John Carpenter's Halloween is
undeniably one of the most influential films of all time, doubling as
one of the most ripped off as well. In reality, one can make the
claim Halloween ripped off a 1974 indie horror flick called
Black Christmas, but that's an article for another day. The
fact of the matter is Halloween is the movie EVERYONE saw, and
the one everyone attempted to emulate. Sean S. Cunningham, a
producer and director, was one such person that viewed Carpenter's
classic and thought “Hey, why not me too?”.
Cunningham already had some minor
success with his own knockoff versions of the hit 1976 film Bad
News Bears, Here Come The Tigers and Manny's Orphans, so
he was no stranger to emulating superior movies. Cunningham and his
writing partner Victor Miller set out to directly copy all of the
signature techniques that made Halloween so original: their film
would use a first person view to put audiences behind the eyes of
their killer, the killer would get a signature theme that would play
whenever he was about to kill, the cast would be a bunch of unknown
teenagers that would get killed off one by one with the exception of
the Final Girl, pretty much everything Carpenter thought of, they
imitated.
Their
ONE innovation in the script was to include bucket loads of blood
and gore, because Halloween
is actually one of the most bloodless horror films ever made. In
this aspect, Friday The 13th
ALSO became one of the most ripped off films of all time because
after it was a hit EVERY slasher film turned into a bloodbath with
severed body parts flying everywhere. With all these elements in
place, all they needed was a title for their upcoming production.
Originally it was going to be called Long Night At Camp
Blood, but Cunningham decided to
change it to Friday The 13th,
which oddly enough was the working title for Manny's
Orphans.
