Imagine walking into your local movie theater in late October 1978.
It’s Halloween season, but there’s no guarantee that the theater lobby is plastered with Michael Myers merchandise. There are no rows of Funko Pops. No giant cardboard cutout of a masked killer standing beside the popcorn machine. And nobody has yet decided that every October needs approximately 47 different versions of a Michael Myers mask.
Instead, you're confronted with a rather strange collection of movies.
There’s a massive Hollywood musical. A Jack Nicholson western comedy. A serious western drama. A brutal prison movie.
And then there’s this little independent horror movie called Halloween.
It doesn't look like the biggest movie in the building.
It certainly doesn't have the biggest stars.
But it has something the others don't.
A guy wearing a William Shatner mask who really doesn't like babysitters.
And history is about to change.
Michael Myers Walks Into the Theater
John Carpenter's Halloween began its theatrical release on October 25, 1978, after premiering in Kansas City the previous day. Its initial release was relatively small, opening in roughly 198 theaters.
Today, that sounds almost quaint.
We live in an era where major horror movies can open in thousands of theaters simultaneously. Back in 1978, however, Halloween was essentially an independent horror movie trying to find an audience.
The movie had reportedly been made for around $325,000.
That's not exactly Marvel money.
It wasn't competing against other movies with enormous special-effects budgets or casts filled with A-list celebrities. Instead, Carpenter and producer Debra Hill had crafted a stripped-down horror movie built around atmosphere, suspense, music and one very simple idea:
What if evil just walked down the street?
Audiences were about to find out.
But what exactly were they choosing between at the box office?
The Wiz
One of the major movies already playing when Halloween arrived was The Wiz.
Released October 1, 1978, The Wiz was a huge Hollywood musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow.
Yes.
Michael Jackson.
Years before Thriller would turn him into an unlikely horror icon, Jackson was dancing his way through a bizarre, colorful version of Oz.
And here's where the contrast with Halloween becomes hilarious.
One theater could essentially be offering audiences:
“Would you like to see Michael Jackson dance through a magical fantasy world?”
Or:
“Would you like to watch a silent psychopath stalk teenagers?”
1978 was apparently a simpler time.
Goin' South
Then there was Goin' South, which arrived in theaters on October 6.
Directed by and starring Jack Nicholson, the movie was a western comedy.
Nicholson was already one of Hollywood's biggest stars, and Goin' South had considerably more traditional star power than Carpenter's little horror film.
Imagine being a casual moviegoer in 1978.
You see Jack Nicholson's name.
Then you see Halloween.
Who's in that?
Jamie Lee Curtis.
Who?
That would soon change.
Curtis was making her feature-film debut in Halloween, and nobody knew she was about to become one of horror's most recognizable actresses.
Comes a Horseman
On October 25—the same day Halloween began its theatrical release—Comes a Horseman also arrived.
This was a serious western drama starring James Caan, Jane Fonda and Jason Robards.
In other words, Hollywood was offering audiences some very respectable entertainment.
Big stars.
Big productions.
Big landscapes.
Big dramatic performances.
And then John Carpenter showed up with a movie in which a man spends a significant amount of time standing approximately 50 feet away from somebody's house.
That was the magic of Halloween.
Carpenter didn't need explosions.
He didn't need armies.
He didn't need monsters crawling out of spaceships.
He just needed Michael Myers to stand there.
And watch.
Midnight Express
Two days after Halloween began its release, Midnight Express arrived on October 27.
This wasn't horror in the traditional sense, but it certainly wasn't exactly a feel-good family movie either.
Midnight Express was a brutal prison drama based on Billy Hayes' experiences after being arrested in Turkey for drug smuggling.
The movie became a major success and received considerable critical attention.
So, by the end of October 1978, audiences had plenty of dark material to choose from.
But Halloween was offering something different.
It wasn't based on a true story.
It wasn't an epic historical drama.
It wasn't a giant Hollywood production.
It was suburban horror.
And that was about to become enormously important.
The Genius of Being Ordinary
One of the things that makes Halloween so fascinating is how ordinary everything looks.
Haddonfield doesn't look like a fantasy world.
It doesn't look like a haunted castle.
It doesn't look like a gothic European village.
It looks like your neighborhood.
There are houses.
There are sidewalks.
There are school buses.
There are teenagers.
There are babysitters.
And somewhere in the background is Michael Myers.
That made the movie considerably scarier than many of its contemporaries.
The horror wasn't happening somewhere else.
It could happen next door.
And Carpenter understood something that would influence decades of horror movies afterward:
You don't have to show the monster constantly to make people afraid of it.
Sometimes it's much scarier when he's barely there.
The Movie That Didn't Look Like a Hit
The really remarkable thing about Halloween is that it didn't initially look like the movie that would become one of horror's defining franchises.
It was cheap.
It was independent.
It didn't have a major movie star leading the cast.
And it was being released alongside movies featuring people like Jack Nicholson, James Caan, Jane Fonda and Michael Jackson.
Yet the movie caught on.
Fast.
Word of mouth helped turn Halloween into a major box-office success.
A film made for roughly $325,000 would eventually earn around $47 million domestically.
That's an absolutely ridiculous return.
Imagine investing $325,000 into a movie and watching it become one of the most influential horror films ever made.
That's not a successful business decision.
That's a cinematic lottery ticket.
And somehow, Carpenter had the winning numbers.
Halloween Changed the Horror Business
The success of Halloween helped demonstrate that a relatively inexpensive horror movie could become a major theatrical attraction.
And Hollywood noticed.
Suddenly, the idea of a masked killer stalking teenagers in suburbia didn't seem quite so ridiculous.
It seemed profitable.
Very profitable.
The slasher boom that would follow gave audiences an entire collection of killers, final girls and unfortunate teenagers who apparently had never heard the phrase:
“Maybe we shouldn't split up.”
Friday the 13th, Prom Night, The Burning, Terror Train, The Prowler and countless others would eventually follow.
But Michael Myers was already waiting.
And Then There Was the Poster
There's also something wonderfully old-school about the original Halloween marketing.
The poster featured a giant jack-o'-lantern-inspired image and the iconic tagline:
“The Night HE Came Home!”
There was no complicated cinematic universe.
No explanation of Michael Myers' entire childhood.
No elaborate mythology.
No 14-minute YouTube video explaining the timeline.
Just:
Michael Myers.
October 31.
Run.
What a 1978 Moviegoer Saw
So let's go back to that theater lobby.
It's October 1978.
You're deciding what to watch.
Maybe you want The Wiz because Michael Jackson is in it.
Maybe Jack Nicholson catches your attention in Goin' South.
Perhaps Comes a Horseman looks like the serious Hollywood movie of the week.
Or maybe you've heard some kid at school talking about this weird horror movie called Halloween.
There's no internet.
There are no trailers instantly available on YouTube.
There are no Rotten Tomatoes scores.
There are no Reddit threads arguing about whether Michael Myers is supernatural.
You have a poster.
Maybe a newspaper advertisement.
Maybe a friend telling you:
“You have to see this.”
So you buy a ticket.
The lights go down.
The opening credits begin.
And somewhere in the darkness, a new horror icon is born.
The Funny Thing About History
Looking back today, it's easy to assume that Halloween must have been an obvious blockbuster.
It wasn't.
It was a small independent horror film released into a marketplace filled with movies that had bigger stars, bigger budgets and much more conventional Hollywood appeal.
And yet, the little horror movie won.
Not immediately.
Not because everybody in Hollywood knew it was going to change the genre.
It won because audiences discovered it.
Then they told other people.
Then those people went.
And suddenly everyone wanted to know about the guy with the white mask.
By the time the dust settled, Michael Myers wasn't just another character in an October movie.
He was a horror icon.
The Beginning of the Halloween Tradition
Today, we can't imagine Halloween season without Halloween.
The movie has spawned sequels, remakes, reboots, merchandise, video games, comic books, masks, costumes, soundtracks and approximately enough fan arguments to keep the internet busy until the end of time.
But in October 1978?
It was just another movie opening at the local theater.
A very inexpensive one.
Surrounded by Hollywood productions.
And nobody knew what was coming.
That's perhaps the most fascinating part of the story.
When Halloween arrived in theaters, it wasn't competing against a bunch of other slasher movies.
It was competing against Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson, James Caan and Jane Fonda.
And somehow, the guy in the cheap William Shatner mask walked away with the night.
🎃 What Do You Think?
If you could travel back to October 1978 and walk into a theater showing all of these movies, which one would you have picked?
Would you have gone with The Wiz?
Jack Nicholson in Goin' South?
Comes a Horseman?
Midnight Express?
Or would you have taken a chance on that strange little horror movie called Halloween?
Let us know in the comments! And if you're a lifelong Michael Myers fan, tell us what you think made Halloween stand out from everything else playing in theaters at the time.
Because sometimes the biggest horror franchises don't begin with a massive Hollywood premiere.
Sometimes they begin with a small movie, a cheap mask, a babysitter, and one guy standing across the street.
Watching.
Waiting.
And coming home.
