'Halloween' is 45: Jamie Lee Curtis’ $200 wardrobe budget and inspiration for ‘damn scary’ Michael Myers mask

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Jamie Lee Curtis on returning to 'Halloween' franchise

'Halloween' star Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode and confronts masked murderer Michael Myers.

"Halloween" is celebrating its 45th anniversary.

The movie premiered in October 1978 and followed a group of teenagers trying to escape from the murderous Micheal Myers on Halloween night. While it was filmed on a tight budget in only 20 days, it went on to become one of the most successful slasher movies ever.

Its success led to the creation of many sequels, with the story seemingly reaching its conclusion in the 2022 sequel, "Halloween Ends." 

Here are some facts about the first movie you might not know. 

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Jamie Lee Curtis was ‘not like Laurie Strode’

Jamie Lee Curtis' first leading role in a movie was in the 1978 slasher film, "Halloween." (Compass International Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

The role of Laurie Strode in "Halloween" was Jamie Lee Curtis' first starring role in a movie. Prior to that, she had appeared in small roles on a number of television shows, and has since gone on to receive an Academy Award.

"When I was 19, I was not like Laurie Strode. Laurie Strode was an acting part. You know, you would have hired me to play Linda. I was a little snarky, and I was a little promiscuous. But I was not Laurie Strode," Curtis said at New York Comic-Con in 2022. 

"What was amazing to me was an acting part. She didn't look like me. She didn't dress like me. She didn't think like me, barely out of high school. She was like the valedictorian of her class, you know? And there was a real opportunity for me to be an actor, which I hadn't had that opportunity before. And for me, that was incredible."

Looking back, Curtis revealed the character is very special to her, explaining they "have become woven together," and that "there is no separation." "I don't have anything in my life without Laurie Strode, nothing. I wouldn't have a career. I would not have a family. Everything comes from you loving her," she said.

‘Chills went up our spines’

The mask used to give Michael Myers his signature look is a Captain Kirk mask with the features wiped off. (Compass International Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

During an interview with The Movie Waffler, Tommy Lee Wallace, the production designer for "Halloween," explained the origin of the Michael Myers mask. He said he was tasked with finding a mask with a blank face, saying he mostly found masks of "prominent people like Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford," but those wouldn't work because their features were too strong.

He then found masks of Emmett Kelly and William Shatner, and seriously considered using the Kelly mask as the sad-clown aesthetic worked really well with the eerie vibe they were going for.

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"I had, meanwhile, modified the Kirk mask a little - painted it dead white, yanked off the sideburns, opened up the eyeholes more, mussed the hair and darkened it," Wallace explained. "When the guy came out wearing it, no one was prepared for the effect. It was like 'whoa, f--- me...' and chills went up our spines. It was so damn scary just to look at, never mind any story or action, just the pure visceral effect of the thing itself."

The original mask was used in the first two sequels. However, from the fourth film on, a new mask was needed and filmmakers have been trying to replicate the eeriness of the original ever since.

‘A big mistake’

John Carpenter wrote the screenplay for the film in 10 days with his girlfriend at the time, Debra Hill. (Compass International Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

It took director John Carpenter less than two weeks to write one of the most iconic horror movies. 

"'Halloween' was written in approximately 10 days by Debra Hill and myself," Carpenter wrote on his website. "It was based on an idea by Irwin Yablans about a killer who stalks babysitters, tentatively titled 'The Baby-sitter Murders,' until Yablans suggested that the story could take place on Oct. 31 and ‘Halloween’ might not be such a bad title for an exploitation-horror movie."

One of the elements that makes the movie so scary is the suspenseful score, which builds the tension throughout the film. Carpenter composed the music himself, explaining he felt music was needed to up the scare factor, and he did it himself because "[he] was the fastest and cheapest [he] could get."

"I showed the movie to an executive without music, which is a big mistake. Don’t ever show a movie to anybody unless it’s completely done," Carpenter told PBS. "And the executive said that’s not scary, and I’m not scared by anything like that. And then you know the movie came out, and it was with the music, it got scarier."

‘Buying Laurie’s wardrobe with $200'

Jamie Lee Curtis told People in 2018 that, due to the film's minimal budget, she was given $200 to buy her wardrobe for the movie from JC Penney. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

The minimal $325,000 budget producers were working with didn't allow for extravagance when it came to wardrobe or any of the comforts found on bigger movie sets. Many of the film's actors even went out and purchased their own clothing for filming.

"All the sudden, I was going to JC Penney and buying Laurie’s wardrobe with $200," Curtis told People in October 2018. "I made $8,000 – I made $2,000 a week, which at the time was a fortune."

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Also, unlike most movie sets, there weren't separate trailers for each actor or even for the different departments such as wardrobe, hair and makeup. Curtis explained that "the makeup and the hair and the wardrobe were all in this one Winnebago [RV] that we all shared."

‘Psycho’ inspiration

Carpenter named Dr. Sam Loomis after a character in "Psycho," a film Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, Janet Leigh, appeared in. (Bettmann via Getty Images)

When it came time to naming the characters, Carpenter drew inspiration from not only classic movies, but also the individuals behind those movies.

He named the film's villain, Michael Myers, after the British distributor who helped him when it came to releasing his previous film, "Assault on Precinct 13" in the U.K. Laurie Strode was named after one of his ex-girlfriends, Tommy Doyle was named after a character in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Rear Window," and he named Sheriff Leigh Brackett after the famous screenwriter who wrote "Rio Bravo" and "The Empire Strikes Back."

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In a special nod to the film's star, Curtis, Carpenter named Dr. Sam Loomis, the psychiatrist assigned to evaluate Michael Myers when he is brought into Smith's Grove Sanitarium as a child, after a character with the same name in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Curtis' mother, Janet Leigh, appeared in the movie, and was involved in one of the movie's most famous scenes, when her character is attacked in the shower.