John Carpenter’s classic horror movie ‘Halloween’ enjoyed its nationwide British TV premiere on 5 February 1982* (reportedly much to Mary Whitehouse’s chagrin).

It’s etched upon your correspondent’s memory. My parents recorded it onto VHS and my uncle thought it would be a laugh to show it to my brother and I. Instead it scared the hell out of me. But it’s remained a favourite movie over the years.

(And that premiere was edited for TV – watching the full version now, it’s always a shock when Michael Myers/The Shape admires his ‘handiwork’ after the kitchen murder, a moment that was cut from the original showing…).

It’s interesting that Carpenter’s work is still pretty much go-to Halloween horror fare for British terrestrial TV. Sky Arts celebrated the day with ‘The Fog’ while the Beeb have been showing ‘Halloween’ for a few weeks now.

And watching it again recently 45 years after my first viewing, it still proved itself a stone-cold classic – and offered up a few new insights:

The odd/inexplicable lines of dialogue
Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill generally do a great job but there are still lines that baffle, maybe due to the actors’ delivery. Three from Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis): ‘Well, kiddo, I thought you outgrew superstition’ and ‘The old girl scout comes through again’ and ‘What’s the boogieman?’ Maybe ‘What IS the boogieman?’ (with an emphasis on the ‘is’) would have been better…

‘Sexualised’ Jamie Lee in the second half?
In the first half of the movie, Laurie wears she wears a long skirt, bobby socks and cardigan, maybe a rather clever bit of character ‘motivation’ for Michael Myers/The Shape – Laurie possible reminds him of the sister that he murdered (there’s no evidence that Laurie and Michael are related in ‘Halloween’ – that silly idea only came later…). But in the second half of the film, she’s arguably ‘sexualised’ with tight blouse and tight jeans – better equipped to face her demons?

The massive influence of Hitchcock’s‘Psycho’
Obviously it was a coup to cast Jamie Lee, daughter of Janet Leigh. And Donald Pleasence’s character is named ‘Sam Loomis’ after a character from ‘Psycho’. Then there’s that brilliant tracking shot that follows Jamie Lee towards the ‘haunted house’, and Laurie’s entry into the ‘bedroom of horrors’ where evil lurks, as it does in ‘Psycho’. There’s also rather an effective use of a staircase, as in ‘Psycho’ where Martin Balsam meets his grisly end. Also it seems Carpenter wanted to do for cars what Hitchcock did for showers – see below.

The strange moving shape
Check it out – while Lindsey is watching ‘The Thing’, a weird shadow moves behind her in the corner of the room. For UK readers, it’s at 45:20 on iPlayer. Possibly camera shadow? Possibly not…

Illogical plot points
How does The Shape/Michael Myers get into the car to murder Annie (Nancy Loomis)? Carpenter makes a big deal of showing us that the car door’s locked – Annie then goes to get the keys – but when she returns it’s unlocked. Did he have a key? Then there’s the trowel locking the kitchen door when Laurie tries to escape the ‘haunted house’ (in the shooting script it is ‘key-locked’). Also why does it take Sam Loomis (Pleasence) so long to spot Michael’s car when he’s staking out the Myers house in the middle of the night?

The Shape/Michael Myers’ inhumanity
The naturally mild-mannered and sensitive Carpenter saw a lot of scary stuff growing up in the Bible Belt South, and it informed his writing. It’s clear he invested something absolutely immoral into The Shape, but it has precedents in the head baddie played by Frank Doubleday in ‘Assault On Precinct 13’ – shocking inhumanity and a reluctance to die, even when shot and stabbed a few times…

*Reportedly ‘Halloween III: Season Of The Witch’ got the biggest audience of all the UK ‘Halloween’ premieres though, 11 million when shown on the Beeb in 1986…