Halloween 1978 with Wine - Mockingbird, Digbeth
Thank you to everyone who joined us at The Mockingbird for Halloween (1978) with Wine. Dr Tony Loomis brought five wines from his personal cellars and spent much of the evening insisting that Michael Myers had followed him to Digbeth. We hope you enjoyed the wines and made it home safely.
Read on for details of all five wines, our Haddonfield gallery and plenty of movie trivia. A few of the facts below had to wait until after the credits to avoid giving the game away.
Dr Loomis’ Personal Cellar Selection
We began with a glass of South African Cap Classique: bottle-fermented sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Lemon cream and almond biscuit on the nose, followed by citrus, tropical fruit and fine bubbles. A civilised welcome before Dr Loomis began checking the doors.
As Loomis warned the Haddonfield police that Michael was coming, we poured something cool and fresh. Cave de Lugny are true specialists. They’re the biggest Chardonnay producer in Burgundy, but they don’t rest on their laurels. Their mission is to make standout white Burgundy which is affordable and delicious. This is made using grapes from 30-year-old vines. Older vines produce more intensely-flavoured grapes and the team dial up this fruitiness by leaving it unoaked. It’s fruity, juicy and refreshing – citrus, green melon and a touch of honey. Dr Loomis had checked the label. He wished the sheriff had shown similar attention to detail.
The old Myers house called for a wine that was more than it first appeared. Pinot Grigio grapes have dusky pink skins; a short period of contact with those skins gives this dry rosato its delicate copper-pink colour.
Made from grapes grown in Trentino’s Vallagarina Valley, it has white peach and gentle summer fruit flavours, a hint of redcurrant and a lively citrus finish. An easy wine to enjoy while keeping one eye on the house across the street.
After Annie’s encounter in the car, it was time for our first red. This Loire-sourced Pinot Noir is light and juicy, with redcurrant, cherry and a little sweet spice.
Pinot Noir can look pale in the glass while delivering plenty of flavour. By this point in the film, we had learned that appearances in Haddonfield could be misleading.
Laurie went looking for her friends, and Dr Loomis decided we needed the most substantial red in his cellar. This Californian Cabernet Sauvignon offers ripe blackcurrant and black cherry, with vanilla oak and a soft, generous finish.
The bottle is called Man with an Axe. Michael, of course, has always shown a preference for a different implement. We felt it was best not to dwell on that while Laurie was crossing the street.
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The Haddonfield Files
John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill wrote Halloween from an idea about a killer stalking babysitters. The Babysitter Murders was the working title until executive producer Irwin Yablans suggested setting the story on 31 October.
The opening journey through the Myers house puts us behind the killer’s eyes. Cinematographer Dean Cundey used a Panaglide camera rig to create that unsettling movement through the rooms.
That opening sequence was actually the last scene filmed. The Myers house was an abandoned property which the crew cleaned up and dressed to look like a family home in 1963.
Producer Debra Hill supplied young Michael’s hands for the opening point-of-view shots, including the hand that takes the knife. Will Sandin played the six-year-old Michael revealed outside the house.
Haddonfield, Illinois, is fictional. Hill borrowed the name from her hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey, while much of the film was shot in and around South Pasadena, California.
California in spring did not offer much autumn foliage. The crew painted leaves, scattered them for the street scenes, then collected them to use again. They also had to keep palm trees out of the shots.
Michael Myers was named after an English distributor who had helped Carpenter’s previous film, Assault on Precinct 13, reach audiences in Europe.
Dr Sam Loomis shares his name with a character in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. There was another Psycho connection in the cast: Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of Janet Leigh, who played Marion Crane.
Halloween was Curtis’s first feature film. Debra Hill recognised that casting Janet Leigh’s daughter would attract attention, but Curtis also won Carpenter over with her audition for Laurie.
Laurie’s practical school clothes came from J. C. Penney. Curtis recalled shopping for them with the costume department as though they were choosing clothes with Laurie’s mother.
The film was shot out of story order. To help Curtis pitch Laurie’s reactions, Carpenter gave her a “fear meter” for each scene, telling her how frightened Laurie should be at that point.
Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were both approached to play Loomis. Donald Pleasence eventually took the role after his daughter recommended Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13.
Pleasence had already played Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. In Halloween, he gave Loomis the absolute conviction that nobody around him wanted to share.
Annie is played by Nancy Kyes, credited on the film as Nancy Loomis. Her matching surname with the doctor causes the occasional double take in a cast list, but the characters are unrelated.
P.J. Soles, who plays Lynda, had appeared in Carrie. She recalled getting the Halloween part at her audition because Carpenter liked the way she said “totally.” Soles then tried to work the word into as many of Lynda’s lines as she could.
Soles and the filmmakers hoped Dennis Quaid, then her husband, could play Bob. He was unavailable, and the role went to John Michael Graham.
Michael’s blank white mask began life as a Captain Kirk mask. Production designer Tommy Lee Wallace altered the hair and eye holes and painted the face pale. A clown mask had also been considered.
Nick Castle, Carpenter’s friend, played the masked Michael for most of the film. When Castle asked how he should portray the character, Carpenter’s direction was essentially to walk.
Carpenter composed and performed the film’s music. The famous main theme uses a 5/4 rhythm that his father had taught him on bongos. Carpenter remembered showing an early cut without the score to an executive who was not frightened; adding the music made a remarkable difference.
The old film on Tommy Doyle’s television is The Thing from Another World (1951). Carpenter admired filmmaker Howard Hawks and went on to make his own The Thing in 1982.
The original American poster has a clever double image: a hand holding a knife also forms part of a jack-o’-lantern. Artist Bob Gleason said the idea was his.
A couple of facts we had to save until after the film: Donald Pleasence suggested that Loomis should seem to expectMichael’s disappearance at the end, rather than look surprised. The filmmakers shot both reactions and used Pleasence’s choice.
And if you remember Laurie and Michael being related, that revelation came in Halloween II. It was not part of the story Carpenter and Hill told in the 1978 original.
Thank you again for joining us in Haddonfield by way of Digbeth. Keep an eye on our upcoming Movies with Wine. .
Dr Loomis, Michael and The Wine Events Crew
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