10 Mistakes Directors Hoped You'd Forget By The End Of The Movie
6. John Carpenter's Visible Cigarette Smoke - Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter is a director who has always played by his own rules, and apparently that extends to smoking it up even when the camera is rolling.
This came back to bite him while directing the iconic bushes scene early in Halloween, where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) spots The Shape spying on her from the hedge, and her pal Annie (Nancy Kyes) makes fun of her by walking over to the hedge.
Just as Annie says, "He wants to take you out tonight," eagle-eyed viewers might notice a strange ring of smoke drifting across the screen. It's much easier to spot in motion than in a still image, and once you see it, you'll never un-see it.
As Carpenter himself admitted on the film's DVD commentary, this was a result of him standing too close to the camera while lighting up a cigarette - tobacco or something else, we do not know - and presumably not realising until he went to edit the scene.
It's hardly a garish mistake, at least, and fits the film's low-budget, seat-of-the-pants production like a glove.