John Carpenter on Halloween

[@Jimmietwotimes]

I remember 1978, looking at the newspaper for the movie listings (yes that was a thing) and seeing all these large ads for some of the Fall blockbusters and in the corner, for this one tiny theater, was a simple, tiny, black square that said HALLOWEEN. That was it. No director, no actors, no studio. Just Halloween and the run times. All these years later I can't remember what the other movies were in the paper. I just remember that small black square and how it changed my life.

[@TboneTenEighties]

Carpenter knocked it way out of the park. We are talking a 600 foot grand slam!. Amazing how perfect Halloween 78 turned out. They took chances and every single one turned out for the good. From the iconic mask to the chilling music...it is pure perfection. Why am I alive?

[@RussianPirate-ff7yt]

Still my favourite film of his. The thing is great, but I just love the simplicity and slow but satisfying pace of this film. Proof that you don't need buckets of blood to make a great horror, just a great atmosphere, creepy villain and proper building of tension.

[@sergiovelazquez8756]

John Carpenter's Iconic Halloween score is chilling and awesome 😊❤

[@gallery7596]

Should've been nominated for an Oscar.

[@kcsnazz01]

Carpentervision fan....50 years and going strong! ❤

[@Jake-iw4bu]

This totally set the playbook for what a high quality slasher can be. My favorite random movie fact ever is that the man who plays The Shape (Nick Castle) when on to direct Dennis the Menace lol. Awesome!!

[@stevennieto9898]

I used to be terrified of Michael Myers as a kid, but loved Dennis the Menace haha. Go figure.

[@Njbear7453]

@@Jake-iw4bu he also directed major payne lmao! Fun fact

[@MartinCooper81]

Filmmaker in the truest sense

[@noneofyourbeeswax546]

“To anyone who wants to make movie’s Make it your vision, what else are you living for? why else are you alive?” -John Carpenter

[@tyskerbarn5171]

one of my favorite movies. Thank you!

[@STONESGAM]

Top 3 Horror film of all time. Certainly the coolest music in a horror movie.

[@Buff_Cupcake]

One of my favourite directors of all time. Absolutely legendary film maker

[@davidrose647]

Just one more film🎥. With Kurt Russel

[@SupremeGreatGrandmaster]

A western! 😃

[@seanmac9578]

And as a straight up western. No horror just flat out western. Akin to his fav film, Rio Bravo.

[@chuckliquor3663]

​@@SupremeGreatGrandmasterNo Snake Plissken 🥺👉👈

[@Njbear7453]

@@seanmac9578 his favorite film is only angels have wings ! Another Howard hawks classic

[@toddgrogg8005]

I definitely need Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, to work together.

[@samsmith1999]

John Carpenter is the best, man.

[@GreasyFilms-qc1xo]

Watching this reel, I gotta say Dean Cundy is one of the best DPs ever. Carpenter is a master, but Dean needs credit.

[@AlexJEdits]

6:00 He’s right about evil which is universal I’ve seen it personally in folks who simply don’t care when something is wrong, no boundaries or the masks people can wear, and if you have a sharp pair of eyes you’ll see past that and recognize something rotten in them regardless of their masquerading…

[@hippiecheezburger5457]

I think Halloween somehow gets better and better every year with how it’s aging. When it was the 90s and early 2000s I never thought of it that way. It does so much with doing so little, very simple but creepy

[@everyonesguy7466]

I think that cam behind Micheal while he’s driving , is awesome and they should bring it back

[@borisnegrarosa9113]

Mr Carpenter, a childhood idol

[@TheDemeoCrew]

John Carpenter is the greatest filmmaker in history and nobody is close. Halloween 🎃 and. The Shining and Jaws and The Godfather are perfect in the history of film 🎥.

[@IvanZavala-e2m]

I am still a big and I mean big fan of the films and I love them a lot my son himself he has also seen all the films and he is a fan of the films just like me he is a good and sweet boy daddy loves you kiddo

[@IvanZavala-e2m]

You know at a certain point I was not actually going to see this film the reason why is because I had thought that it might be a little bit silly but then I sat down and I had watched it on video and man oh man I enjoyed every minute of it this is a classic horror movie

[@Woozlewuzzleable]

I'm surprised by how normal and nice he sounds, considering how crazy his movies are.

[@kowalski5599]

Listen to his commentaries. Especially when he records with Kurt Russell.

[@JamesGadbury]

he's just having fun exploring the depths of creativity

[@jessievomero8543]

You should hear the Big Trouble In little China commentary with John and Kurt Russel. It’s on You Tube. It’s hilarious . I think he is making talking about Escape from New York when he mentioned his “western”. Although not in a literal sense

[@JnEricsonx]

Glad I met the man.

[@timdonnelly8392]

I just Farted!

[@ArchLars]

He once said something along the lines of "I love when people remake my movies because I get to sit back, relax and put my hand out and money magically appears in it" 😂 Also this movie is the most ripped off movie of all time, he basically created the 80s slasher.

[@sconni666]

I never understood why they just didn’t set the film in California.

[@kevinkuenn5733]

Charles Manson aside, most famous serial killers come from the upper Midwest for some reason: Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and so on. Not that I'm saying this is the reason why Carpenter chose to set Halloween in Illinois, who knows why.

[@plasticweapon]

i know! me and my brother are always saying this!

[@masonteague4039]

This movie is like gone with the wind of horror

[@Njbear7453]

THE greatest director of the modern generation, hands down.

[@johnnyc.4761]

He has too many mediocre movies in the 90s-2000s to have that title

[@draven65]

​@johnnyc.4761 15 movies from 74-94 and not one bad one is a pretty great run especially considering his struggles after the reception of The Thing.

[@WalterBurton]

👍👍👍

[@chuckliquor3663]

I've never been a fan of Halloween. It has some neat visuals, but I just find the slasher pics of that time dull for some reason. But I love Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape From New York. I guess I like Carpenter's more unique oddball pictures more.

[@johnnyc.4761]

Check out prince of darkness, one of his most unique

[@hippiecheezburger5457]

Halloween is good because of the camera work and the music and suspense I think. It’s a pretty low budget movie but it influenced all that stuff in the 80s that came after it

[@clayschmoldt8933]

Some of this appears to be out of context. Who is he referring to at 1:39?

[@FredCracklin]

Michael Myers, a British film distributor who distributed Assault on Precinct 13 overseas.

[@tonypine3434]

Miracle Films head in the 70s as the man above has helped identify.

[@clayschmoldt8933]

@@FredCracklin Oh cool, thanks for clarifying.

[@reidboggs4344]

Just wanted to make a movie, succeeded in making one of the few films that rivals Psycho with it’s intensity.

[@hippiecheezburger5457]

Psycho and Halloween are both made rather cheap but are simple and effectively scary

[@dharma_star]

What does the "Jim Crow South" and "Hillbillies" have to do with this film? Does someone here know more about John Carpenter's background to give some insight on this?

[@honeychilerider]

I was just asking the same thing. I don't understand.

[@michaelmoraga2926]

@@honeychilerider As I posted above... He said he learned about "evil" from segregation and "rough" people who didn't care about others. In other words, his experience with racism in the South informs his understanding of evil. Carpenter is a very humanist (and pluralist) kind of guy. You can see it throughout his work, especially in Starman and They Live. ✌

[@KyleL1968]

Just a liberal from Hollywood being able to talk about the South like they have any idea what they are talking about. If you leave the door open an inch they will find a way to talk about it but never mention that their beloved Democrat Party is the home of the KKK.

[@JustaComment93]

I got laid to this movie because it was so boring. Thank you. John carpenter.

[@honeychilerider]

Wait, I understand, what was that whole part about the Jim Crow South? What did that have to do with Halloween? Or, really, any movie Carpenter ever made?

[@michaelmoraga2926]

He said that he learned something profound from his experience in the South with segregation and some "rough" people: "That's where I learned about evil. I was even friends with some evil people too. But by evil I mean that they don't care about others at all. They have no empathy..." He's clearly referring to racism.

[@Njbear7453]

@@honeychilerider he went from new york to Kentucky in the 1950’s/60’s

[@genther6668]

The King of horror

[@frankrossi6972]

Huge Carpenter fan, particularly the “Halloween”-“They Live period. However, his take on Southern “evil” is a bit simplistic (though he does have some Southern cred having lived in Kentucky from age 5 to early adulthood; on my end, I lived in Houston for 16 years in my teens and 20s, albeit Texas is not really the “proper” Jim Crow Deep South). He seems to assert that every Southern racist is evil, and that brush is too broad. Slavery was evil. The Klan and other rent-a-posse killers (e.g., the Emmett Till tragedy) and other purveyors of terror were evil. Jim Crow was evil on an institutional level, ignoring the constitutional protections granted to blacks after being freed for more than a century. However, a large proportion of Southern whites after the Civil War hated “Northern Aggression” and losing the war more than they hated blacks, whom they viewed as inferior to them outright after slavery dehumanized them. However, blacks were easy targets, so they scapegoated them---sometimes committing evil acts against them, but mostly being intolerant and bigoted due to cultural ignorance and suspicion due to segregation. There were many integrated areas in the Deep South after the war where very poor whites and blacks lived in the same communities----they rarely mixed, but they technically lived among each other. I’m betting those Southern whites were more tolerant due to cultural and other levels of mixing. Carpenter also needs to tell the whole story. I mentioned living in Houston earlier. Before my family moved there, I was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, in highly segregated Calumet City. There were no blacks anywhere near our neighborhood, nor in school. As a young kid, I’d only hear about blacks in passing, like when one relative complained about having to dine amid too many blacks at Red Lobster. Not exactly Jim Crow, but culturally toxic nonetheless. Chicago, the Deep North, remains one of the most highly segregated cities in the U.S., from housing to schooling. However, when we moved to Houston, the Western South, our suburban neighborhood was fully integrated---whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians all living in the same neighborhoods, attending the same schools, etc. Yes, there were redneck racists in pickups---but they were few and far between compared with the cultural, economic, and proximity racism on the South Side and other parts of Chicago. Tell the whole story of racism, J.C., not just the easy stereotypes you get from progressive news sources.

[@deakensomoza3305]

John Carpenter on Ang Lee?

[@paulv7554]

They should never have put Michael Myers behind the wheel of a car. It just does not fit his character.

[@horrorfanandy4647]

How does he escape then? He wasn’t going to slow-walk 150 miles to Haddonfield. I think it works fine, and the fact that he couldn’t possibly know how to drive makes it very creepy. That was a perfect way of using a big plot-hole as a way to keep the mystique of the character.

[@paulv7554]

@@horrorfanandy4647 Michael Myers stopping for traffic lights and stop signs, obeying traffic laws, just doesn't fit. The thought of that is corny.

[@JSC178]

@@paulv7554 I always got a kick out him looking both ways for safety before enters the intersection. 😂

[@gallery7596]

They should've had Michael commandeer the station wagon and then drive it into a ditch a mile down the road. When Loomis comes upon it, of course, Michael is long gone- and heading for home. That would've been easier to accept than his instant skill as a driver (during a bad rain storm yet)- although in the extended version they do suggest somebody at the sanitarium must've given him lessons.

[@paulv7554]

@@gallery7596 To me it just seems cheesy to think of Michael Myers stopping at traffic lights, putting on his turn signal. etc.....That made him look too human. He never should have been driving a car. Odd move for his character.

[@DanielMussen-ob7uo]

Every One Is In On The Conspiracy In John Carpenters Halloween 31|10|1963 - 31|10|2022 and 01|01|1950 - 31|12|2050

[@jasonaugustine3370]

I love John Carpenter, but he sure cared about the money after the movie made $70 million

[@JawsBites]

Eh...Jaws made more $$$

[@travzimmerman1340]

I dislike Carpenter as much as I like Halloween.

[@Dantegrey1]

I have a problem with Jamie Lee Curtis. She is a fine enough Actress, but she is too hyper - kind of like Ann-Margret. She can't match the energy of her co-stars. She always has to turn it up several degrees compared to everyone else on screen. I first noticed it on Virus, where it is just ridiculous. I haven't been able to unnotice. I kind of like her in her early horror roles and in Trading Places, but not in much else.

[@Dantegrey1]

@@Username2521hh I haven't. Perhaps I'll try.

[@Njbear7453]

It’s called energy lol, you just can’t handle it.

[@Njbear7453]

She’s a great actress

[@Dantegrey1]

@@Njbear7453 Did you not read what I wrote? This isn't a political twitter spat. I hate that childish crap.

[@tonypine3434]

Interesting observation

[@themaestromegatron4488]

Yeah, too bad you sold out on your own creation and destroyed it...

[@ralphiecifaretto8961]

He did? How?