20 Things You Didn't Know About Halloween (1978)
13. The Origin Of Leigh Brackett
Charles Cyphers's Sheriff Leigh Brackett is an uneasy ally to Donald Pleasence's Dr. Sam Loomis throughout the film, doubting that Michael Myers has actually returned to Haddonfield, but also fearing what the impact might be if Loomis is correct and the little town actually has a killer roaming its streets.
The sheriff was named in honour of screenwriter, Leigh Brackett, who had written such films as The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). Halloween was made mere months after Brackett succumbed to cancer, following her submission of an early draft of the script for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) to George Lucas.
John Carpenter is also a keen admirer of one of the directors with whom Brackett had her some of her most prolific successes, Howard Hawks, and Hawks' work also features in Halloween in the form of excerpts from the 1951 film, The Thing from Another World, which Carpenter would remake in 1982 as The Thing.