Original Halloween Footage Rescued
The big news of the day appears to be Horror Roundtable miscreant Don May, Jr. and Billy Kirkus’ discovery of a large amount of unused footage from John Carpenter’s Halloween. These are the multiple takes that ended up on the cutting room floor. Though the boxes haven’t been completely catalogued yet, May seems convinced that it will contain at least a few interesting surprises.
“The most exciting possibility is that Wallace told me about the original ending—and if this is indeed all the original camera negative, then we certainly have it. Wallace explained that he always thought it was funny that, even in the ‘original shooting scripts’ that are for sale for HALLOWEEEN, the ending always has Michael Myers disappearing at the end. That isn’t the way they originally shot it. The original shooting script, and the way the movie was initially filmed, had Michael dying at the end.”
May has also been offering up a few tidbits on the DVD Maniacs message board.
“One of the things I am hoping to find is the original opening sequence, without the mask overlay. I’ll have to ask Wallace (or Carpenter, if he calls me) about it, but I think, when little Michael goes to the house and puts on the mask before he kills his sister, that the “mask” portion of the screen may be an optical effect. If so, chances are we may have the un-masked version, or an alternate take version, of the opening scene death scene without the mask covering the picture! THAT is something I want to see…”
I’m not that big a fan of Halloween (more of a Black Christmas man, myself) but I love the discovery of hidden treasures from the days before every piece of footage from even the most unassuming movies was tucked away for the inevitable DVD extras. It would be especially instructive watching Carpenter at work and actually seeing the process that went into making a low-budget horror film of that era.