Scarecrowber: Halloween
October 25 - 27, 2024
“Halloween is an absolutely merciless thriller, a movie so violent and scary that, yes, I would compare it to Psycho (1960). It’s a terrifying and creepy film about what one of the characters calls Evil Personified.” – from Roger Ebert’s 1979 review. I first saw it when I was 9 and it scared the crap outta me. Though it set up the template for slasher films of the 80s and beyond, most directors after Carpenter focused on the violence instead of the suspense – and the suspense is what makes this film terrifying, even now. —Greg
Passes: $100 | $75 Members - Provides access to all Scarecrowber screenings
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase
Related Event
Cinema Dissection: Halloween
Join facilitator and SIFF Programmer Dan Doody for a scene-by-scene—or should that be a slash-by-slash—breakdown of John Carpenter’s Halloween, which firmly established the slasher film as a popular and lucrative sub-genre of horror.
On a cold Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith. He was sentenced and locked away inside a sanitarium under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis. On October 30, 1978, Myers escapes and makes his way back home to Haddonfield, turning a night of tricks and treats into something much more sinister for three young women, including Laurie Strode, the star-making role for Jamie Lee Curtis.
- Director: John Carpenter
- Principal Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers
- Country: USA
- Year: 1978
- Running Time: 92 min.
- Producer: Moustapha Akkad, Irwin Yablans, Joseph Wolf
- Screenplay: John Carpenter, Debra Hill
- Cinematographers: Dean Cundey
- Filmography: The Thing (1982), Escape From New York (1981), The Fog (1980), Christine (1983)
- Language: English
- Format: DCP