by Brian Fee
The infamous baby-sitter slasher film, “Halloween”, created by John Carpenter is widely regarded as a classic horror movie and has been known to influence several proceeding slasher pictures. The “Halloween” franchise consists of 11 films ranging from the original, which was released in 1978, to today with the newest adaptation which was released this Halloween season. The original, being an independent film, did not stop the series from ranking 4th in gross sales out of all horror movie franchises. During the making of the original film and being on a tight budget, Carpenter decided to compose the soundtrack himself because he believed he could do it the fastest and cheapest. That ended being a great decision because the final product, “Halloween Theme”, ended up becoming one of the most famous movie soundtracks of all time. Through the use of high pitched sounds and rumbling bass, Carpenter created an instant classic inspired by Bernard Herrman’s score from “Psycho”. With the making of this film and score, Carpenter changed the course of low-budget, independent films. Here at WWMPC, we are proud to have worked with Malcolm McDowell who played Michael Myer’s psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis in the 2007 adaptation of “Halloween”. McDowell starred in one of our feature films, “Red Roses and Petrol”.
The most recent in the famed Halloween slasher series has arrived in theaters this October. This time directed by David Gordon Green and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle. The film follows Laurie Strode (Curtis) after she narrowly escaped a small-town Halloween tragedy four decades ago. There have been many spinoffs or remakes of John Carpenters “Halloween”, but the 2018 adaptation serves as a direct sequel to the original 1978 film.
