PHILADELPHIA — Michael Myers is back to terrorize the small town of Haddonfield with the release of “Halloween Ends,” which hits theaters and streams on Peacock starting Friday.
But don’t expect him to check out Haddy the dinosaur statue between kills.
Horror buffs already know that Myers’ mayhem doesn’t take place in the South Jersey borough just outside Philly. Instead, it’s set in a small, fictional Illinois town.
The Halloween franchise, beginning with the 1978 John Carpenter classic, has a connection to Haddonfield, N.J., though, thanks to original franchise co-writer and producer Debra Hill, who spent her formative years in the real Haddonfield.
“Haddonfield was a place that I loved,” Hill told the Courier-Post in 1999. “It’s really a beautiful community. Basically, I used the name to pay homage to the town where I grew up.”
Hill, who died in 2005 at 54 after a battle with cancer, was born in Philadelphia and moved around frequently with her family, the New York Times reported. She spent a good chunk of time in Detroit before her family moved to Haddonfield in 1965, according to a 1980 Courier-Post article. Hill would go on to graduate from Haddonfield Memorial High School in 1968 and earned a degree in sociology from Temple University.
She met Halloween director Carpenter in 1975, and he encouraged her to write scripts because “it was the best way for a woman to get into directing or production,” according to Hill’s Los Angeles Times obituary. The pair, who were reportedly dating at the time, ended up writing the script for the original Halloween in three weeks.
Carpenter has said that the inspiration for the film’s Haddonfield was his childhood hometown of Bowling Green, Ky. But it was named after the South Jersey town, Hill told the Courier-Post in 1979.
“You can tell from the movie that I loved growing up in Haddonfield. That town was good to me,” she said.
And Hill’s highlighting of the town has been good for Haddonfield, said Camden County public affairs director Dan Keashen told the Inquirer. In fact, they almost don’t want to see the series wrap up.
“Many residents will be sad to see the end of the Michael Myers saga that has featured a fictional depiction of our county and the borough of Haddonfield for the last 43 years,” Keashen said. “The movies have almost become a rite of passage and a indelible part of the season for residents since its inception on the big screen.”
“At least I knew she had the genes to scream well,” Hill said.
And while Haddonfield may have been good to Hill, Halloween was even better. Filmed over the course of several weeks on a $350,000 budget, it earned a reported $70 million globally, setting a profit record for independent movies at the time. The Inquirer, however, disliked the film’s “remarkably implausible plot,” as one review noted.
Halloween was revolutionary for the horror genre. Before the iconic slasher film, horror movies focused on isolated locations or distinctly demonic evil. In Halloween, the evil was right next door — and thanks to Hill and Carpenter, the suburbs became scary, too.
Hill went on to write and produce a number of other Carpenter films, including The Fog, Escape from New York, Halloween II, and Escape from L.A. In the 1980s, she formed a production company, Hill/Obst Productions, and produced films including The Fisher King, Heartbreak Hotel, and Adventures in Babysitting.
Today, she is considered a trailblazer for women in filmmaking and was honored with an award from industry organization Women in Film in 2003.
