Goofs for
Halloween (1978) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The Wallace house has its living room on the left side of the house and yet when anybody enters the house, they go to the right of the door to enter the living room.
  
  
• Factual errors: Annie tells Laurie that she will pick her up at 6:30. When she does, it is full daylight, which is not the case anywhere in Illinois on October 31. And even though it is a small town, it's full dark when the girls arrive at their destination.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The movie is set in Illinois, but when Tommy and Laurie are going to school, the trees in the background are palm trees.
  
  

• Continuity: When Michael is stalking Tommy at the school there are a few cars parked across the street from where he's headed. Once Michael gets into his car, all of those cars are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: The front door knob of the house where Laurie is babysitting is on the right when seen from both sides of the door.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Although the story takes place in Illinois, all the cars have California license plates.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Laurie sees the shape near the bush, cigarette smoke from director John Carpenter's cigarette can be seen floating into view.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: While Bob and Lynda are heading up to the bedroom from the living room, Lynda trips on a dolly track and tries to ignore it. [widescreen only]
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael Myers, as a child, walks through the living room with the knife, the clock above the stove shows 9:25 and the clock on the wall reads 9:40, but just 5-7 seconds later, the clock chimes 10 times.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In a close up on the phone before Lindsay answers it, someone's shadow moves into the light.
  
  
• Continuity: When Laurie is trapped in the kitchen, she breaks away glass to move the rake. The shards of fake glass are clearly visible. However, when it cuts back to the shot, the shards of glass are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: When Annie drops off Laurie at the Doyle house, Laurie walks towards the front door which is a French door in this scene; throughout the rest of the movie the door is solid.
  
  
• Continuity: The narrow windows on either side of the front door of the Wallace house are not the same pattern on the inside as they are on the outside.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Michael stabs his sister as a child, you see it from his point of view through the mask. As he is butchering her, he is not looking at her, but in fact he is staring at his own hand. This is presumably part of his sickness.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Michael breaks the car window behind the nurse's head you can see a wrench tied to his hand.
  
  
• Continuity: When Laurie jabs the needle in Michael's neck, he sticks the butcher knife in the couch. After Michael falls, Laurie picks the knife up, looks at it, and then throws it on the floor next to the couch. Later, Michael comes upstairs holding the knife. Before the end credits, when we hear Michael breathing and it shows all the shots of the house, the knife is still on the floor next to the couch.
  
  
• Continuity: When Laurie walks to the Myers house to drop off the key, she only has a few blocks to walk. However, when she and Annie drive clear across town to reach the Doyle house, the Myers house is conveniently close by.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael goes to the school and gets in the car to follow Tommy, the passenger side window is no longer smashed from the previous night's attack on the nurse.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bob and Lynda get out of the van and go into the house, they clearly leave the passenger's side door open. The next time we see the van, the door is closed.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: The amount of time that passes between Laurie hanging up on Annie (when Annie first calls with the "chewing" noises) and the phone ringing again is exactly 3.2 seconds. This is not enough time for Annie to realize Laurie hung up, wait for a dial tone, dial Laurie's number again, and for it to ring on Laurie's end (all the phones seen in this movie are rotary phones which don't have a re-dial feature; even if Laurie's number was 111-1111, it couldn't be dialed that fast). However, in the "TV Version" (which contains scenes filmed 3 years later, during the making of Halloween II), the yellow phone Annie uses to call Laurie is a touch-tone phone (which could very well have re-dial), but even still it's unlikely that Annie could have called Laurie back that fast.
  
  
• Continuity: When Annie comes back after dropping Lindsey off at Tommy Doyle's house, the TV is turned off, although it was left on when Annie and Lindsey went across the street.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the movie Michael is supposed to be 6 years old. However, when he is walking around the house you can clearly see that the scene is being shot by an adult. The camera is well above the door knob and when he goes outside he is as tall as his parents. Then they take the mask off and the view switches to the long scene; notice how much shorter than the adults he is.
  
  
• Continuity: After Michael has stabbed Judith, his sister, he leaves the house and when the camera pans upward, all the lights in the house are on. But, they were never on when Michael was inside and he never turned them all on when he was exiting the house.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the beginning of the movie Michael is six years old. The rest of the movie is enacted 15 years later, so Michael must be 21 years old. In the end credits however, there's a Michael of age six and a Michael of age 23.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Laurie is trapped in the kitchen, you can clearly see which pane of glass in the door is fake glass.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Laurie runs back into the Doyle house after being chased by Michael, she notices the living room window is open. When you look closely you can see a fan that is being used to blow the curtain.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Laurie goes into the living room of the Wallace house, you can see the arm of a crew member protruding from the left wall.
  
  
• Continuity: When Laurie and Annie are walking down the sidewalk and Laurie sees Michael standing next to a bush, from Laurie's point of view the bush is trimmed and neat, but when Annie walks up to the bush, it's all bushy with leaves sticking out everywhere.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Shadow of crew member when Lindsey is watching television.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The writing on the side of the car that Michael steals disappears.
  
  
• Continuity: The date on the tombstone above Annie says that Judith Myers was born November 10, 1947, and died October 31, 1963. that would make her 15 at the time of death, yet everyone says that she was 17 years old.
  
  
• Continuity: In one scene in the movie, Michael stops a running child. If you rewind it a little bit and play in slow motion, you can see Michael has his mask on. A couple of minutes later, Annie and Laurie stop to talk to Annie's dad who is investigating a robbed hardware store. There is no way an alarm bell on a busy street such as that one would go off all day unnoticed.
  
  
• Continuity: Whenever Laurie, Tommy or Lindsey looks out the window at the Wallace House, there is a pumpkin visible with a candle burning. In all of the shots except two, the jack-o-lantern is a flat-looking thing. The two exception shots show a tall and more narrow/skinny pumpkin.
  
  
• Continuity: When Annie is first shown spilling something on her clothes and takes them off to wash them, her panties are a solid color. Later when she is in the laundry room her panties have flower prints on them.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Michael stabs Bob with the butcher knife, the knife goes all of the way through Bob and into the wall. However, the knife is barely even long enough to go entirely through Bob's body (if at all), much less the additional length required for it to be deep enough in the wall to hold up his weight.
  
  
• Factual errors: This movie takes place in late October. Though if you look at the neighborhood around the characters, it does not fit the characteristics of October weather.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Filmed in the spring in California, pumpkins were not in season and the low budget of the movie ruled out creating artificial varieties. Most of the pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns seen are squashes painted orange. As a result they often look somewhat flat or misshapen with the wrong textured skin.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael lunges for Laurie with the knife, and she stabs him with the knitting needle, she clearly hits him around the temple, but in the next scene, it is lodged in his neck.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Laurie is trying to escape the kitchen during the initial Myers attack, a small light with blue gel to simulate moonlight is seen in the left side of the frame. (widescreen only)
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the nurse struggles in the car while Michael is on the roof of the car, we hear the sound of tires screeching. However, it is raining and the road is wet.
  
  
• Continuity: After Doctor Loomis has talked to the Sheriff from a phone on the highway and warned him about Michael, he notices a red pick-up truck and walks towards it to inspect it. We can hear the noise from the train that is coming towards the camera on the left side, shows up and starts to pass. The next shot, is from the opposite side, showing the Doctor and the truck from the front. We still can hear the train passing but there is no train in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: Toward the beginning of the movie when Michael is attacking the woman in the car, she steps on the gas turning the car toward some trees. In the next scene when she jumps out of the car, Michael jumps in and drives off. The trees aren't there anymore and he's driving straight on a road.
  
  
• Continuity: Laurie's hair changes from curly to straight in almost every scene.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael is watching Annie in the kitchen he knocks down and breaks the plant hanging in front of the door. Later when Laurie approaches the same door there is a plant hanging in front of the door.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Dr. Loomis is talking in a phone booth after Myers escapes ("It's your funeral!"), when he exits the booth and notices the abandoned truck, a crew member is reflected in the glass of the phone booth.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): While he is talking to the sheriff, the doctor pulls out his gun, then he says that he has a permit. Illinois does not issue any kind of a permit to carry a handgun.
  
  
• Errors in geography: You can clearly see the mountains in the background, when Dr. Loomis is on the phone and sees the Red Rabbit matchbook. Since this movie takes place in Illinois that would be impossible.
  
  
• Continuity: As Laurie is walking home from school, a leaf (or some other debris) is briefly seen stuck in her hair. She turns back, looking towards where Michael was, after she bumps into the Sheriff, and is startled the leaf is gone.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Laurie stabs Michael there is no blood on the knife she has used.
  
  
• Continuity: Tommy meets up with Laurie at the corner to walk to school, yet to get to Tommy's house requires a car ride across town.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the scene when Laurie scolds Tommy for "scaring Lindsay", he accidentally says Laurie's line, "there's nobody out there", right before she does.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: A boom mic is visible at the top of the screen during the scene where Michael stabs Bob. It shines light off and is clearly visible, killing some tension in the moment.
  
  
• Continuity: Walking home from school, the girls are seen to be traveling along a very dry street, however, when Laurie is left alone, the streets are obviously now wet.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Annie brings Lindsey Wallace over to the Doyle house, she tells Laurie that she will just have to call Ben Tramer "tomorrow." In actuality, Laurie could just talk to Ben at school, as November 1, 1978 was on a Wednesday.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: After Michael has killed Annie, he carries her body around the side of the house. In the first shot, notice her head is to the left side of Michael's body and her feet are on the right side. It then cuts to Tommy who is watching from the window across the street. When it cuts back to Michael carrying Annie up the front steps of the house, her body has switched positions. Her head is now on the right side of Michael and her feet on the left.
  
  

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