TODAY'S NUGGET: Halloween (1978) - Delivering a Gripping Script on a Low Budget

[Quick Summary: A babysitter and her friends are stalked by evil Mike Myers who has just escaped an asylum.]

Three Things I Find Fascinating About This Script:

1) Carpenter made it for $300k and thought it didn't need a sequel:

But Michael Myers was an absence of character. And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That’s silliness – it just misses the whole point of the first movie, to me. He’s part person, part supernatural force. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake.

2) Mike Myers is a super-scary character BECAUSE he has no motivation:

But it was a movie where the main character, the guy in the mask, really isn’t altogether human. He has no characteristics. He's, uh, almost like a machine. He was just pure evil. That was what I intended to do. It's evil out of nothing, evil from no background, which completely creeps me out as a human being, that evil could arrive at my doorstep without a purpose, without a past, without an origin. So that's the idea behind it. It was put together to scare you. That’s all.

3) This script reads very fast, and does not read like a low budget film. Why?

I think it's because Carpenter:
- knew the film was going to be done on the cheap
- knew he had to deliver the scares
- knew that he had to deliver SOMETHING that didn't require stunts, car chases, etc.

So he cranked up the levels of tension about what was to happen next (also known as Hitchcock's "bomb under the table.")

ex. "[Dr.] Loomis glances at Marion as she lights a cigarette. She shoves the matches into the pack and tosses it on the dashboard. Loomis stares at the cigarette pack. The pack of matches reads: "The Rabbit in Red Lounge -- Entertainment Nightly." Loomis turns his eyes back to the rain-slicked road. [This is a setup for a later payoff.]

LOOMIS: Ever done anything like this before?
MARION: Only minimum security.
LOOMIS: I see.  [This feels bad.]
MARION (defensively): What does that mean?
LOOMIS: It means ... I see.
MARION: You don't have to make this any harder than it already is.
LOOMIS: I couldn't if I tried. [Yes, it is really bad.]
MARION: The only thing that ever bothers me is their gibberish. When they start raving on and on... LOOMIS: You don't have anything to worry about. He hasn't spoken a word in 15 years. [This is really, really bad! I am anxious. What is next?]

Both of them suddenly stare out the windshield in front of them.

POV THROUGH WINDSHIELD -- FIELD

Through the rain we see a field off to the side of the road. Dimly lit by the car headlights are FIVE PATIENTS, dressed in wind-blown white gowns, drenched by the rain, wandering aimlessly around the field."  [So, so bad! HOW WILL THIS END??!!]

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: I like that this script puts the focus on what it can do (increase tension), and not on what it cannot (big effects, CGI).

It does not whine about its budget nor try to overcompensate ("aren't we clever!")
  
Halloween (1978)(shooting draft, dated 4/10/78)
by John Carpenter and Debra Hill