Halloween (1978) - 38 mistakes

Continuity: In the scene when Michael is carrying Annie's body into the house her head is on the left side of his body. After they show the boy looking out the window they cut back to Michael and suddenly Annie's head is on the right side of his body.

Factual error: Even though the story is set in Haddonfield IL, all of the cars have California license plates.

Revealing: There is a scene where Michael Myers is hiding behind a hedge bush and Laurie and her friend go to investigate. Laurie turns around and talks and you see cigarette smoke go by the camera. It came from one of the camera crew members shooting the scene.

Continuity: In the closing credits, Michael Myers is said to be 23 years of age, he was actually 21.

Continuity: When Laurie is walking home the sidewalk instantly goes from wet to dry.

Continuity: When Laurie is beating on the door to Tommy's house and telling him to open it, the door knob is on the right side of the door. When it shows Tommy opening it from the inside, the door knob is also on the right side (it should be on the left).

Visible crew/equipment: Just before Laurie stabs Michael with the knitting needle you can see that one of the window shutters is open and that the wind is ruffling the curtain. When the camera gets closer and the curtain is out of the way you can see the huge fan in the studio being used to simulate the wind outside.

Continuity: There is a scene involving Michael Myers breaking the closet in order to get to Laurie, then why near the end of the film does it show you the closet in tip-top condition?

Visible crew/equipment: When Annie is locked in the laundry room, there's a scene where the phone is ringing incessantly and the camera pans slowly to the right showing little Lindsay Wallace who's too busy watching television to answer the phone. If you watch this scene in widescreen, you'll see a crew member lurking in the shadows (left side of the screen) on the wall. It appears they are trying to avoid being seen.

Continuity: In certain shots, you can see that the William Shatner mask had not been fully painted white, because you can see the flesh coloured neck, but in other shots it is fully painted.

Continuity: After Laurie asks Annie what she is going to wear to the dance (while Annie is driving with Laurie), we see Annie turn the steering wheel to the left, yet the car turns right as seen on the green screen in front of them. As the car is turning right, it cuts back to Annie still turning the steering wheel left.

Plot hole: Michael stabs the teen boy who goes to get a beer for his girlfriend. In the closeup, even though the teen boy was stabbed pretty much straight through the heart clear through to the wall, there is no blood whatsoever dripping on the floor or down his pants. If you cut the major arteries to the heart, there would be great volumes of blood streaming down both the front and back of the teen.

Continuity: During the beginning of the movie, when Laurie is talking to the police officer, the sun is shining bright as if it is a perfect day, then when Laurie walks to her house, the trees look as if it has just quit raining.

Continuity: When Laurie is in the bottom of the closet hiding from Michael, you can see that a purple dress is in front of the rest of the clothes. However when she stands up to grab a hanger, a pink sweater is in front only to be behind the purple dress again when she sits back down.

Factual error: When Dr. Loomis is at the pay phone talking to someone at the mental institution, the background of the scene has mountains, which in fact Illinois does not have any mountains.

Continuity: Toward the end of the movie, Dr. Loomis comes up the stairs and starts to shoot Michael six times, sending him spiraling to the terrace. Take notice that Michael is about to go over the ledge of the terrace head first. In the next shot it shows him carefully backing off the ledge, while facing the house.

Continuity: Laurie's hair keeps changing throughout the movie. Her hair changes from wavy to straight while she babysits the kids. It is wavy again when she is going to Lindsey's house, and straight again when she is running back to Tommy's house. It stays straight until Michael starts to strangle her,where it becomes wavy again, having been straight in the previous shot. It all ends with straight hair. Surely all of this could not happen in a matter of hours.

Factual error: It's supposed to be late autumn, but in most scenes the leaves are still very green. [This is because it was shot in California during the summer. Carpenter imported leaves for every shot that you saw leaves blowing on the ground and blew them with a giant fan (this also killed any ambient sound takes); there are also a few shots where you can see palm trees (most prominent the one right in the front yard of Michael Myers' house).]

Revealing: During the scene when Michael steals the station wagon from Dr. Loomis and the nurse, when she is lying across the seat you can see the passenger window is clean and very much transparent. However in the very next scene where Michael goes to smack his hand on the window, it is now foggy - a side effect of the glass alternative used for the effect.

Continuity: When Lynda is talking about how she forgot her books (at the beginning of their walk home) we see Michael Myers drive by, then speeds up and drives passed a driveway, then it cuts to Annie (Myers is still driving) and she says, "Hey Jerk. Speed Kills." We see Michael driving again and he is just a bit behind the drive-way he drove by before, he should be much farther ahead down the road at the speed he was going.