Halloween (1978)

PRODUCTION NOTES

In 1990, twelve years after Halloween was released and at the tail end of the British tabloids' attempts to demonised horror movies via their 'video nasties' obsession, Carpenter's film found itself embroiled in another press-created 'scandal.' The Daily Mail - predictably - reported the trial of 23-year old Robert Sartin, identified newspapers as a "horror fan" who had gone berserk in the town of Monkseaton, Tyne and Wear in April 1989 and had used a shotgun to kill one man and wound a dozen other passers-by.

The Mail's reporting of the case led on the fact that Sartin was supposedly "obsessed" with Halloween and was hearing the film's killer, Michael Myers, giving him orders to kill in his head. The paper's article on the case (1 May 1990 and 2 May 1990) focussed on this curious aspect of the case, downplaying the fact that Sartin was schizophrenic (it was mentioned almost in passing) and positioning his viewing of Halloween as the trigger for his rampages. In the 1 May 1990 article, Margaret Henfield noted that Sartin had confessed to hearing voices in his head instructing him to kill his parents and that "Only when he watched a video of Halloween did he connect the imagined commands of a voice called Michael with a character in the film", a bizarre statement when one considers that Michael Myers hasn't uttered a single word in any of the Halloween films.

It was caught up in the fall out from a further real-crime tragedy in February 1995 when the BBC withdraw a planned screening on the Tuesday 21st following the real-life murder by stabbing of 15 year old babysitter Rachel Rooney and her 7-year-old charge, Jonathan Copley, in Bradford.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008