The Cult Movie Club: Halloween (1978/1982) Revisited (with spoilers)

Posted on 02/11/2026 by Matt P (movingtheriver.com, soundsofsurprise.com)

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…

The Cult Movie Club: The Fog @ 40

Posted on 29/02/2020 by Matt P (movingtheriver.com, soundsofsurprise.com)

What with ‘The Lighthouse’ and ‘Bait’, you can’t move for nautically-themed movies at the moment.

But it’s arguable whether either are as effective as John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’, released 40 years ago today.

But I’m biased: aside from Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ and ‘American Werewolf In London’, it was one of the first scary movies I was allowed to watch in my teenage years, and subsequently inspired a dodgy short horror novel of my own (‘The Ghost Of The Drowned Sailor’…).

Revisiting it this week for the first time in ages, it delivered all sorts of treats though these days is scarcely mentioned alongside ‘Halloween’, ‘Assault On Precinct 13’ and ‘The Thing’ in the list of bona fide Carpenter classics.

Shot mainly in coastal California around Point Reyes, Bodega Bay and Inverness, ‘The Fog’ was a brave move on Carpenter and producer/co-writer Debra Hill’s part, following up ‘Halloween’ by mostly eschewing the slasher format (it’s interesting to note that both ‘The Shining’ and ‘Friday The 13th’ were released two months later, in May 1980) in favour of a seemingly old-fashioned ghost story inspired by a trip to Stonehenge and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

This attempt at a different kind of movie caused problems when Carpenter’s original cut was deemed too moody and not supplying the requisite scares for post-‘Halloween’ sensibilities.

Many scenes were re-shot and some new ones added just a few months before release, including the opening ghost story, ‘Close Encounters’-style scene-setting and top-of-the-lighthouse finale. The music and sound effects were also reworked.

Watching the 2002 DVD edition, the first thing I noticed is the gorgeous lighting and camerawork. Its sharp, crisp colours and composition are a great testament to the lab technicians (heralded by Carpenter on his DVD commentary) and director of photographer Dean Cundey, who has since gone on to be one of the premier DPs in Hollywood.

The impressive miniature/model work, widescreen lenses and evocative coastal locations give a lot of bang for relatively little buck (‘The Fog’ was eventually brought in at just over $1 million).

‘The Fog’ also benefits from an excellent central performance from Adrienne Barbeau as the Hawksian, Bacall-voiced DJ Stevie Wayne (and spinner of Steely Dan-approved big-band and light jazz/fusion tunes).

She and co-writer Debra Hill manage to root the hokum in a credible, sympathetic, rounded character. It’s also great fun to see Janet Leigh appearing in the same movie as her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, and Nancy Loomis delivers her usual amusingly insouciant line readings.

Effects man extraordinaire Rob Bottin features as head ghost Blake, heading up a very rock’n’roll-looking bunch of ghouls, though arguably the movie would have benefitted from a little less ‘show’ and a little more ‘tell’ in the last 20 minutes.

But editors Charles Bornstein and Tommy Lee Wallace deserve much credit for building tension in the last third with shrewd, snappy cutting (sometimes seamlessly between studio/location shots).

Carpenter’s excellent soundtrack cribs a little from Michel Legrand’s famous score for ‘The Go-Between’ but has some marvellous sections, particularly during Barbeau’s ‘look for the fog’ closing speech (obviously very influenced by a similar ending to Howard Hawks’ ‘The Thing’).

‘The Fog’ was a hit (despite Siskel and Ebert’s stinking review, see below), earning around $20 million against its $1 million budget. It was a lot of fun to revisit it again, and looks like just the low-budget horror classic I always remembered it to be, with more imagination and storytelling elan than 99% of other genre offerings.

Happy birthday to a true cult classic. Now, what’s that sound? Who’s rapping on my door at this hour? Goddamn kids… They won’t like finding me at home…

Halloween Special: 11 Memorable VHS Covers

Posted on 31/10/2018 by Matt P (movingtheriver.com, soundsofsurprise.com)

Back in those early days of VHS fever at the beginning of the ’80s, my parents would occasionally invite friends round to watch a scary movie.

I remember tip-toeing out of my bedroom very late at night, creeping along the corridor and trying to snatch a peek at ‘Halloween II’ or ‘Straw Dogs’.

I wasn’t allowed to watch those kind of movies, though later was granted a bit of license with regards to ‘The Fog’, ‘Creepshow’, ‘The Island’ and ‘American Werewolf In London’.

The Video Masheen shop on Sheen Lane was a treasure trove of interesting VHS covers, a weird showroom advertising movies I’d never get to see. What kind of deranged mind could conceive of these images? The mind boggled. Some surely qualify as genuinely surreal pieces of art, though the #MeToo movement would probably put pay to a few more these days.

Here are some VHS covers of the era that stuck in the mind. Straight from the shelf of Video Masheen. Happy Halloween…

11. ‘An American Werewolf In London’ (1981)

10. ‘Halloween II’ (1981)

9. ‘Creepshow’ (1982)

8. ‘The Island’ (1980)

7. ‘The Howling’ (1980)

6. ‘The Fog’ (1980)

5. ‘Southern Comfort’ (1981)

4. ‘The Exterminator’ (1980)

3. ‘Scanners’ (1980)

2. ‘Christine’ (1983)

1. ‘The Thing’ (1982)

11 Great 1980s Movie Taglines

Posted on 08/04/2017 by Matt P (movingtheriver.com, soundsofsurprise.com)

Movie taglines: you know the drill (actually the tagline for a dental-themed slasher pic whose name escapes me…). One, two or three sentences that sum up a film’s flavour or sometimes entire plot.

To cineastes of a certain generation, a tagline can be as memorable as the movie itself. Some even become part of the modern lexicon. But what makes a good one? Perhaps it’s common words uncommonly used. Horror and sci-fi films seem to lend themselves to memorable tags. Is it because of their promise of the perverse, the uncanny, the unexpected, the taboo?

Quotable taglines are scarce these days. Perhaps the proliferation of films as ‘lists’ has snuffed them out. Walk into your local multiplex and you’ll see some extremely lame offerings. But the 1980s threw up a fair few humdingers, prompted by a need for eye-catching posters and proliferation of horror movies. Here are some of the best:

11. ‘The Shining’ (1980): The tide of terror that swept America is HERE.

A spine-tingler whose possible meaning is explored in excellent recent documentary ‘Room 237’.