20 Things You Didn't Know About Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter is a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock; like many directors before and since, he has cited The Master of Suspense as being a key influence upon his work. Halloween is an extremely good example of this.

Jamie Lee Curtis is, of course, the daughter of Janet Leigh, whose character was infamously knifed in the shower at the Bates Motel in Hitchcock's 1960 film, Psycho, but the references to that film do not stop there.

For instance, Donald Pleasence's Dr. Sam Loomis is named in honour of the hero of Psycho, John Gavin's hardware store owner. Meanwhile, Nancy Stephens portrays a nurse accompanying Loomis to Smith's Grove Sanitarium to bring the adult Michael Myers before a judge to have him ruled insane on his 21st birthday.

It is not specifically mentioned in the film, but Stephens is actually portraying Nurse Marion Chambers, which is a combination of the names Marion Crane (Janet Leigh's character from Psycho) and Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire's character from that film). Whilst it does not directly relate to Psycho, Carpenter also named Brian Andrews's Tommy Doyle after Wendell Corey's Lieutenant Detective Thomas J. Doyle from Hitchcock's 1954 film, Rear Window, which also serves as something of an inspiration for Halloween's more voyeuristic moments.

Far more disturbing, however, is that fact that, whenever The Shape stabs someone, the sound that audiences actually hear is that of a knife being pushed into a melon - the same technique that Hitchcock used for the stabbing effect sounds in Psycho. After all, Michael's weapon of choice is the same as that used by "Mrs Bates"...