HalloweenMovies™ | The Official Halloween Website

Jamie Lee Curtis

Haddonfield Comes to Pasadena, CA October 12-14 with Halloween: 40 Years of Terror

by

Tickets to the biggest Halloween convention in history are now on sale. Get yours before they sell out!

Presented by HorrorHound Ltd., Sean Clark, Trancas International Films and Compass International Pictures, the Halloween: 40 Years of Terror convention, running October 12th through the 14th at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California is nearly upon us, and promises to be the biggest celebration ever of the storied, four decade-spanning franchise.

Featuring celebrity guests from all eleven films in the franchise (the impressive list, which includes notable cast, directors and crew is massive and continues to grow, and contains many first-time ever appearances), one-of-a-kind events, special gallery offerings, cast Q&As, a Horror’s Hallowed Grounds location bus tour, exclusive H40 and Halloween merchandise offerings, myriad vendors and much more, it’s an event not to be missed.

With VIP tickets having already SOLD OUT, admission to the Halloween: 40 Years of Terror convention CAN STILL be obtained here (although I’d predict not for long, so don’t dawdle). For further information on the convention, including schedule, lodging and more, visit the official site here, and stay up to date with them on the convention’s Facebook page here.

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.

John Carpenter’s Halloween Returns to Theaters TODAY

by

Celebrating its 40th anniversary, John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic is being re-released in advance of David Gordon Green’s sequel, and returns to theaters beginning today, September 27th, 2018.

For theaters and showtimes, please visit CineLifeEntertainment.com.

Read on for further and exciting details!

From the press release:

LOS ANGELES, CA – Cinelife Entertainment, the event cinema division of Spotlight Cinema Networks, has teamed up with Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films Compass International Pictures and to bring John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 classic back to select theaters worldwide beginning September 27, 2018.

In the film, the villain, Michael Myers, has spent the last 15 years locked away inside a sanitarium under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis. On October 30, 1978, Myers escapes and makes his way back home to Haddonfield, turning a night of tricks and treats into something much more sinister for three young women, including Laurie Strode, the star-making role for Jamie Lee Curtis.

The original Halloween will be released on over 1,000 screens in over twenty countries across the globe. “I’m thrilled to have the original make its way back into theatres, as we prepare for the release of the sequel. Having both back in theatres this fall is remarkable,” says director John Carpenter.

Fans will be treated to view big screen presentations of the restored and remastered digital print, created under the supervision of the world-renowned cinematographer, Dean Cundey.

“We are thrilled to be a part of the 40th anniversary celebration, working with Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films to bring the most fear-provoking and enduring horror movies of all time to cinema screens around the globe,” said Mark Rupp, Managing Director, CineLife Entertainment.

The release of John Carpenter’s Original Halloween comes just ahead of the release of Halloween (2018) – the direct sequel to John Carpenter’s classic. Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle reprise their roles as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, respectively. It is set for release on October 19th, a week before the 40th anniversary of the original Halloween release date.

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.

LA Press Junket: Jamie Lee Curtis Talks 2018’s Halloween

by

This past Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with film star Jamie Lee Curtis on the Universal backlot to discuss her forthcoming movie Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this October. Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green and directed by the latter, Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Seated outdoors at a picnic table on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, which was decked out for the occasion in Halloween décor, Lee said of the film, which ignores all existing sequels subsequent to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film and which pits Curtis’ character of Laurie Strode up against original nemesis Michael Myers, albeit in a fresh way, “It’s a movie about trauma. There’s no question. Generational trauma. But you know, it can’t be (too) heavy. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Halloween movie, so it can’t be laden with psycho drama. Do you know what I mean? It has to be judicious.”

The generational trauma Curtis referred to is the PTSD her character now suffers after having survived the (now random, as they aren’t related in the new narrative) October 31, 1978 attack by escaped mental patient Myers, as set forth in Carpenter’s original. And as with any tragedy, the ensuing trauma has impacted everyone in its path. In Green’s Halloween that includes Laurie’s daughter Karen (portrayed by actress Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (newcomer Andi Matichak).

Expounding on the familial damage the attack would inflict, as well as the personal, Curtis recalled of the shoot, and of her head space during, “The entire movie I was very isolated. I’m a homebody. I’m a mom. I’m a card carrying friend. Do you know what I mean? I buy a lot of birthday presents. I’m that girl. And I left (my home) and went to South Carolina to make this movie and I was very isolated. And from the moment I began the movie, Laurie’s trauma just all came back. The first time I walked on set it was very emotional. And it was that way all of the way through.”

Curtis continued of ‘finding’ Laurie four decades later, pointedly in a moment which serves to communicate the enormity of her trauma, “It was the last scene (of the film) that we shot, and as written in the script, Laurie sits in the truck, her truck, and there’s a gun and there’s alcohol and basically forty years of trauma comes back. Now, what do you do? So I prepared, and we were shooting it in the middle of nowhere in Charleston on a street called Ashley Phosphate Road in that truck and in a parking lot at night, with a bunch of lights and a bunch of people.”

“You need to know in advance that when I make a movie I like crews to wear name tags for the first few days of the production,” expounded the actress, “Because I like to know who you are. So on this last day, as I walked to Laurie’s little truck under this bank of lights and cranes (ready to shoot the scene), I realized that the entire crew were (instead) wearing names tags which read, ‘We Are Laurie Strode.’ The entire crew was saying, ‘We are with you. We are all in this together, and we believe in you.’ Needless to say, it was an incredibly emotional gift for them to give me, and something that for me was sort of the underpinning of the whole thing. It was beautiful.”

As Green’s Halloween cuts a new path in the franchise, talk then turned to the complicated narrative of the Halloween series, from the introduction of Jamie Lloyd as the daughter of a deceased Laurie in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988, to the re-introduction of Laurie (and that of a new timeline) in 1998’s Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, the latter of which was intended as the final showdown between Laurie and Michael.

“H20 was my simplistic idea of, ‘Hey! We’re all still in show business and the movie’s twenty years old. How often does that happen? Let’s make a twentieth anniversary movie and deal with the trauma,’” offered Curtis of the Steve Miner-directed film.

“(In that film) she was running (and had) changed her identity,” she continued. “She was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and we tried to explore it a little bit in that movie, but she wasn’t Laurie Strode. She’d already given up her identity. And it just didn’t work. I mean it was good. There were great things in it. It just wasn’t great.”

“What was beautiful about what David, Danny and Jeff did is,” Curtis mused of the writers’ decision (which was to ignore, barring the first film, its predecessors), “is that if you imagine all the Halloween movies as their own inner tubes on a lake, all they did was untie them from the dock. And they floated away. And they all exist. There’s Halloween II, there’s Halloween 4, but the only one that this movie relates to is the first one. Because in order to tell this story, that was the way they could. If they had to take all of those stories and try to weave them together, it wouldn’t have been possible, because Laurie died (in Halloween: Resurrection)! So I think the way that they did it was beautiful, and all of those movies still exist. None of them have been popped and or drowned. Do you know what I mean? They’re right there. But this is the story we’re telling today.”

And in this story, the character of Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson factors significantly. Portrayed by newcomer Andi Matichak, Curtis effused of the young actress (who bears a striking resemblance to the nineteen year old version of the grande dame of scream queens in not only physicality but in demeanor), “Andi (apparently) was going to go to college on a soccer scholarship, and that summer, before college, she went to model in Greece and met an actor’s manager there, who said, ‘You could be an actress.’ And she gave up college and moved to New York to become an actor at nineteen.”

Curtis continued of the shared similarities in their respective career trajectories, “When I was nineteen I was going to college, and I ran into an actor’s manager who said, ‘You could be an actress,’ and I went up for a part and ended up quitting college and becoming an actor. (1978’s) Halloween was my first movie. (2018’s) Halloween is her first movie. Neither of us were going to be actors, and we both ended up being actors, and in a Halloween film for our first movie.”

She concluded of Matichak, “She’s gorgeous, she’s grounded, and she’s gonna’ be a big star.”

David Gordon Green’s Halloween arrives to theaters October 19th, 2018 from Universal Pictures.

Check out the trailer below.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Win Tickets to Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood & Orlando From HalloweenMovies.com!

by

We’ve got four pairs of tickets to give away, courtesy of Halloween Horror Nights and HalloweenMovies.com, and they could be yours! Read on for details on how to win.

With Halloween Horror Nights in full swing at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando theme parks, as well as the Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers mazes in both, The Shape continues his much buzzed-about return to Haddonfield in 2018.

To celebrate it, as well as the exciting re-release of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween in theaters worldwide on September 27, 2018 (from CineLife Entertainment, Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films), we’ve got FOUR PAIRS of general admission tickets to Halloween Horror Nights to give away to a quartet of our lucky readers.

How to win? It’s simple.

Just follow HalloweenMovies on Twitter at @HalloweenMovies here and retweet our announcement of the re-release of Carpenter’s Halloween here (and make sure to include the hashtags #HalloweenMovie AND either #HHNHollywood or #HHNOrlando in your retweet, specifying which park you’d like to attend).

We’ll be watching, and from those who’ve followed, retweeted and hashtagged correctly, four people will be randomly selected and notified via Twitter, with each receiving a pair of tickets for the date and park of their choice via USPS First Class mail!

It’s that easy, because after all, everyone’s entitled to one good scare.

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

For more information about Halloween Horror Nights at either Universal Studios Hollywood or Universal Orlando Resort, visit them here, and engage with them on social media using @UniStudios @HorrorNights #UniversalHHN

Contest details:
– Winners will be notified October, 1, 2018 via Twitter. US Residents only.
– This event may be too intense for young children and is not recommended for children under the age of 13.
– Tickets may not be copied, transferred or resold, and are nonrefundable.
– Tickets valid on selected date only. Event occurs rain or shine. No refunds. Ticket cannot be combined with other offers, separately ticketed events, discounts, or per capita sightseeing tours.
– The person using this ticket assumes all risk of personal injury and loss of property.

My Favorite Horror Movie: Matt Mercer on John Carpenter’s Halloween

by

With the re-release of 1978’s Halloween taking place next week (the film returns to theaters 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, they serve to explore just why 40 years later, The Shape still terrifies.

Second up (on the heels of our first essay is a piece by Beyond the Gates and Contracted star Matt Mercer, who found that as a child his all-encompassing fear of that shark from Amity was supplanted by that of a featureless masked murderer from Illinois, during one simple VHS viewing.

HALLOWEEN
by
MATT MERCER

In July of 1986, ABC aired Jaws as the Sunday Night Movie. I was six years old, visiting my grandparents in Culpeper, VA, and, with my mom’s “okay”, they let me stay up late to watch it to the end. It changed my life.

For the next few months, I literally couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I convinced my mom to buy the VHS cassette of Jaws and I watched it constantly. Watched it until certain sections of the tape (mainly the attack sequences which I replayed over and over) were so demagnetized that one couldn’t make out what was happening on-screen entirely. Adjusting the tracking on the VCR didn’t make a lick of difference. Just as Bryan Adams played his guitar until his fingers bled…I played Jaws until the tape was in shreds.

I became a shark fanatic. I wanted to be Matt Hooper, the Richard Dreyfuss character. I projected a future in which I became a marine biologist – specifically an ichthyologist – who studied all kinds of sharks. I’d get myriad scars from my encounters with them. I’d live the Hooper Life, traveling the world to find giant sharks and study them. Amity Island, Brisbane, aboard the Orca or the Aurora… bring it on. I’d read every book about sharks. I was ready.

I tried to convince my mom we needed to switch our summer beach trips from Myrtle Beach, SC to Amity Island. It’d be safe… they didn’t have a shark problem anymore. The issue I encountered was when I looked on a map to find Amity Island, I could only find an Amityville in New York. The heck?! Where was the island? Must be some mistake.

We had a fish tank and I cruelly tried to tie a soda can to one of my pets with a string to see if I could recreate the yellow barrel scenes from the film. It didn’t work. Beta fish are slippery. And fast. (As Hooper would say, “Fast fish.”) I also “recreated” several attacks from Jaws in the bathtub with little green plastic army men and a rubber Great White. These reenactments came to a halt when my stepmom couldn’t find her McCormick red food coloring and I got in trouble for stowing it under the sink in the bathroom, having used almost all of it for the attacks.

When the school year started, my first grade teacher Mrs. Jones expressed concern when, for the first show-and-tell of the year, I didn’t share my shell collection from a summer trip to the beach, or cookies I’d baked with Mom, or a wood shop project made with Dad… No. No, no, no. I performed Quint’s death from Jaws in all its glory. I laid on the floor in front of the entire class, and while kicking and screaming, slid down the stern of the Orca into the shark’s mouth. In my mind, it played beautifully. I flailed wildly. I kicked at the imaginary chomping maw of the shark. I maneuvered my body to make the slide seem natural, as if the floor were at an angle. I aped Robert Shaw’s giant blood- puke. And, I very clearly recall the army of blank stares I got in return from my classmates when I was done.

Further explanation of the scene and the events leading up to it didn’t help, and Mrs. Jones quickly invited me to sit down before the details became more grotesque. Enough already. I wanted to yell at them, “Don’t you get it?! I’ve experienced this incredible thing, and so help me God, you’re going to take the journey with me!”

What had this movie done to six-year-old me? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about it and wanting to relive and recreate its thrills over and over in any way possible? Was any of the movie real? How did they make it? Was Robert Shaw really killed by that shark? What was the path to more of these thrills?

These questions started to be answered that Christmas, when my grandmother (who had become aware it was Jaws 24/7 for me, and was also super-cool apparently) gifted me a copy of The Jaws Log, a firsthand account of the making of the movie Jaws by one of its screenwriters, Carl Gottlieb. Now, this book was a bit advanced for someone my age, and although I was a fairly advanced reader, I didn’t entirely get it. My filmmaking lexicon was limited at that age, obviously. But it made one thing clear for me: the movie wasn’t “real” and a group of people had indeed made it. They’d put it together, piece by piece, over a relatively large chunk of time, photographed it, and the process was all spearheaded by one person, a director, Steven Spielberg. Jaws wasn’t some crazy event that happened to get recorded by some folks near the beach. It was manufactured, piece-by-piece, and came out as this scary movie. Great.

So, that means there must be more of these movies. Right?

Not long after finishing The Jaws Log (probably early ’87 by now), I asked my mother one morning while getting ready for school, “Mom, what is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?”

She thought for a moment. “Hmmm. Probably Halloween.”

Halloween? There’s a horror movie called Halloween?! My kid-brain caught fire. My mind started to conjure what the movie might be, and the dream-reel didn’t stop…images of demons in the autumn dark, monsters snatching trick-or-treaters off the street and dragging them into the woods, creatures with glowing jack o’ lanterns for heads…what the hell could this film be? She wouldn’t tell me. And thus began a massive campaign on my part to see the movie. I wouldn’t let up.

I mean, I really begged, and begged, and begged my mother to rent it. I could handle the movie, but I couldn’t handle waiting until I was older to see it. Her answer was a flat “no,” until honestly, I don’t recall how her change of heart exactly happened, but after a few weeks, she finally relented and agreed to let me see it on one condition: she had to watch it first, and I had to turn away during anything involving nudity or sex.

Deal.

Next thing I knew we were headed to Rent-A-Tainment, our local video store in Newport News, VA. It had a bright yellow sign shaped like a strip of unspooled celluloid, the store’s name in big bold letters on top of that – a beautiful beacon at dusk. I remember that night vividly. Prior to the video store, we’d grabbed some dessert, something called frozen yogurt (a fresh concept in the mid-’80s, and a “healthy” alternative to ice cream!) from a new place called Yogurt’s Inn. (Newport News small business owners in the mid-1980s were super clever in the store-naming department.) Walking into Rent-A-Tainment, I went straight to the Horror section, blowing past all the sections (Disney, Family, etc) that had been safe, easy, and allowed in the past…

And there it was. The VHS display box of the Media Home Entertainment release of John Carpenter’s Halloween. The iconographic box art with the jack-o-lantern and a big hand with insane vascularity, swooping down with a gleaming butcher knife in its grip where the last ridge of the pumpkin should be… it stared me in the face. Glorious. It held so much promise.

We raced home and popped it in…I don’t recall if my mother ended up doing a pre-screening or not (I think she just winged it from her memory), but I do remember the experience of watching it that night. From the opening credits, as the camera slowly pushed into the glowing, flickering pumpkin, I was completely entranced. I couldn’t move. And it just kept getting more and more intense, every element of the film perfectly calibrated to scare the living hell out of me…out of the audience. It was one of those rare times the movie lives up to the quality you’ve been cultivating in your head…even though it was nothing like the movie that had been playing in my head prior to seeing it.

But watching Halloween was more than just a defying of expectations.

That night was the peak viewing experience of my (short) life up to that point. Part of that experience was I’m sure due to the fact that I was a young, impressionable kid watching a truly scary movie for the first time, but I don’t know that another film has worked on me like that since. At least not in that way. It was everything all at once. Every element of the film wrapped around me like a dark blanket of dread and terror that, as the film played on, tightened around my mind and body until I was suffocating. But I couldn’t look away. I just wanted more. Where Jaws had imbued me with a sense of wonder and thrills, Halloween was scarier and more pure…it was perfect, shadowy atmosphere and visceral terror honed from the simplest (but well-crafted) elements. Jaws was my gateway into horror and showed the possibilities of film, but Halloween was the real deal and blew my world apart. I think I watched that two-day rental copy ten times that first weekend I saw it. To this day, I watch Halloween at least three times a year. I’m still obsessed. It still takes me on an incredible journey and inspires me to no end.

So much has been written about Halloween…the making of it, its success as a low-budget independent film, how it ushered in and created an entirely new “slasher” subgenre and era of horror films, and the techniques that made it so effective. I won’t regurgitate that here in great detail. If you’ve seen the movie, and read about it, you know these things already. The techniques Carpenter uses are transcendent and game changing. The music. The mask. Dean Cundey’s cinematography. The way he fills the ‘Scope frame. It’s a flawless intersection of technique, storytelling, atmosphere, and scares. There’s an unrepeatable and unmistakable alchemy that makes the film what it is. In other words, it’s all about how this story is told, not necessarily what it’s about. The style these elements create, added to the simplicity of the film, is the formula that makes it so effective.

In a small Midwestern town, Michael, a six-year-old boy murders his sister on Halloween. Fifteen years later, on Halloween, he escapes the sanitarium where he’s being held, and goes back to his hometown to kill again. That’s pretty much it.

Simple.

Over the years since the first time I saw the film and the countless times since, I’ve often thought about what the key factor is (beyond the aforementioned style) that makes it my favorite horror movie. I think the answer lies somewhere in its restraint. In a way, it’s not what Carpenter did do, it’s what he didn’t do that makes Halloween special. The film is nearly bloodless. He uses the frame to create a visual language that puts us on edge, as opposed to throwing gore at us (not that there’s anything wrong with that…I love a good bloodbath, but I’m glad it’s not here). Carpenter also suggests, but doesn’t overexplain, the subtle supernatural aspects of Myers. Mystery begets better terror. The first of these touches is the fact that it takes place on Halloween. In its development, the film was originally called The Babysitter Murders (which sounds scary already), until one of the producers of the film, Irwin Yablans, suggested it take place on (and be called) Halloween. This idea was a stroke of genius, because although Carpenter (wisely) doesn’t use the dark holiday to explain Michael’s killing spree, the fact that Michael “activates” on All Hallows’ Eve adds a layer of bizarre uneasiness to his motivations. It comes from somewhere dark and inexplicable. Carpenter knew better than to have a ritual or séance or possession aspect to explain the killer’s actions…it’s just simply the date when Michael goes home to kill. And that’s enough.

Another subtle touch: the methods used to make Michael the personification of Evil. As Doctor Loomis says in the movie, Myers “isn’t a man.” Well, he looks like a person, and he’s shaped like a human, but measured doses of strange behavior suggest there’s something more going on there…something more at the wheel inside Michael than just himself. He doesn’t talk, he only breathes. He wears a mask to kill. Later, he wears coveralls taken from a tow truck driver that he’s murdered, his “costume”. He inspects his kills in a curious way; after murdering one kid, he tilts his head back and forth. Later on, he sets up a haunted house of corpses as a gauntlet of terror for the main character, Laurie. He also doesn’t seem daunted by injury. When Laurie stabs him, he doesn’t stop. It’s these touches of character that make The Shape scarier. Where is this weirdness coming from? These traits culminate in the climax, where Michael is shot six times and falls from a balcony…and then disappears.

Thus, by the end of the film, these supernatural hints (and the Myers character) have fully developed and transformed into theme, the idea being that evil never dies. It can’t be killed. It will always be there, looming in the dark, ready to strike without warning.

Halloween started me on a constant diet of horror movies, and there are many in my “favorites pantheon”. Alien transported me aboard a ship in deep space and showed me creatures I couldn’t have seen in my wildest dreams. Psycho catapulted me into the mind of an isolated killer living a double life. Jaws had already whisked me away on an adventure on the ocean and given a glimpse of what lurked beneath the surface of an unknown world.

But Halloween was in my backyard. Every night. Staring up at me from between the clotheslines. It turned the most basic location, the most identifiable place, suburban America, into a terrifying landscape. A place of darkness and danger. Haddonfield didn’t feel like South Pasadena, CA, where they shot the film. No, Halloween felt like it was happening in a small Illinois town. It felt like my hometown in Virginia. The streets in it felt like my street. The houses felt kinda’ like my house.

Halloween didn’t just take me to another world; it turned my own world into something new. As I started my own career, I took that with me.

_ _ _

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

Matt Mercer can be found on Twitter/Instagram @MercerShark

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.

LA Press Junket: Director David Gordon Green Talks Halloween

by

This past Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with director David Gordon Green on the Universal backlot to discuss his forthcoming film Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19th, 2018.

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

Seated outdoors on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, decked out for the occasion in Halloween décor, Green said of his initial attraction to directing the film, which serves as recalibration of the franchise, “I didn’t want to see someone else’s (version, because) I’ve been a huge fan of the (Halloween) movies. All of them, actually. But particularly the original film, which got under my skin in a way that no other horror film – well, maybe The Silence of the Lambs – has. Those two movies really affected me. I saw them in my youth and at a time in my life where they were very exciting and terrifying.”

Talk turned to Green’s script for Halloween, which co-written by he, McBride and Fradley, ignores all existing sequels, and picks up forty years after Carpenter’s original, with antagonist boogeyman Myers behind bars and final girl Laurie waiting with bated breath for his eventual return.

“As the franchise progressed it got more and more complicated, (and) my concept and Danny’s (was to) simplify it again,” said Green of their bold approach, “and go back to the least complicated version. And so, I wanted to do that rather than having to incorporate all of the mythology the series (had) absorbed over the years.”

And he laughed, “(To) use it as a device to be able to meet John Carpenter.”

As for the return of Curtis to her iconic role of Laurie Strode, there was however no guarantee during the initial scripting process.

“We had written it already, hoping she would (return),” recalled Green, “but were prepared for her to say, ‘No.’ (But) I just wanted to hang out with her. And she’s Laurie Strode. When you think about someone else stepping into that character? There’s no one like her. It’s iconic, so I put on my sweet talkin’ salesman voice and gave it the hard sell, and she said, ‘Yes.’”

“This was (us) assuming she wouldn’t want to be very involved,” revealed the filmmaker, “(but) as I started talking to her I realized (that) she was actually very excited about it. But originally we thought, ‘Let’s just try to get her for a couple of days and see if she’ll just do a cameo in the movie.’ Our initial thought was the trauma (of the first film) having been inherited by her daughter Karen (actress Judy Greer) who has inherited this sense of trauma and identity crisis from her mother who has raised her in this kind of captive, strange, over-protective landscape, and make that the centerpiece.”

“Before we presented her with the script,” he continued, “we did a quick sleight of hand, and moved all the meat to her, and said, ‘Let’s put it all on the table and see if we can make it happen.’ But we were prepared to have to pull it back, and play with other characters and other dimensions, and take the foreground with other characters.  I’m just glad we didn’t have to do it. It seems silly to even think about it now.”

Another one of the things which changed from concept to execution was Green’s desire to re-shoot the ending of Carpenter’s original from a different perspective, a plan which existed well into production.

“It was a very complicated overhead view of Loomis shooting the gun,” illuminated Green, “and then Michael going over (the balcony). And then when we were shooting (the film), we kept pushing it off.”

“So this is interesting,” Green expounded. “We rebuilt the bedroom from the climax of the original film, so we had the bones of this room, but the budget was getting tighter, and the schedules were getting tighter and we were trying to jam this (into the) movie and finish it up, and then we were like, ‘Screw it, let’s not do that.’ And if we need it later, we can always rebuild it, so we used the set for the scene (in our film) with all the mannequins. But it is (still) a rebuild of the bedroom (from the first Halloween) down to a square inch.”

In addition to set construction, in preparation for the aborted re-imagining of the finale of Carpenter’s original, the production had also hired actors to reprise needed characters from the first film.

“We cast a Loomis double, who was actually our art director, because he looked exactly like him,” said Green of the role originated by deceased actor Donald Pleasence, “and we would have re-created Laurie with a blend of Jamie and a body double similar to a nineteen-year old Jamie. And there was conversation of utilizing footage from the original film and digitally altering it, so we could get some other interesting elements, but all of it starts costing money, and you look at what you’re trying to do (and ask), ‘Do you need the gimmick? Do you need the exposition? Do you need the set up?’”

“Carpenter actually calmed me down on set and said to me, ‘Just trust (the audience) and let them figure it out.’”

As for Carpenter’s presence on the South Carolina set, “(It was) super surreal,” Green recalled of the famous director’s arrival. “My parents were also visiting and he and my dad were just talking about comic books while I was shooting the babysitter scene upstairs. It was the scene with Vicky (Virginia Gardner), with a ghost sheet over her, so it was kind of a fun scene for John to show up on set for. But yeah, really surreal seeing Jamie Lee and Nick Castle and John kind of bonding again. Someone was showing me photographs of that day recently, and it was pretty overwhelming and emotional and nostalgic and sentimental in a lot of ways.”

Conversation progressed to the film’s score, as composed and performed by Carpenter as he did for the original, and Green offered, “He kept me out of (the scoring process and) said, ‘I wanna’ have a whole score for you. It’s not gonna’ be piece by piece. I was like, ‘Is he doing an orchestra? Is it gonna’ be the opera?’ But then I heard it and it feels very Carpenter. I can sense a little Escape from New York in a couple little pieces. I was so fucking excited to hear (it).”

Reflecting on his career, “One of the things I’m most proud of (is that) I genre hop,” said the filmmaker, whose previous features include the decidedly non-horror films George Washington (2000) and Pineapple Express (2006), along with the comedic television series Eastbound & Down.

“I can’t sit still. I gotta’ do a comedy here, a fantasy movie there, (and) a drama there. What I’m most excited about that Halloween does, (is that) it lets me exercise all of it: humor, drama, emotional honesty and action. I felt more so than any other movie (that I’ve directed) that I could jam more genres that I love into one film. And call it a horror movie. So, that’s really rewarding, particularly if an audience likes it, because I don’t have a huge relationship with an audience responding well to my films,” Green laughed self-deprecatingly.

(Writer’s note: given the positive critical reviews stemming from Halloween’s world premiere at TIFF earlier this month, perhaps for Green this relationship will change).

Concluded the forty-three year old director, as behind him Carpenter and Curtis chatted against the backdrop of ghostly Halloween decorations which shifted in the failing light, “You know, critics have been kind and I’ve managed an awesome, exciting career and have traveled the world but out of thirteen movies (only) one of them is commercially successful. I don’t have a great track record. So it would be awesome to be able to think that I can infuse so much of what I’ve learned through the various movies, TV shows and commercials that I’ve done into one thing, and have an audience respond to it, because the sky’s the limit with what we want to continue (to do) with this franchise. So a lot of this movie, for me, is about trust: getting an audience to trust me, and getting me to trust a franchise, and then let’s see what needs to happen next, if it works.”

Check out the trailer below.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.