The slasher film that started it all, the 1979 John Carpenter classic Halloween, is coming home — to theaters that is.
For a limited run in the United States, each showing of the famous fright flick will be opened with a documentary titled You Can’t Kill the Boogeyman: 35 Years of Halloween. Screenings will begin on October 25.
In case you are numb to the genre, Halloween features a psychotic murderer named Michael Myers who has been institutionalized since childhood for the murder of his sister. After 15 years, Myers breaks out on the night before Halloween and proceeds to stalk and slay a group of teenagers lead by the character Laurie Strode (played by a young Jamie Lee Curtis).
If you haven’t seen Michael Myers torture teenagers on the big screen, this might be your last chance.
Halloween was truly the Pulp Fiction success story of its day because it was an independent film that cost $320,000, and made back $40 million, a huge return on investment, and the major studios immediately took notice. Yet unlike Pulp Fiction, which was released by Miramax, who were then under the Disney umbrella, Halloween was a truly independent film that succeeded outside the system.
Like a low budget B movie, Halloween went around the country state by state, “bicycling” prints from city to city, and within three to five months, it became a phenomenon. (Carpenter didn’t even know it was a hit until Avco Embassy offered him a two-picture deal, and he made The Fog and Escape From New York for the company). Like Tarantino and Hitchcock, Carpenter also became a star director, and his name became synonymous with screen terror.]
Check out this 1979 screening with audience reactions.
Will you go see Halloween this… err… Halloween?
