Halloween is my favorite holiday. As a kid, I always looked forward to this time of year. I loved the costumes, the ritual of going door to door for candy, the old monster movies on TV, and (usually) the cooler weather. Had that been all there was to it, I'm not sure if it would still be such an important time for me these decades later, but something significant happened that is such an integral part of the holiday for me that it's difficult to think of a time without it.
In 1978, a film simply titled Halloween first appeared in theaters. I was only seven at the time, so obviously I did not see it in the theater, I had to wait until it came to television, as we had to do back in those days. As I recall, Halloween III had already come out so I would have been probably 11 or 12. I remember loving the silent, masked killer concept, relentless and unstoppable. In the final scene he is shot multiple times, falls off the balcony and then moments later is simply gone... Thus ended the film. No resolution. It was perfect.
There isn't a lot I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said dozens of times. Everything from how this film came to be, to making California in spring look like Illinois in autumn, to basically starting the slasher genre, is discussed in every article you read about it. I don't want to talk about any of that. If you don't know that stuff by now then this article really isn't for you. I want to talk about how this served as the basis for one of the more convoluted lines of continuity in all of horror cinema.
There are at least three different lines of continuity in this franchise, and that's not counting the two films by Rob Zombie, which are their own entity. All three timelines start with this film. The original line was 1-2-4-5-6, followed by 1-2-H20-Resurrection, and the latest being 1 with the new trilogy that began in 2018. I say at least three because there are those who only acknowledge the original, and probably some other subsets and combinations as well, such as a simple 1-2-4 combination.
As if this whole franchise wasn't complicated enough with all the different sequel timelines, we also have to deal with different versions of the first two films. First there are the theatrical versions, then there are the TV versions. These are not just your standard "edited for television" versions. The original has additional scenes filmed at the same time as Halloween II, and Halloween II is full of alternate and rearranged scenes. I'll also mention that there are two different versions of the sixth installment as well, but that's a whole other story there. Yeah, it's complicated, so let's start at the beginning...
The intent of the first Halloween film is simple. You have a small town in which something terrible happened in the past, and now that terrible thing returns. There is the evil, the victims of that evil, and the person familiar with that evil trying to stop it. There is no explanation given for this evil other than he is "the boogeyman". His victims are chosen for reasons known only to himself. No questions are answered, we are left with a mystery.
A mystery is always a great element to have in a horror film. There should never be an answer to all of the questions, you need something to take home with you to ponder. If a film gives away all of it's secrets, there is nothing left to ponder. As the DC Comics characters Cain and Abel point out in an issue of Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, the difference between a mystery and a secret is that you can share a mystery with others and it still remains a mystery, but once a secret is known then it is no longer a secret. Mystery is key to a great story.
Had this been the first and last we had heard of Michael Myers, we would still have a classic film with a modern classic monster. No sequels were needed. In fact, I would argue that Halloween and Michael Myers obtain their status as classics despite the sequels rather than because of them. With each sequel, more and more of the mystery is explained away, and the explanations are often not satisfying.
Two years after the release of Halloween, a new slasher franchise had begun with Friday The 13th. To exploit this new trend in horror cinema, it was decided to bring back Michael Myers. After all, Halloween was the film that inspired Friday The 13th. John Carpenter declined to direct the next installment, but he and Debra Hill took on the task of writing the script. Not wanting to write the same film all over again, Carpenter and Hill needed a new element for the next film. This is where we get the controversial decision to make the surviving victim from the first film, Laurie Strode, Michael Myers' sister. This is also where the first continuity divergence occurs.
Some fans, preferring the mystery the first film left them with, refused to acknowledge the sister angle. They would have to wait 40 years to get a sequel that disregarded that plot element. So for 40 years there is a continuity line of a single film. Unfortunately, since I first watched this movie on television, I never got to experience that line of continuity in a pure form.
I bought Halloween on VHS back in the mid-to-late 1980s. It was the theatrical version, though in 4:3 aspect ratio. I hadn't watched the television version for a few years, but remembered the additional scenes enough to notice they were not there. We had no convenient dump of knowledge of everything as we do now so I couldn't really investigate, but years later another VHS edition was released that explained the additional footage and incorporated it into the theatrical cut of the film. I had long favored this sort of "final mix" edition of Halloween as a definitive version. After all, future installments all built upon the sister revelation. More recently I have come to think that all those scenes are unnecessary, even if you fully embrace the sister angle.
In the first of these additional scenes, we hear Loomis discuss Michael with some of the doctors at the hospital, and he later speaks to young Michael himself. While it's cool to see more of young Michael, this scene throws off the pacing of the film a bit. The theatrical version is simple, you have the murder in 1963, then jump ahead to 1978. A stop in 1964 keeps us in the past longer than necessary. We get a little more insight into Michael's state of mind, but it doesn't really add much to the story. This scene is best viewed as a vignette, separate from the main body of the film.
The second scene, is where the sister concept is introduced. Loomis is at the hospital the day after Michael escapes, to find Michael's room trashed and the word "sister" written on the wall. While it does retroactively foreshadow the relationship between Michael and Laurie, it lessens the impact of the reveal in Halloween II, and doesn't contain anything else of importance. I suggest only watching this if you're really stoked on Laurie being Michael's sister.
The third scene is just filler with (supposedly) teenage girls talking about borrowing clothes. Skip it.
Thus we take our first steps on the branched path of Halloween continuity. For my own purposes I look at the theatrical and TV versions as 1 and 1a, respectively. With the new set of films, you need to have the theatrical version as it was originally presented. With the earlier branches of continuity, the extra scenes are really the viewer's choice. I'm going to leave the theatrical version for now and take the 1a branch, as our next stop will be Halloween II.
I had planned to cover the first three films in this article, but I have a feeling that covering part two will get rather long winded. As a result, this one is probably not as interesting as it would have been, but I need to cover this one before I get into the rest. As with this film, Halloween II exists in two different forms. The difference there is that both versions of the sequel are heavily flawed. This won't be the last time I'll say that about a Halloween film either, just wait until we get to part six.