Compared to other John Carpenter films, “Halloween” demonstrates an amazing amount of restraint for the director. Which is not to say the chaotic elements of “The Thing” and “Assault on Precinct 13” aren’t amazing, but Carpenter displays a surprising competence for pulling back as he does with unleashing hell on a slew of characters. Like many of Carpenter’s films, “Halloween” is also relegated to a limited setting, where the slasher tropes for hundreds of other slasher films would be built. There’s a small town, a curse, a crime that resonates within the community, and a virginal final girl who would stand off against the monster.
Tarantula Man came about as a result of a long discussion between myself and the team who write the website material. We were having a conference about potential new content for the site, and Greg Mitchell (one of the site writers) suggested possibly doing Tommy Doyle’s comic books. My thoughts went into overdrive at that point and I came up with the rather wrong idea of a pedophile arachnid. I was thinking about things that would scare a child, and I instantly thought of how myself, as a child, I was constantly warned to avoid strangers. In my mind when I was young, strangers were shadowy figures that hung around by the school gates and in the garden at night. That was the sort of thing I was trying to tap into there.