HalloweenMovies™ | The Official Halloween Website

FEATURED

How Long Can You Survive the 8-bit ‘Escape Michael Myers’ Video Game?

by

Forty years in the making, Laurie Strode’s final (?) confrontation with Michael Myers hits the big screen this Friday, October 19th from Universal Pictures, and to get you in the mood, the retro-style ‘Escape Michael Myers’ video game, in which the boogeyman chases our beloved and beleaguered final girl through a graveyard, the streets of Haddonfield and beyond, is now available for free online at www.escapemichaelmyers.com

It’s pretty addictive, although we here at Trancas haven’t been able to survive any longer than a minute and a half. How will you fair against The Shape?

The eleventh film in the franchise, co-written by director David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic of the same name, and thusly disregards all of the series subsequent entries. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

My Favorite Horror Movie: Michael Gingold on John Carpenter’s Halloween

by

With 1978’s Halloween currently in theaters (the film returned to cinemas on September 27th via CineLife Entertainment/Trancas International Films/Compass International Pictures), we’re continuing at HalloweenMovies.com our celebration of the John Carpenter classic via a series of essays on the subject.

Culled from the 2018 best-selling book My Favorite Horror Movie, which features 48 essays by horror creators on the films which shaped them (from our own Editor-in-Chief Sean Decker to Contracted star Matt Mercer and beyond), they serve to explore just why 40 years later, The Shape still terrifies.

In our final essay from the book, horror luminary Michael Gingold digs deep into Haddonfield.

HALLOWEEN
by
MICHAEL GINGOLD

All through my preteen years, I couldn’t handle horror films. I was that kid who was freaked out by scary  stuff. Forget watching through my fingers; I would actually stand while viewing genre flicks on TV, just in case they got to be too much and I had to run from the room. I was a big fan of Godzilla and similar monster movies, but the harder-core stuff—even the ones that were rated PG—was too intimidating. I did want to see Jaws when it first hit theaters just because I was so into sharks at the time, though the “May be too intense for younger children” note on the ads forestalled that possibility.

Things began to change around the time I turned twelve. I went to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers with my family and made it through unscathed (though today, I’m stunned it got away with a PG rating). Through the following spring and summer, I began getting curious about horror, and seeing a few of the R-rated examples—like Phantasm and Alien—along with Jaws, finally. They all had the desired effect, and I hid my eyes during Phantasm’s silver sphere scene and Alien’s chest-burster. Still, I began not only getting comfortable with being frightened by film, but enjoying the sensation—the natural high it created. My intrigue was fueled by a cover story in Newsweek called “Hollywood’s Scary Summer,” and the emergence of a new magazine called Fangoria (which featured my old friend Godzilla on the front of its first issue). And later in 1979, I saw the movie that made me love being scared.

I was vaguely familiar with John Carpenter’s Halloween, having seen a television ad or two when it first opened in October 1978. At that time, a newspaper-workers’ strike had shut down The New York Times, the paper in our household, so I didn’t read much about the movie then; in fact, I read more about it during a family vacation to England in the summer of ’79, when it had opened in the UK to lots of positive attention. Back then, however, before the video market took over, popular movies were rereleased all the time within a year or so of their initial openings, and so it was with Halloween, which returned to theaters in October ’79. That’s when I first saw it, and I didn’t know what hit me.

Never mind the now-classic opening single-take shot from young Michael Myers’ point of view; the damn music frightened me before the film proper even started. Carpenter’s simple but chilling 5/4-time theme had my hackles raised within the first minute, and the movie had me in its grip from then on. I don’t recall if I screamed out loud, but my grandmother, who took me to the movie (my parents just weren’t into the horror stuff), was genuinely concerned afterward at how frightened I had been.

She needn’t have worried. I had indeed been scared half to death by Halloween, more than by anything I’d ever watched before, and yet I had found it exhilarating. It was a huge change in the way I experienced movies. A year before, I had barely been able to take a made-for-TV schlocker like Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell; now, a movie that was originally advertised with the tagline “When were you last scared out of your wits by a movie?” had completely lived up to that promise—and I enjoyed the hell out of it. (The reissue ads, conversely, were stocked with laudatory quotes from critics. Contrary to popular belief, Halloween attracted a number of positive reviews from the start; one of my favorite excerpts—I can’t recall the source now—was “It’ll scare the seeds out of your pumpkin.”)

Part of the reason Halloween was so effective was that it literally got me where I lived. I grew up in exactly the kind of suburban town where Michael comes home to do his dirty work, and what makes the scenes between his prologue slaying of his sister and his All Hallows’ Eve rampage work so well is how ordinary, and thus relatable, they are. There’s nothing special about Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie and her friends, nor are they the hopped-up sex and party monsters of so many subsequent slasher films; they’re just typical teenage girls with typical teenage concerns. Producer and co-scripter Debra Hill reportedly wrote most of the heroines’ dialogue, and demonstrated a remarkable skill at capturing the tone and tenor with which young women conversed—not to mention that Lynda’s (P.J. Soles) favorite expression “totally” anticipated Frank and Moon Zappa’s hit song “Valley Girl” by four years.

Once we’ve gotten to know our central trio, along with young Tommy (Brian Andrews), whose dread of Halloween and “the boogeyman” helps amplify our own, Carpenter tightens the screws with merciless precision, demonstrating a remarkable handle on composition, framing and pacing. Even as I was caught up in Laurie and co.’s escalating fright, Halloween was the first time I was aware that a movie was directed, and I was able to admire Carpenter’s craft at the same time it was holding me in a death grip.

I became an instant Carpenter fan, eagerly anticipating each new film from the director (I didn’t have to wait long; The Fog debuted only five months later). I reviewed Halloween for my junior-high-school newspaper; one of the first pieces of criticism I ever wrote. I attempted to teach myself Carpenter’s Halloween theme on the family piano, and almost mastered it. I read Curtis Richards’ novelization and was puzzled by why the author felt it necessary to throw in the distracting backstory about Samhain (if only I knew…).

And when Halloween II opened in 1981, three friends and I went on Halloween night. This was back before sequels and franchise pictures had taken over the movie scene the way they have now. We weren’t dutifully catching the latest entry in an established series, we were getting more Halloween! The entire audience was primed for it, and we all responded with screams and laughs at the right places, shouted advice to Jamie Lee Curtis and “Shut up!” when that dumb cop says something stupid during the climactic action. Some consider Halloween II unworthy of its predecessor, but I’ll probably never be able to judge it objectively, because seeing it that first time was one of the best moviegoing experiences of my life. Part of the thrill was that we all went in costume, figuring the disguises would help our 14 and 15-year-old selves get into this R-rated movie without a parent or adult guardian, and we were right; seeing it unchaperoned was part of the excitement.

In the years since, I’ve seen hundreds (thousands?) of horror films, but none will ever hold the place in my heart that Halloween does. Halloween was the movie that crept into my psyche and unlocked that area where the fascination with the dark, scary and unknown resides. It transformed me from a casual fan of fright cinema to a passionate follower of the genre – just at the right time, when horror had its explosion of popularity in the very late ’70s and early ’80s. It was the film that I held all subsequent scare films up against. And it led me to a career in the horror field, fulfilling the dream that Halloween first inspired. One of my proudest achievements is the 8,000-word-plus history of the cinematic Michael Myers saga that I wrote for the booklet accompanying Shout! Factory and Anchor Bay’s Halloween: The Complete Collection deluxe Blu-ray boxed set. (On the other hand, when I took a gig scripting a very-low-budget movie called Halloween Night, my attempt to honor Carpenter’s legacy was completely stymied by the execution.)

I’ve seen Halloween countless times since that first viewing back in ’79, and while it doesn’t frighten me now like it did back then, I am still in thrall to what a relentlessly well-crafted film it is. To me, it’s one of those perfect movies, one that doesn’t have a wasted moment, in which all the elements click together perfectly. From the performances to the music to Dean Cundey’s mobile cinematography, which draws us right into the action (though it does not, as commonly thought, take Michael’s point of view at any point after his childhood prologue), every part of Halloween works in concert toward one goal: To terrify you, to leave you shaking when it’s over, yet to make you feel elated rather than worn down. Halloween did that to my 12-year-old self better than any other movie has since, and that’s why it remains my favorite horror movie.

_ _ _

Check out the new trailer for the re-release of 1978’s Halloween below, and for theatre and ticketing info, please visit www.CineLifeEntertainment.com

TAKEN FROM THE BOOK
MY FAVORITE HORROR MOVIE
© 2018 CHRISTIAN ACKERMAN/BLACK VORTEX CINEMA
MYFAVORITEHORRORMOVIE.COM

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trancas International Films or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Diff’rent Strodes: A Tale of Two Lauries

by

Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton Takes a Look at 2018’s Final Girl, Twenty Years Removed

For genre fans, the name Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton has become synonymous with modern horror journalism. From his humble beginnings working with The Horror Channel in the early 2000s and his co-creation of the revered Dread Central in 2006 (where he served as Editor-in-Chief for well over a decade) to his recent establishment of the popular Brainwaves Horror and Paranormal podcast in 2016, Barton’s erudite knowledge and unflinching editorial candor have made him a highly respected luminary within the horror sphere.

With that, I’m thrilled to welcome back Barton to HalloweenMovies.com as a guest writer, as here he takes a breezy look back at the tale of two Lauries, from director Steve Miner’s 1998 film Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later to director David Gordon Green’s upcoming Halloween, which opens in theaters this October 19th from Universal Pictures.

Sean Decker, Editor-in-Chief, HalloweenMovies.com

_____________

Diff’rent Strodes: A Tale of Two Lauries

Trauma. There’s no right or wrong way to deal with it. Everyone handles their demons in far different ways, but sometimes said demons are so diabolical… so maniacal… that even if you survive their onslaught, there’s no way you could ever be the same. As noted in my earlier piece, the Halloween franchise is home to very different plot threads, and that’s part of what makes it so enduring and exciting. It’s also home to two vastly different portrayals of the same character by the same actress – the indomitable Jamie Lee Curtis.

At the end of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Curtis’ character of Laurie Strode was left shaken, bloodied, broken, and barely breathing. The events of Halloween II were a direct extension of the horrors of that night. Strode was still very much hanging by a thread. Was it the boogeyman? As a matter of fact, it was.

This all led to Halloween: H20. In Steve Miner’s 1998 film, twenty years had passed since the massacre in Haddonfield, and Laurie still held on to the possibility that the events of that horrific night were not yet at their end. The result? She chose to fake her own death and assume the fictitious identity of one Keri Tate, a dean at a private school in Northern California, residing there with her 17-year-old son, John, the only other person to know her true name.

In H20, things haven’t been easy for Strode, and given the sound of her relationship with John’s father, who she describes as “An abusive, chain smoking, methadone addict,” her life has remained in the proverbial shitter. It’s no wonder she chose to hide. To start fresh. Her son didn’t deserve to be a product of the pain she’s been put through and struggles she’s had to face. Starting over and regaining some semblance of normality is high on her agenda. Make no mistake… Laurie in H20 is not weak; in fact she’s damned strong. She may have her demons, exemplified by alcohol abuse and a cabinet full of prescription pills, but she endures.

Unfortunately, her greatest fear is speeding toward Hillcrest Academy, and this time The Shape is looking to finish what he started. Their confrontation forces Laurie to channel her strength and anger into doing what needs to be done. However, the relentless killing machine that is Michael Myers ends up slipping away again, and this “seemingly” costs Strode her sanity and ultimately her life.

But now, forty years since Michael’s initial rampage, a different Laurie is back; and this one is doing anything but hiding. Instead, her psychological scars are on display, and not unlike like Myers, she’s been lying in wait for just the right moment to exact her own revenge. She’s empowered, angry, strong, and calculating. Gone is the sweet girl-next-door babysitter, and in her place is a warrior. One who will never let anyone or anything take from her again. She has a daughter and granddaughter whom she will fight tooth and nail for, and a single-gear drive that keeps her laser focused. She knows now that both she and Dr. Loomis were right: Michael Myers IS the boogeyman, and this time she will be ready.

There’s a lot of psychology at work in the best entries of the Halloween franchise. That’s what makes it so very special and why it has endured the test of time. How would you react if everything you knew and loved was taken from you? Especially your innocence. Ultimately it’s the loss of Laurie’s that is the most compelling victim of Myers, and David Gordon Green dives into the exploration of that loss, and the reclaiming of power – a conversation itself  pulled from the headlines – in Halloween.

Laurie roars.

Curtis is the kind of actor who has an incredibly dynamic range, and that’s part of what makes her character of Laurie Strode as legendary and iconic as The Shape himself. This undeniably epic collision that’s on our horizon… it is a gift for Halloween fans and the genre as a whole. We’re headed toward the exciting climax of a rivalry that has been brewing for decades. One whose epitaph is bound to be etched into stone and splashed with blood.

This is as big as it gets. Are you ready?

Trick or treat.
_____________

Co-written by director David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween serves as the eleventh entry in the franchise and is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Produced by Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and John Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer.

Halloween opens wide in theaters on October 19th 2018 via Universal Pictures.

My Favorite Horror Movie: Alex Napiwocki on John Carpenter’s Halloween

by

With director David Gordon Green’s 2018 feature Halloween fast approaching, we thought it time to further celebrate John Carpenter’s 1978 classic of the same name via a series of essays on the subject.

Culled from the 2018 Amazon best-selling book My Favorite Horror Movie, which features 48 essays by horror creators on the films which shaped them (from our own Editor-in-Chief Sean Decker to filmmaker Matt Mercer and beyond), they serve to explore just why forty years later, The Shape still terrifies.

HALLOWEEN
by
ALEX NAPIWOCKI

How does one pick a favorite horror film when there are so many? I love the exploitation of the ‘70s, the pure slashers of the ‘80s, and the gory melt movies of the early ‘90s. How do I narrow it down to just one? The only fair way seems to be to choose the one that started this horror obsession in the first place. The granddaddy of them all, the slasher that defines the genre – John Carpenter’s Halloween.

I grew up as a sick kid – allergies, asthma, the works. This left me with a lot of down time while the other kids were getting brainwashed at school. I’d run the gauntlet of late ‘80s and early ‘90s daytime TV. It was cheesy and I was already beginning to hate commercials. They bring you out of fantasy and back into reality, totally ruining the experience. This is why, at a young age, my tastes started moving from television to movies.

My sister, being seven years older, definitely had an impact on the movies and music I would find myself chasing. Through her, I found punk rock at nine, and horror films not long after. One particular illness left me home for a long haul. I had my tonsils removed and I was allergic to the anesthetic they used to put me under. During the surgery, my heart literally stopped. I was on bed rest for weeks. Blockbuster couldn’t keep up with me and I was running out of new releases left and right.

My sister had a best friend with quite the movie collection. He also had two VCRs hooked up to each other. One day, he sent a stack of VHS tapes through my sister to help me heal. Little did I know that they would change my life forever. One tape had a couple skate punk flicks, Thrashin’ and Gleaming The Cube, both of which I still love to this day. But those are guilty pleasures, not the Holy Grail. Halloween 1-6 were also in the stack, and holy shit, was life about to be worth living.

I’d seen some horror flicks and had an idea what the Halloween movies were. I knew about the Jason movies and the Chucky movies. Most of the horror films I’d seen were part of the ghost, vampire, or werewolf genres. None of those prepared me for what was about to take place. I began watching Halloween. Seeing Michael Myers take the screen was the first time I was truly terrified while watching a film.

Halloween is not a movie that requires gore. It’s the fear of what’s behind you that makes this film truly terrifying. Michael doesn’t move like a man. He doesn’t move like a maniacal monster either. He moves like only Michael Myers can: smooth, stealthy and calculated. He doesn’t have any cheesy catchphrases. In fact, he never says a word, and it makes him so much creepy than any other horror icon.

There’s more to Halloween than Michael Myers to make it my favorite. Jamie Lee Curtis is the quintessential final girl. No one can match her innocence and strength. Following Laurie Strode (played by Curtis) through Haddonfield is how we viewers became locals. The town and Michael are both viewed through her eyes. Her cat and mouse game with Myers is among the best in horror history.

I spent a couple weeks just watching Halloween over and over. I had the whole series up to the Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle one, but the first flick, I watched twice as much as the rest combined. It has the best characters and the best scares. The music is next level, the lighting is eerie, and the locations are haunting. It’s everything one should strive for when making a horror film.

When the curator of this collection of essays, Christian Ackerman, gave me this task, I don’t think he knew how much he was involved in making Halloween my favorite horror film. He accidentally (or knowing him, quite purposely) taught me the fundamentals of film. He did this by giving me a bunch of VHS tapes in the ‘90s, and it all started with this one perfectly scary flick.

Flash forward to 2015: I filmed my first short film as a writer and director. A trash comedy Halloween slasher titled The Curse Of The Glamulet. My inspirations at the time were definitely more John Waters and Troma than classic horror or even slashers, but the model was Halloween. My film turned into its own take on the final girl and the Halloween slasher. I was even compelled to name the main character Laurie. Forty years later, the film industry still pays homage to this flick. I literally wouldn’t be making films or writing this essay without it. Sorry Jason. Sorry Freddy. My favorite horror movie is, without a doubt, Halloween.

_ _ _

Check out the new trailer for the re-release of 1978’s Halloween below, and for theater and ticketing info, please visit www.CineLifeEntertainment.com

 

TAKEN FROM THE BOOK
MY FAVORITE HORROR MOVIE
© 2018 CHRISTIAN ACKERMAN/BLACK VORTEX CINEMA
MYFAVORITEHORRORMOVIE.COM

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trancas International Films or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Revenge of Jamie Lee Curtis

by

Welcome to the age of “big-box office post-trauma horror.”

Vulture journalist David Edelstein digs deep into the legacy of 1978’s Halloween, David Gordon Green’s upcoming direct sequel of the same name, the ‘final girl’ mythos and so much more in this ‘must read’ article with series star Jamie Lee Curtis and originating filmmaker John Carpenter.

Photo by: Robert Trachtenberg for New York Magazine

Read the article here.

*A version of this article appears in the October 1, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe here.

Halloween next plays on October 6th at Beyond Fest in Hollywood, CA at the Egyptian Theater as part of ‘Halloween Day’ (along with 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, with Halloween series producer Malek Akkad in person, and more) before opening wide in theaters on October 19th, 2018 via Universal Pictures.

Co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is produced by Trancas International Films’ Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer.

Go Under the Knife with Michael Myers in the Halloween Face Your Fate Video Generator

by

Ever wonder what your reflection would look like in Michael Myers’ butcher knife?

Universal Pictures is excited to launch today the Halloween Face Your Fate video generator, which allows fans to easily create a unique video that’ll answer that terrifying question (and make a cool Facebook profile video, as well as one easily shareable for Instagram and Twitter, in the process). All you’ve got to do is upload a photo of yourself to the Halloween Face Your Fate video generator here, and The Shape will do the (stabby) rest (check out a demo below).

David Gordon Green’s Halloween is set for release October 19th, 2018 from Universal Pictures.

Jamie Lee Curtis is the Ultimate Horror Heroine on EW’s Halloween Cover

by

“The Best HALLOWEEN Ever!” top lines this Friday’s issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Hitting new stands tomorrow, Entertainment Weekly and photographer Art Streiber dive deep into director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s upcoming film Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19th, 2018, in a wonderful celebration of not only it, but of the series itself, with particular attention paid to the grande dame of final girls, Jamie Lee Curtis.

Said Curtis today via her personal Twitter of the above photo shot by Streiber and contained within the spread, “In all my years playing Laurie Strode & representing the Halloween movies there has never been an image that captured the journey better than this. My gratitude to @EW & Art Streiber, Michele Romero, Victoria Wood & the teams at the magazine & @halloweenmovie for this moment.”

Containing interviews with Curtis, Green, co-writer and executive producer Danny McBride, series originator and composer John Carpenter and The Shape himself (actor and filmmaker Nick Castle), all which stem from eight months of journalism (EW began their coverage of the film during principal photography earlier this year in Charleston, South Carolina), you can check out a teaser here of an issue that’s a ‘must have’ for fans of the series.

Additonally co-written by Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, Green’s Halloween serves as the eleventh entry in the franchise and is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad and Bill Block additionally produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Trancas’ Ryan Freimann.

Check out the trailer below.

LA Press Junket: John Carpenter & Jason Blum Talk Halloween

by

On Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with executive producer and composer John Carpenter and producer Jason Blum on the Universal backlot to discuss their forthcoming film Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19th, 2018.

Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green with the latter directing, this eleventh entry in the franchise is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad and Bill Block additionally produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Trancas’ Ryan Freimann.

Seated outdoors on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, Blum said of his approach in attracting Carpenter to Green’s Halloween, which serves as a narrative recalibration of the franchise, “I went to the people who own the rights and I said that I really wanted to do a new Halloween movie, but that I had a couple of conditions. The most important condition was that I wasn’t going to do it without John Carpenter. And they said that they’d already approached him and that he’d said he wasn’t interested. And I said that I had to meet with him, because I wasn’t going to do it without him.”

“So John is very direct,” continued the Blumhouse CEO, “and he gets to the point. We had a fourteen minute meeting (together). The key, and I think this is what changed his mind, is that I said to him, ‘John, they’re going to make this movie with or without us. You may as well join the party instead of letting them do it alone.’ And I think he said, ‘Well, that may make a little sense.’”

“That’s true,” added Carpenter, “Jason challenged me to not sit on the sidelines and criticize, which is very easy to do with these sequels that have been coming out. They’re just awful. So Jason asked, ‘(Instead) why don’t you help?’ (So I said) OK, I can do that, and I helped.”

With much discussion within Halloween fandom concerning the latest film’s jettisoning of Laurie and Michael’s familial ties as established in 1981’s Halloween II (a film which in Green’s revamped Halloween universe is no longer canon), Carpenter commented, “You know the reason I wrote that was because they sold the (original Halloween) movie to NBC to air on TV, and it was too short! (So) I had to go back and shoot more material (for the television version). So I made up that silly, stupid idea (of Michael being Laurie’s brother).”

As for Laurie, inarguably cinema’s most iconic ‘final girl,’ an archetype originated by actress Curtis in Carpenter’s classic (and revisited here by her for the fourth time), Blum was asked if they would have proceeded into production on Green’s Halloween without her involvement.

Answered the forty-nine-year old producer, “We would have (but) we really wanted Jamie Lee Curtis. She had kind of quite publicly said though, ‘I’m never doing this again.’ She did the movie because of David Gordon Green. He and Danny met with her, and he shared his vision with her, and she’d actually had a meeting with Jake Gyllenhaal, who was in David’s prior movie. Jake had said to her, ‘David is a real director and someone great to work with,’ and so she agreed to do it. But yes, I think we would have (proceeded into production without her).”

Blum then asked Carpenter, “Would you have?”

“I don’t know, but the part is a great part, and she had to do it,” answered the filmmaker, before joking, “I would have beaten her up if she hadn’t.”

Also returning to the fold from Carpenter’s original is The Shape actor Nick Castle.

“David Gordon Green was sitting in my living room and said, ‘What’s going on with Nick? Has he got all his marbles?’” recalled Carpenter, “And I said, ‘Yeah, he’s great, he can do it.’” So, he called him up. And they cast him.”

“Honestly, that’s the best and smartest thing this production has done, is to get him back,” added Carpenter of Castle’s 2018 reprisal of cinema’s most infamous boogeyman (aided this time out by stunt actor James Jude Courtney). “Nick is so great in this role. His father was a choreographer, so Nick has this grace. I’ve never seen a monster walk like that. And you can’t forget it once you’ve see it. So, he’s back.”

As for the production’s decision to bring on a filmmaker whose filmography exists outside the genre, a move which surprised those who assumed that such a high-profile retool would be entrusted to a seasoned horror auteur, Blum offered, “I have a fundamental belief which exists outside of Hollywood (thinking), that great horror movies come from great directors. John has made great genre movies, and great not-genre movies. So when I look for directors, I really look for directors whose work I love. We make so many genre movies (at Blumhouse that) the scares are kind of easy. The hard part of horror is the storytelling and the script and the acting and all that stuff that’s in every movie. The horror part is the easier part. So we really look for great directors, and I have always admired Green since (his 2000 film) George Washington. I’ve tried to work with him on a bunch of different things, and he’s said, ‘No.’ With Halloween, this was the first time he said, ‘Yes.’”

And while Carpenter may indeed have passed the directorial reigns to Green, the score for the new film will be all his own (or more correctly, Carpenter’s, his son Cody’s and Daniel Davies’). Releasing from Sacred Bones Records on October 19 (you can purchase it here), the Halloween Original Motion Picture Soundtrack continues in the essence of Carpenter’s composition for the 1978 original, retaining the haunting synth sounds of its predecessor, as well as in occasion that famous 5/4 time.

      Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, photo by Sophie Gransard.

Said the seventy-year old Carpenter (who embarks on a music tour of Europe this October which culminates in a Hollywood, CA show on Halloween night – tickets are available here) of scoring the new film, “It started when we had a spotting session with Green. He told me what he wanted. We sat in front of the movie and he said, ‘Here’s this scene.’ I said, ‘What do you want to do with this scene? What is the feeling you want out of this scene?’ So that’s how we started.”

Often succinct, the artist did take a moment to reflect on his creation’s prolific nature some forty years after he first went trick or treating, by saying, “Michael Myers to me is like Godzilla. Godzilla’s an all-purpose monster. He was a bad guy, then he became a good guy. He was beloved by children. Then he was evil again. Michael Myers can fit into any slasher movie. There he is. He’s blank. He may be human. He may be supernatural. We don’t know.”

For 2018’s Halloween, “David made him human, and he’s scary,” concluded Carpenter.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Check out the trailer below.

Halloween – Heritage Trailer

by

In twenty-seven days, evil returns to Haddonfield in director David Gordon Green’s Halloween, and in anticipation of the buzzed-about feature film, Universal Pictures has released a new teaser trailer with an interesting angle.

Taking a true crime approach in the framing of The Shape’s terrifying backstory, it additionally sets up the new film’s central confrontation between Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, returning to her iconic role) and nemesis Michael Myers (Nick Castle).

See the trailer below.

The eleventh film in the franchise, co-written by director David Gordon Green and collaborators Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, the latest Halloween film serves as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers. They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter.

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.

 

 

Halloween Has Premiered in Texas at Fantastic Fest and here’s what the Critics are Saying

by

Ahead of its October release via Universal Pictures, director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s Halloween held its Texas premiere to a packed house this past Thursday, September 20th at Fantastic Fest in Austin (which runs through September 27th), and the critical response continues to be overwhelmingly positive.

Photo credit: Austin 360 (l to r: Jason Blum, Bill Block, Andi Matichak, Jamie Lee Curtis, Malek Akkad, Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride)

Says ComingSoon.net’s Alan Cerny, “Green and McBride are not reinventing Carpenter’s wheel.  Instead, they’re adding some torque and drive to it, and the result is one of the best horror sequels in many years,” while Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle proclaims, “When David Gordon Green announced he was taking on the Halloween franchise, there was general befuddlement. But seeing what he has achieved with a sequel that is both loving and insightful, it makes all the sense in the world.”

That’s not all. Joe Gross of Austin 360 states, “This is Curtis’ show; her third-act confrontation with the man who destroyed Strode’s life plays out with tension and chills,” and Bad Feeling Magazine’s Gabriel Sigler effuses, “Green nails the film’s tone down perfectly, capturing Michael Myers in a way we haven’t seen since John Carpenter’s original.”

Halloween next plays on October 6th at Beyond Fest in Hollywood, CA at the Egyptian Theater as part of ‘Halloween Day’ (along with 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, with Halloween series producer Malek Akkad in person, and more) before opening wide in theaters on October 19th, 2018.

The eleventh film in the franchise and co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s ‘78 film, and thusly disregards all of the series subsequent entries. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Check out the trailer below.