Halloween

9 of 9 places · 26 of 26 Moments

• The Myers house (the Century House)

  1000 Mission Street, South Pasadena

  • Through the mask

    The film opens with a five-minute shot through the eyes of a masked killer: the young Michael Myers, played by Will Sandin.

  • The last day

    The opening at the Myers house is shot on the last day of the 20-day schedule.

  • A silver dollar

    With the houses round it coming down, the 1888 house is bought for a silver dollar by the historian David Margrave and moved up the street.

  • $300,000

    Halloween is made for $300,000, opens on 25 October 1978 and takes $55 million.

  • Five-four on the bongos

    In 1961 Carpenter’s father teaches him a bongo exercise: beating out 5/4 time. It becomes the main title rhythm.

  • Three days

    Carpenter writes the whole score himself in three days.

  • Sound Arts

    Scoring begins in late June at Sound Arts Studios, with Dan Wyman programming the synthesisers.

  • Six times

    The theme plays six times in the film, and the opening credits set the mood with a jack-o’-lantern.

  • The LP

    Columbia releases the soundtrack album in August 1979.

• The hardware store building

  966 Mission Street, at Meridian Avenue, South Pasadena

  • The hardware store

    Michael takes his mask and knife from a hardware store, played by a frame shop on Mission Street.

  • A magic shop in Hollywood

    Looking for a cheap mask, the art director finds one at Bert Wheeler’s magic shop in Hollywood, and a clown mask as a spare.

  • Captain Kirk

    It is a Don Post Studios Captain Kirk mask. On Halloween II, the illustrator Rick Sternbach finds the maker’s name moulded into the neck of the last one left, and the company confirms it.

  • Painted white

    The mask, bought for under $2, is painted white and its eyeholes widened.

  • Almost faceless

    Debra Hill says the idea was to make him almost humourless, almost faceless.

• SugarMynt Gallery

  810 Meridian Avenue, South Pasadena

• The Strode house

  Oxley Street, South Pasadena

  • Spring, not autumn

    The 20-day shoot begins in the spring of 1978, for a film that comes out that October.

  • Dozens of bags

    The production designer Tommy Lee Wallace brings dozens of bags of fake leaves, reused from scene to scene. There is no money to change the trees, so they stay green.

  • Their own autumn

    Los Angeles looks nothing like a Midwestern autumn, so the crew make their own brown leaves and scatter them round each location.

  • Laurie waits

    Laurie leaves home with a pumpkin and waits on a cement pillar for her ride.

  • Third audition

    Jamie Lee Curtis auditions three times. She gets Laurie after nailing the scene of Laurie looking out of her window.

• South Pasadena High School

  1401 Fremont Avenue, South Pasadena

  • At the window

    From a classroom window, Laurie sees a masked man.

• Hollywood Reservoir

  Lake Hollywood Drive, Hollywood Hills

  • Smith’s Grove

    Michael escapes from Smith’s Grove sanitarium on the dark roads round the Hollywood Reservoir.

• The Doyle and Wallace houses

  North Orange Grove Avenue, Hollywood

  • Halloween night

    Laurie and Annie babysit in two houses on Orange Grove Avenue, just north of Sunset Boulevard.

  • The closet

    Laurie is trapped in a closet in the Doyle house.

• Sierra Madre Pioneer Cemetery

  East Sierra Madre Boulevard, Sierra Madre

  • The empty grave

    Dr Loomis finds Judith Myers’s grave desecrated.

  • Loomis

    Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee turn Loomis down because the pay is too low. Donald Pleasence takes him, and plays him in four sequels.

• Haddonfield, New Jersey

  Haddonfield, Camden County, New Jersey

  • The name

    Debra Hill names the film’s town after her hometown, Haddonfield, New Jersey.