It might be hard to believe, but it’s been 16 years since we last saw Jamie Lee Curtis in a Halloween movie. But as an incredible gift for horror fans — just in time for the Halloween festivities, no less — she’s stepping back into the shoes of Laurie for another face off with Michael Myers.
Ryan Green / Universal
The latest instalment to the Halloween franchise ignores all the other sequels that have taken place (soz H20, you were great) and instead acts as a direct sequel to the 1978 movie, set 40 years later. So, after watching the film for ourselves, and being scared out of our wits in the process, we jumped at the chance to speak to Jamie Lee Curtis and find out some behind-the-scenes facts. Buckle up, and prepare to be terrified!
1.
The opening to Halloween was originally a different scene that paid homage to the first movie, but it was eventually cut.
BuzzFeed, Compass International Pictures
Jamie said: “The movie used to open with a scene of my granddaughter jogging through Haddonfield and ending up in her bedroom, opening up a louvered closet door, and pulling a bare bulb light bulb to pick her sweater for the day.”
2.
One of the reasons Jamie actually signed up to the movie was because of that scene.
BuzzFeed, Universal
“I just loved how I could imagine the run through Haddonfield where the credits were rolling would kind of put you back in this small town USA,” she said. “And then you were gonna end that sequence with this young woman, my granddaughter, basically turning on the light and illuminating that we are all back in the closet again. I thought that was incredibly beautiful.”
3.
The most emotional scene for Jamie was shot on the last day of filming, where Laurie sits in her truck waiting for Michael Myers to be transferred from a mental institute to prison. Since she was filming the scene on her own, the rest of the crew wore name tags which said “we are Laurie Strode” to show their support.
Universal
Speaking about the last day of filming, she revealed: “I was in my dressing room preparing for my work, and then when I came to the set, there was the entire crew standing there in a kind of silent solidarity with me, knowing I was about to climb into the cab of this truck and relive what happened to Laurie 40 years ago. It was very moving to me, that my crew really were saying, ‘We’re with you, we’re with her, we love you, we love her.'”
4.
But even though the whole scene took hours to shoot, only a couple of seconds were actually used in the end.
Ryan Green / Universal
Jamie continued: “It’s in the movie very, very, very, very little. I mean, it’s in the movie in the right way. But when you shoot something, you shoot for an hour and they use three seconds, it’s the nature of the beast.”
5.
Another thing that made her feel emotional was actually a super small detail that you might not notice — while Laurie’s house is basically a fortress prepared for the return of Michael Myers, there are also a lot of house plants, which Jamie thought was a lovely touch.
BuzzFeed
“I thought that was very moving because of course you water house plants and they grow,” she said. “So, basically Laurie, even though she was damaged, she still believed in the possibility of growth and transformation, which is what the miracle of growth is. That moved me.”
6.
It was also Jamie’s idea to paint a garden on the metal grate that hides her gun collection in the movie, which she recommended after seeing the house plants.
Universal
She revealed that when the director, David Gordon Green, asked her what they should paint on the grate, she recommended a garden, so the art department painted the metal cover with vines and flowers.
7.
And the house plants / garden themed grate painting was what inspired her to ask to keep the clicker that unveils her secret safe room as a memento.
BuzzFeed, Universal
When asked if she took anything from the set of Halloween to keep as a memory, Jamie revealed that she’d asked for something but hadn’t gotten it yet. “There’s a little clicker that operates the secret opening to [Laurie’s] safe room, and that clicker has a label on it that says ‘the garden’ [inspired by the house plants and painted grate]. That’s what I asked for.”
8.
Looking back at the first movie, Jamie revealed that after the events of Halloween night in 1978, she thinks that Laurie actually went back to school the very next day.
BuzzFeed, Compass International Pictures
She said: “Laurie Strode suffered a trauma when she was 17 years old on October 31st 1978, and basically she went back to school November 1st 1978 a different person.”
9.
She also thinks that she wouldn’t be doing her job properly if she didn’t find it emotional stepping back into the shoes of Laurie Strode.
Compass International Pictures
“She went from being an innocent, dreamer, intellectual, romantic, chaste virgin, to someone who was brutalised, and no one helped her,” she said of her character. “This beautiful young soul was battered and beaten and traumatised through her entire adult life, and if that doesn’t make me, the actress, emotional, then I’m in the wrong profession. In order to make the story have any resonance, you have to believe that this woman went through a trauma.”
10.
Jamie saw a lot of the scariest moments in the movie for the first time when she went to watch it in the theatre.
Ryan Green / Universal
“I’m not there during the filming of all these other sequences that I’m not involved in,” she confessed. “So, there a lot of sequences in this movie that I’m not in that are really, really, really, scary and that I saw for the very first time in the theatre.”
11.
And Jamie thinks that the movie is an A+ based on how terrifying it is.
Ryan Green / Universal
Although she revealed that it’s not scary filming a horror movie “because you know everybody and you know what’s about to happen”, she did say that “it is designed to scare you, and I will tell you we get an A+. Or an H+ if you will.”
12.
The cast and crew would usually spend time between takes on their phones, but Jamie revealed that if she was a director, she’d ban cell phones from the set.
BuzzFeed
“It’s sad reality, but the truth is most people communicate their lives through their phones,” she said. She continued, “If I was a director, I would forbid cell phones on sets. I find them distracting, and yet they are the tool we reach for when we have a break.”
13.
Jamie admits that there are a lot of homages and easter eggs to previous Halloween films in this latest instalment, but refuses to reveal any of them because it takes away the fun of finding them for yourself.
BuzzFeed, Ryan Green / Universal
“That is part of a way for a filmmaker to give a superfan something really to look for and be delighted in, so it’d be like me telling a child the egg that has the $20 is the red egg with the green stripe around it. I’m not gonna tell you one of them.”
14.
Jamie never thought she’d do another Halloween movie after reviving the franchise with H20 in 1998.
Dimension Films
She revealed that she’s been enjoying her “beautiful personal life” before going on to say, “The last thing I thought I’d be doing is making another Halloween movie.”
15.
Although this latest movie marks the first time Jamie has stepped into the role as an executive producer, she thinks that she also deserved an executive producer credit for Halloween H20 because it was all her idea in the first place.
Dimension Films
“I deserved a credit on the H20 movie because I actually invented it,” she said. “I was raising my kids and I was busy, and I didn’t think to say to my people, ‘I should be an executive producer, it was my idea to do it.’ I regret that.”
16.
Jamie revealed that she would actually like to direct a horror movie, and that after filming Halloween, she went home and wrote a screenplay of her own.
Ryan Green / Universal
“Being around David definitely got my creative mojo going. I went home and wrote a screenplay that I will direct at some point I hope.”
17.
Jamie didn’t actually rule out the possibility of another Halloween sequel.
BuzzFeed, Ryan Green / Universal
When BuzzFeed said that we assumed there wouldn’t be another sequel and asked what she would miss most about playing Laurie Strode, Jamie answered, “Well you know what, I don’t know nothing about nothing. I know I will leave here, probably go have a latte. Beyond that, I don’t know what.”
18.
And finally, what’s one thing Jamie Lee Curtis thinks you should know before you go and see Halloween? “You will be so fucking scared that you won’t know what to do.”
Ryan Green / Universal
You can watch Halloween in cinemas from 19 October.