Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), p. 61, ISBN 1578066921.
18. Jamie Lee Curtis interview, quoted at HalloweenMovies.com.
19. ^ James Berardinelli, review of Halloween, at ReelViews. Cite error: The named reference "Berardinellireview" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
20. http://www.music.sjsu.edu/admin/faculty/wyman/index.html
21. http://halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/h1soundtrack.htm
22. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/filmarchive/h1distribution.htm
23. Tom Allen, review of Halloween, The Village Voice (New York), 6 November 1978, pp. 67, 70.
24. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077651/business
25. http://imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Academy_of_Science_Fiction_Fantasy_And_Horror_Films_USA/1979
26. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/halloween/
27. TV Guide review of Halloween at TVGuide.com.
28. Rogers, Halloween, pp. 117-118.
29. Mick Martin and Marsha Porter, Video Movie Guide 1987 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), p. 60, ISBN 0345338723.
30. Rogers, Halloween, pp. 117-118.
31. John Kenneth Muir, Wes Craven: The Art of Horror (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1998), p. 104, ISBN 0786419237.
32. Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 189, ISBN 0691006202.
33. Tony Williams, "Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror," in Barry K. Grant, ed., The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 164-165, ISBN 0292727941.
34. Rogers, Halloween, pp. 121.
35. Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest, documentary on Divimax 25th Anniversary Edition DVD of Halloween (1978; Troy, Mich.: Anchor Bay, 2003), ASIN B00009UW0N.
36. Adam Rockoff, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2002), p. 42, ISBN 0786412275.
37. Herb Kane, "Is 'Halloween' Still Scary?", 28 October 2003, at CriticDoctor.com
38. Halloween: Extended Version (1978; DVD, Troy, Mich.: Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2001), ISAN 013131195996.
39. http://halloweenmovies.com/movies_lobby.html
40. http://imdb.com/title/tt0082495/business
41. http://imdb.com/title/tt0220506/business

All URLs last accessed 19 April 2006 unless otherwise stated.

Other references

• Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. ISBN 0313275238.
• Prince, Stephen, ed. The Horror Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. ISBN 0813533635.
• Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud's Worst Nightmare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0521825210.
• Williams, Tony. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. ISBN 0838635644.

External links

• Official site of the Halloween series.
• Official site of John Carpenter.
• Halloween at IMDb.
• Halloween at Box Office Mojo.

• 1978 films
• Horror films
• Cult films
• Halloween movies
• Independent films
• Films directed by John Carpenter