Halloween

On Halloween night 1963 in Haddonfield, Illinois, six-year-old Michael Myers stabs his teenage sister Judith to death with a large butcher knife, right after she has sex with her boyfriend. The whole murder is seen through the eyeholes of the clown mask he is wearing.

Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Dr. Sam Loomis and a nurse drive to the Smith's Grove sanitarium to take Michael before a judge. Loomis has treated him since childhood, believes he is pure evil, and hopes he never gets out. When they reach the gates, patients are wandering loose on the grounds. Loomis gets out of the car, and Michael smashes the window, drives off in the car and heads for home.

On Halloween morning, teenager Laurie Strode drops off a key at the empty Myers house for her father, a real estate agent. Tommy Doyle, the boy she often babysits, warns her the house is haunted. Michael watches her from inside. All day Laurie keeps catching sight of a man watching her, including from the street outside her classroom, and he is gone whenever she looks again. He trails Laurie and her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok. At the elementary school, three boys tease Tommy that the Boogeyman is coming for him that night.

Loomis follows Michael's trail. He finds the patient gown in an abandoned truck, but misses the stripped body of the dead driver in the brush nearby. In Haddonfield he learns Judith Myers's tombstone has been stolen. He meets Annie's father, Sheriff Leigh Brackett, who is looking into a hardware store break-in where only a mask, rope and knives were taken. Inside the Myers house the two men find a freshly killed dog. Loomis tells Brackett about the six-year-old boy with black, empty eyes and decides to wait at the house.

That night Laurie babysits Tommy Doyle, and across the street Annie babysits Lindsey Wallace. Michael kills the Wallaces' dog, Lester. Annie gets locked in the laundry room and stuck in its window, then drops Lindsey off with Laurie so she can go pick up her boyfriend Paul. Before she can leave, Michael strangles her in her car and cuts her throat. Tommy sees the masked man carrying a body into the Wallace house, but Laurie does not believe him.

Lynda and her boyfriend Bob Simms show up at the empty Wallace house planning to use it for sex. Afterward Bob goes downstairs for a beer, and Michael pins him to the kitchen wall with a knife. Michael comes back upstairs wearing a sheet and Bob's glasses. When Lynda calls Laurie, Michael strangles her with the phone cord, and Laurie hears only squealing on the line.

Laurie walks over to check on her friends. Upstairs in the dark Wallace house, a bedroom is lit by a jack-o'-lantern. She finds Annie's body laid out on the bed under Judith Myers's stolen tombstone. She backs into a closet and Bob's body swings down at her, and then she finds Lynda dead too. Michael steps out of the dark and cuts her arm, and she falls over the banister onto the stairs. She escapes to the Doyle house, where Tommy lets her in. The phone is dead. Michael climbs in through a window, and she stabs him in the neck with a knitting needle. He gets back up and follows her upstairs. She locks the kids in a bathroom, hides in a bedroom closet and jabs him in the eye with a wire coat hanger, then stabs him with his own knife. She sends Tommy and Lindsey out to get help.

Loomis sees the children run out screaming and hurries inside. Michael sits up and attacks Laurie again, and in the struggle his mask comes off. Loomis shoots him six times, and Michael falls off the balcony onto the lawn. Laurie says it was the Boogeyman, and Loomis agrees. When Loomis looks down at the lawn, the body is gone.

Story notes

• On Halloween night in Haddonfield, escaped patient Michael Myers returns to the town where he killed his sister as a child.
• Psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis hunts for him while teenager Laurie Strode and her friends become Michael's targets.

Release facts

• Distributor: Compass International Pictures (Aquarius Releasing handled the New York and Philadelphia areas)

Halloween opened in Kansas City, Missouri, in October 1978. Wikipedia gives the premiere as October 24 at the AMC Empire. The AFI Catalog says it opened in four Kansas City theaters. Box Office Mojo gives October 25, and the AFI Catalog lists a Los Angeles opening of October 25 and a release date of October 27. Yablans recalled weak first-night grosses of about $200 per theater that grew to $1,600 to $2,000 per theater within a week on word of mouth. On Halloween 1978 it screened at the San Diego Film Festival with Hill and Curtis attending. It was then rushed into New York and Los Angeles.

Major studios had passed on the film, so Yablans booked it through independent theaters. The Hollywood Reporter said it earned more than $2 million in its first two weeks, plus $1 million in foreign advances after one screening at MIFED in Milan. It opened to $200,000 in its first week in six Boston-area theaters. Warner Bros. bought rights for Italy, Germany and France. The opening week in 198 theaters brought in $1,270,000. It was reissued every Halloween. In 1980, Aquarius Releasing tried a New York run in 83 theaters, on pay cable and on cassette at Video Shack stores at the same time. It took $450,000 that week.

The Numbers lists $47,274,000 domestic and $70,274,000 worldwide on a budget of $325,000. Wikipedia estimates about 20 million tickets sold. Boxoffice and The Hollywood Reporter called it in 1979 the most lucrative independent picture up to that time.

Early reviews were mixed. Variety praised Carpenter's timing and offbeat humor. David Ansen of Newsweek called it a superb exercise in suspense and predicted it would become a cult film. Gene Siskel gave it three and a half stars, and Tom Allen of The Village Voice compared its technique to Hitchcock. The Los Angeles Times called it well made but empty, and Gary Arnold of The Washington Post found the tension forced. Pauline Kael panned it in The New Yorker in February 1979. Andrew Sarris predicted it would be the cult find of 1978. Roger Ebert gave it four stars in 1979.

Awards and honors: nominated for the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, losing to The Wicker Man. It won the Critics Award at the 1979 Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival. Carpenter got a Special Silver Plaque at the 1978 Chicago International Film Festival, where the film played as an invited entry. It ranked number 68 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills in 2001 and was added to the National Film Registry in 2006. Rotten Tomatoes lists 97 percent from 92 critics, and Metacritic scores it 91.

NBC bought the television rights. Variety reported Yablans priced them at $3 million, and Wikipedia says NBC paid about $3 million in 1980. The network premiere, with new scenes added, aired October 30, 1981, the day Halloween II opened.

A 35th anniversary theatrical re-release began October 25, 2013, paired with the short documentary You Can't Kill the Boogeyman: 35 Years of Halloween. Box Office Mojo also lists a July 10, 2020 re-release that added about $160,000 domestic.

In January 2008 Carpenter sued Yablans and Compass International in Los Angeles Superior Court, saying they had stopped quarterly accounting and payments since 2004. The AFI Catalog could not find how it ended.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: Official international art / vintage advertising archive.

Posters and print

Cast

Crew

Production

Executive producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad came to John Carpenter after Yablans saw Assault on Precinct 13 at the Milan film market. The AFI Catalog says Yablans first called his babysitter-killer idea The Babysitter Murders before moving it to Halloween night. Yablans has since said it was always meant to be called Halloween. Carpenter said no film had ever used Halloween night as its theme. Akkad put up $300,000. Carpenter took $10,000 to write, direct and score the film, plus 10 percent of the profits. The Hollywood Reporter wrote in 1979 that Debra Hill took no salary and worked for a share of net profits.

Carpenter and his then-girlfriend Debra Hill wrote the script fast. Carpenter has said about ten days, and Hill remembered three weeks. Hill wrote the teenage girls, drawing on her own babysitting years. Carpenter wrote Loomis and Michael and based Loomis's speeches on a boy with a blank stare he saw on a college visit to a psychiatric hospital in Kentucky. Haddonfield, Illinois, was named for Hill's hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Several street names came from Carpenter's hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Loomis was named for John Gavin's character in Psycho. The name Michael Myers came from the British distributor of Assault on Precinct 13, who got that film into the London Film Festival. Tommy Doyle is named after Wendell Corey's detective in Rear Window.

The money was tight, so the casting was careful. Carpenter first offered Loomis to Peter Cushing and then Christopher Lee. Both passed, and Lee later told Carpenter it was the biggest mistake of his career. Donald Pleasence took the part because his daughter liked Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 score. He was paid $20,000 for five days of work, the highest salary in the cast. Carpenter first wanted Anne Lockhart for Laurie, but she was booked. Hill pushed for Jamie Lee Curtis, who got $8,000, partly because her mother Janet Leigh starred in Psycho. P. J. Soles has said Lynda was written for her. The filmmakers wanted Soles's boyfriend Dennis Quaid for Bob, but he was unavailable. Nick Castle, Carpenter's friend from USC, was visiting the set and played the Shape for $25 a day. Tony Moran had a job dressed as Frankenstein on Hollywood and Vine and got $250 to play Michael unmasked. His sister Erin played Joanie on Happy Days.

The shoot was non-union. The AFI Catalog dates the start of principal photography to April 24, 1978. The official Halloween site says the film was shot in 21 days that spring, and other accounts say 20 days in May. The Los Angeles Times reported that the crew's average age was 26. Cundey shot on Panavision with a Panaglide, an early Steadicam-style rig, for the long moving shots. The crew worked out of Cundey's Winnebago, used the caterer's truck as the Phelps Auto Service truck in one shot, and put Carpenter's old Cadillac in another.

Because it was spring in Southern California, the crew painted leaves in fall colors, spread them before each take and raked them back up to reuse. Pumpkins were hard to find, and Carpenter and Cundey framed shots to keep palm trees out. Local families dressed their kids in costumes for the trick-or-treat scenes. The Myers house was an abandoned house owned by a church, and the crew cleaned and repainted it. The opening point-of-view murder was the last shot of the production. The station wagon Michael steals was a rented 1978 Ford LTD that went to auction after the shoot.

Carpenter gave Curtis a fear scale for each scene, with numbers like 6, 7 or 9 and a half, so her terror would stay consistent when shooting out of order. When Nick Castle asked about Michael's motivation, Carpenter told him to walk from one mark to another and not act. For the moment Michael looks at Bob's body, Carpenter told Castle to tilt his head as if he were studying a butterfly collection. Pleasence suggested that Loomis's face at the empty lawn should say he knew this would happen, and that is the version in the film.

Principal photography: 21 days; spring 1978; Southern California.

Autumn effect: artificial leaves; reused between setups; spring shoot.

Myers house: abandoned property; cleaned/dressed for 1963 opening.

Opening POV murder: filmed at end of production.

Filming locations

• South Pasadena, California: Main stand-in for Haddonfield streets
• 707 Meridian Avenue, South Pasadena, California: The Myers house, a nearly 100-year-old abandoned house owned by a church. It later became a tourist attraction for fans.
• Orange Grove Avenue near Sunset Boulevard, Spaulding Square, Hollywood, California: The Wallace and Doyle houses for the climax, chosen because the street had few palm trees
• Garfield Elementary School, Alhambra, California: Tommy's elementary school
• Cemetery in Sierra Madre, California: Judith Myers's grave
• Burt Wheeler's Magic Shop, Hollywood Boulevard: Where Tommy Lee Wallace bought the Captain Kirk mask that became Michael's mask
• Sound Arts, Los Angeles: Recording the score
• South Pasadena, California served as the primary Haddonfield stand-in.
• The Myers house used during production stood at 707 Meridian Avenue in South Pasadena at the time of filming.
• West Hollywood locations also represented Haddonfield.

Effects and makeup

The film shows very little blood. Debra Hill said in Universal production notes for Halloween II that the first picture showed next to no blood, and that viewers think they see more than is on screen. Scholar Adam Rockoff calls it one of the most restrained horror films. The kills rely on staging, shadows and Carpenter's music rather than gore.

The opening murder is one unbroken point-of-view shot through the eyeholes of a child's clown mask. Debra Hill's hands stand in for young Michael's as he picks up the knife and stabs Judith.

Erica Ulland did the makeup and Conrad Rothmann handled special effects. Jim Winburn did stunt work as the Shape.

The official site counts seven people who played Michael: Nick Castle, Tommy Lee Wallace in the closet, Debra Hill as the child's hands and the shadow, Will Sandin, stuntman Jim Winburn, a dog trainer, and Tony Moran unmasked.

The 21-day spring shoot reused fake autumn leaves from setup to setup because Southern California did not naturally provide the desired fall look.

The abandoned Myers house was redressed for the 1963 opening, which was filmed at the end of the production.

Props and costumes

The mask was a Don Post Studios Captain Kirk mask that Tommy Lee Wallace bought for $1.98 at Burt Wheeler's Magic Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Wallace pulled off the sideburns, widened and reshaped the eyeholes, teased the hair and spray-painted the face a pale bluish white. The script called for a blank, featureless face. Wallace also tried an alternate mask modeled on the sad-faced clown Emmett Kelly.

Sources disagree on where the Kirk mask came from. Wikipedia reports that Don Post's mold was taken from William Shatner's face for The Devil's Rain (1975). Shatner claimed it came from Star Trek production.

Jamie Lee Curtis's whole wardrobe as Laurie cost about $100 at J.C. Penney. Many actors wore their own clothes.

Michael's weapon is a large kitchen knife stolen from the hardware store along with the mask and rope. Laurie fights back with a knitting needle and a wire coat hanger.

Judith Myers's stolen tombstone is set up over a body on the bed in the upstairs bedroom of the Wallace house.

The original theatrical poster art is by Bob Gleason.

Tommy Lee Wallace bought a Captain Kirk mask, removed the sideburns, enlarged/reshaped the eye holes, teased the hair and painted the face a pale bluish white to create Michael Myers's mask.

Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie wardrobe was bought cheaply at JCPenney to support the low-budget production and conservative character design.

Design

Production artifacts

Art and design

• Official HalloweenMovies archive has international theatrical posters, newspaper advertising and vintage television-premiere advertising.
• Official film-stills gallery source recorded.
• Original theatrical poster: B.D. Fox & Friends Advertising; illustration by Bob Gleason.

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Judith Myers

Played by

Sandy Johnson

How

Stabbed repeatedly with a large kitchen knife

Where

Her bedroom in the Myers house, Halloween 1963

By

Michael Myers, age 6

Truck driver

Played by

Barry Bernardi (uncredited, listed by TMDB as the dead mechanic)

How

Killed off screen for his clothes; Loomis finds the abandoned truck but misses the body in the brush

Where

Roadside on the way from Smith's Grove

By

Michael Myers

A dog

How

Found freshly killed

Where

Inside the Myers house

By

Michael Myers

Lester, the Wallace family dog

How

Killed off screen after barking at Michael

Where

Outside the Wallace house

By

Michael Myers

Annie Brackett

Played by

Nancy Kyes

How

Strangled from the back seat, then her throat is cut

Where

Her car in the Wallace driveway

By

Michael Myers

Bob Simms

Played by

John Michael Graham

How

Lifted off the floor and pinned to the wall with a kitchen knife

Where

Wallace house kitchen

By

Michael Myers

Lynda Van Der Klok

Played by

P. J. Soles

How

Strangled with a telephone cord

Where

Upstairs bedroom of the Wallace house

By

Michael Myers

John Carpenter composed and performed the score himself in about three days at Sound Arts in Los Angeles. He cannot read or write music. Dan Wyman, a music professor at San Jose State University, helped with synthesizer programming and orchestration. Peter Bergren recorded and mixed it.

The main theme is a piano figure in 10/8, sometimes described as a complex 5/4. Carpenter has pointed to Dario Argento's Suspiria and the music of The Exorcist as influences.

The end credits say the music was performed by the Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra, a joke name for Carpenter and his friends that nods to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Songs: '(Don't Fear) The Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult, written by Donald Roeser, courtesy of CBS Records, plays on the car radio while Annie and Laurie drive. An untitled song by Carpenter's own band, the Coupe De Villes, plays as Laurie gets into Annie's car.

Soundtrack releases: Columbia Records in Japan, 1979. Varese Sarabande in the United States, 1983, running 33:43, followed by a CD in 1985 and reissues in 1990 and 2000. Varese Sarabande 20th Anniversary Edition, 1998, expanded to 51:51. Mondo Records LP, 2018, using mono tracks taken from the original 35mm film stem, running 45:58.

Home Media

• 1979, VHS and Betamax, Media Home Entertainment. First home video releases, reissued in 1981. The back of the box misspelled the name as Meyers. A 1979 copy sold on eBay for $13,220 in 2013.
• 1980, VHS, sold only at Video Shack stores in New York, alongside the Aquarius theatrical and pay-cable run.
• 1994, LaserDisc, The Criterion Collection. The two-disc CAV edition has a commentary with John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Debra Hill. A single-disc CLV version does not have it.
• August 3, 1995, VHS, Blockbuster Video commemorative edition.
• October 28, 1997, DVD and VHS, Anchor Bay Entertainment. First U.S. DVD. It is the only DVD with the original 1978 mono track.
• 1999, DVD, Anchor Bay two-disc limited edition with the theatrical cut, the Extended Edition, lenticular cover art and lobby cards.
• 2003, DVD, Anchor Bay 25th Anniversary Edition with a DiviMax transfer and a commentary with Carpenter, Curtis and Hill.
• October 2, 2007, Blu-ray, Anchor Bay/Starz. First Blu-ray release.
• 2008, DVD and Blu-ray, 30th Anniversary Commemorative Set, packaged with Halloween 4 and Halloween 5 and a replica mask.
• 2013, Blu-ray, 35th Anniversary Edition with a new transfer supervised by Dean Cundey. It won the Saturn Award for Best Classic Film Release.
• September 23, 2014, Blu-ray, Scream Factory and Anchor Bay Halloween: The Complete Collection box set.
• 2018, 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, Lionsgate 40th Anniversary edition.
• 2021, 4K Ultra HD plus two Blu-rays, Scream Factory Collector's Edition. The official site gives a September 28 street date, and High-Def Digest lists October 5. It has a new 4K scan of the original negative approved by Dean Cundey, in Dolby Vision and HDR10, with Dolby Atmos, 7.1, 5.1 and original mono audio. The 4K disc has commentaries with Carpenter and Curtis and with Cundey, Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle. Blu-ray disc two adds The Night She Came Home (59:43), Halloween Unmasked 2000 (27:16), TV version footage (10:46), the trailer, TV and radio spots, and galleries. Blu-ray disc three has the Extended Version with SD inserts (1:41:08), the Television Cut in SD (1:37:54), Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest (1:27:07), a vintage Moustapha Akkad interview, the Horror's Hallowed Grounds pilot (20:40) and bus tour (11:27), and an original color timing presentation.

Home video history

• Halloween novelization by Curtis Richards, a pen name of Richard Curtis. Bantam Books, 1979, reissued 1982. Compass brokered the deal to time it to the October 1979 re-release. It adds a Samhain curse backstory and has Michael speak at the sanitarium, which the film contradicts.
• Halloween video game for the Atari 2600 by Wizard Video, developed by VSS/MicroGraphic Image, 1983. The player is a babysitter saving children from an unnamed killer. Many cartridges had only a piece of tape with Halloween handwritten on it. It sold poorly and is now very rare.
• Chaos! Comics trilogy by Phil Nutman, 2000: Halloween, Halloween II: The Blackest Eyes and Halloween III: The Devil's Eyes, following an adult Tommy Doyle.
• Comics by Stefan Hutchinson: One Good Scare (2003, sold at the 25th anniversary convention in South Pasadena), Autopsis (inserted in the Halloween: 25 Years of Terror DVD), and Nightdance, 30 Years of Terror and The First Death of Laurie Strode from Devil's Due Publishing, 2008.
• Dead by Daylight Halloween chapter, 2016, with Michael Myers as The Shape and Laurie Strode in Haddonfield. It does not use Curtis's likeness or voice. The Halloween chapter was pulled from sale in 2026.
• Halloween: The Game from IllFonic, co-published with Gun Interactive. Announced in August 2025 and released September 8, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Windows.
• Halloween (1978) officially licensed trading cards, Fright-Rags, 2019. 78 base cards plus a checklist, packs of 9 cards and a sticker, with random autograph, sketch and chase cards. A PREVIEWS-exclusive hobby box added puzzle, foil, lenticular and metal inserts.
• Trick or Treat Studios, official licensed line: Michael Myers mask sculpted by Justin Mabry, The Boogeyman mask, economy mask, vacuform mask, Young Michael clown mask and adult and children's clown costumes, adult and children's coveralls, Laurie Strode and Samuel Loomis costumes, Michael Myers 1:6 figure, Dr. Loomis 1:6 figure, Scream Greats 8-inch figure, giant-size figure, mini bust, miniature characters, Myers House Pumpkin Micro Maniacs playset, figure stand, butcher knife prop (18.25 inches), poster knife prop (17.5 inches), foam knife, Halloween Game and board game, Strode Realty metal sign, pumpkin pail, wall decor, candle, ornaments, enamel pins, magnet, wrapping paper, Judith Myers tombstone bag and ornament, pumpkin purse, poster knife bag and Fear Fresheners.
• Funko: Pop! Michael Myers #3, Pop! Michael Myers new pose #1156, Pop! Michael Myers black light, and a Horror Michael Myers action figure.
• Mezco Toyz: Living Dead Dolls Presents Halloween (1978) Michael Myers.
• PCS Collectibles through Sideshow: Michael Myers 1:4 scale statue.
• McFarlane Toys: Movie Maniacs Series 2 Michael Myers figure.
• Fright-Rags: Fright Fights: Halloween card game and Haddonfield Boogeymen baseball hat.
• Apparel: CavityColors shirts (Stay Alive, One Good Scare, Screen Shocker, 45 Years of Terror, Immortal Classic, The Shape Stalks), a Spirit Halloween poster shirt, and a BoxLunch exclusive The Boogeyman shirt.
• Trick or Treat Studios officially licensed Halloween (1978) Michael Myers latex mask, sculpted by Justin Mabry from film reference imagery.
• Trick or Treat Studios Halloween (1978) Dr. Loomis 1:6 scale figure.

Books and publishing

Replica props and masks

Trading cards

The catalog

Trailers & clips

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Alternate Art

Merchandise