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?
