Corrected entry: When Laurie goes to the Wallace residence to check on Linda, she enters the living room and a crew member's arm can be seen sticking out from the left wall.
Corrected entry: The Myers' house is close enough to be walking distance from where Laurie lives. Yet at the end of the movie when Loomis notices the station wagon right down from the Myers' house, Loomis himself is a mere walking distance from the houses at which Laurie and Annie were babysitting. This is impossible since we were already told the street where the babysitting was taking place at was on other side of town from where Laurie lived.
Correction: The film never says the Myers house is on the other side of town from the Doyle's/Wallace's. Loomis states the distance as 3 blocks after he finds the car. So by the time he encounters Tommy and Lindsay running outside, we can presume he's walked an additional block or two. But the distance is walkable.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning of the movie, Laurie runs into Tommy while she is walking to school, meaning that they live near each other; however, later on in the movie, when Laurie has to babysit Tommy, Annie has to drive her to Tommy's house, which is located on the other side of town.
Suggested correction: The film never says Tommy lives on the other side of town. They were only driving so long as an excuse to cruise around, smoke weed and kill time. Loomis later tells Sherriff Brackett that he's walked 3 blocks from the Myers house and soon after that we see him arrive at the Doyle house, still on foot. Since we know the Strode and Myers houses are within walking distance of each other, we also know the Doyle and Wallaces aren't too much further away.
Earlier on the walk home Annie says the Wallaces are leaving at 7. She later calls Laurie and says she will pick her up at 6:30. Using those times, the ride couldn't have taken for than 30 minutes, part of which was occupied by the stop at the hardware store (when it's still daylight). There's really no way to reconcile this timeline.
Corrected entry: 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. Even if he missed the heart there should be blood.
Correction: From the position of the wound, it looks like he was stabbed through the right atrium, probably severing the SA and VA electrical nodes. This would stop the heart instantly and miss the coronary arteries. With no blood pressure, there would be very little blood.
Corrected entry: Possibly to avoid being gory, Michael, who's just been unmasked by his father, has a clean butcher knife despite having stabbed Judith multiple times.
Correction: This is incorrect. It's a little hard to see, but if you pay attention, there is some blood on the bottom edge of the knife when the camera cranes back. Look up the YouTube video "Halloween 1978 - Young Michael Myers" and watch around 1:45 through the end of the video - blood is definitely visible on the knife.
Corrected entry: When Laurie is in the closet she stabs Michael with the hanger and leaves it up there. When they show all the locations at the end of the movie, in the shot of the living room look near the floor up close - you can see part of the hanger there, even though it was left upstairs.
Correction: She stabs with the hanger, he drops the knife in which she proceeds to stab him in the midsection. Once he was shot by doctor Loomis and disappeared, the end of the movie begins prior to the credits and we see the knife lying on the floor next to the knitting basket.
Continuity mistake: When Laurie, Annie and Lynda are walking home from school, the part where Lynda walks to her house you can see the station wagon on the side of the road behind them. A few seconds later it has moved up the side of the street.
Visible crew/equipment: When Laurie tries to escape Michael from the kitchen, she breaks the glass. You can see a second hand break the glass in front of Laurie's.
Suggested correction: You are incorrect, but it's an understandable mistake to make because the scene is very dark. It's hard to see, but Laurie actually uses both hands to break the glass... she puts them together and then slaps them through the window in a quick, fluid motion. (If you go through frame-by-frame or in slow motion, it's much, much easier to see.) That's why you're seeing two hands. It's not a crew member's hand... it's Jamie Lee Curtis' other hand.
Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the film the Myers' house is within walking distance of the Strode house, both of which are on one side of town, while the Doyle and Wallace houses are on other considering the driving distance Annie and Laurie had to drive to get to them. But at the end of the film somehow the Myers' house is now within walking distance of the Doyle and Wallace houses.
Suggested correction: Annie and Laurie took so long to get to the Doyle and Wallace houses simply because they were cruising around town, giving themselves enough time to smoke Annie's weed. After they leave the hardware store when the sun was setting, they continue killing time. That's why it was completely dark by the time they arrived at their babysitting jobs; they didn't drive directly there. Remember also, Tommy walks to school too. If the Strode and Doyle houses were truly a long drive from each other, he and Laurie would've never crossed paths earlier that morning when she drops the key off. All the characters' houses in the film (and both schools) are within walking distance of each other.
Revealing mistake: When Michael cuts Annie's throat, notice there's no visible cut or blood at all. When your throat is cut blood is going to pour out.
Suggested correction: True, but the view we have is distorted because it's shown through the windshield in a dark garage. Blood most likely poured out, but we don't see it because of how it's shown to us.
In the documentary, John Carpenter specifically stated that he left out of the gore on purpose. He wanted to film the movie so that the viewer would have a "mental image" of the kills without all the blood. He wanted it to be left to the imagination of the viewer.
Corrected entry: At the very beginning, Michael Myers' sister and her boyfriend "go upstairs." Michael then sneaks around the house, picks up a knife, and follows them. As he is about to go upstairs, his sister's boyfriend leaves. He then proceeds upstairs, and finds his sister nude. The actual time elapsed from proposition to his exit is about one minute and fifty seconds. Is this really enough time to go upstairs, get undressed, go about your business, and get dressed again? (00:03:10 - 00:04:35)
Correction: When in the living room, Michael waits about 20 minutes as the clocks jump from 9:40 to striking 10. That's enough time for a quickie and for the boyfriend to leave before the parents suspect he came by.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning of the film when Michael is walking through the house, the clocks have different times on them. After he walks by the clock in the living room, it says 9:40. Seconds later, it strikes ten times.
Suggested correction: This scene jumps ahead as Michael was in the living room waiting for them to finish having sex and the boyfriend to leave.
Plot hole: When Laurie and her friend see the Sheriff in front of the hardware store, he tells them someone broke in and stole "A Halloween mask, some rope, and a couple of knives." Without someone doing a complete inventory of the store, there would be no way to know the specific items that had been stolen, especially when they are such commonplace things as knives and rope in a hardware store.
Suggested correction: Simple, he watched the security footage.
Before shutting off the alarm? Store video wasn't really a thing in a small town store back then.
Corrected entry: In the opening scene, after young Michael comes out of the house with the bloody knife and his parents see him, they only utter the words "Michael?" and stand there, staring at him with their hands in their pockets. Don't you think they would be curious as to why the knife is bloody and go inside? They don't seem disturbed at all. (00:06:30)
Correction: Bad acting, sure, but hardly a plot hole. Given that Michael was carted off to a mental institute, it's pretty obvious that they did eventually do all of the things you mention. Besides, if you came home to find your kid wandering around with a blood smeared knife, you'd probably be a little shocked to do anything immediately too.
Correction: It's also Halloween night. More than likely they thought it was part of his costume.
Corrected entry: There's no way Annie could have locked herself in the laundry room considering the lock is on the outside of the door.
Correction: It's a figure of speech when one says 'I/you locked myself/yourself in/out'. She was alone, nobody knew that Michael was skulking around, and she got locked in the laundry room. Anyone would say they locked themselves in.
That's pure opinion, not a correction.
In this scene, you can literally see her turn the lock knob which is above the handle before she tries to get out.
Correction: It's not a figure of speech since the door magically locked itself because the wind blew it shut. She tried to open it and it wouldn't open because the lock is on the outside. Why do you think she was trying to get out the window?
The point is she didn't literally lock herself in - she was locked in. Personally I think it's a minor semantic difference - she may well just think she did something wrong that led to the door locking itself. Regardless it's a standard turn of phrase, if technically inaccurate.
Corrected entry: Michael was locked up for 15 years, so how does he even know where Laurie lives? Let alone know what she looks like or that the Strodes adopted her. The nurse states in part 2 that those records are sealed by the state.
Correction: When this film was made, the idea that Laurie was Michael's sister wasn't part of the plot yet. Hence, no mistake here. As far as this movie is concerned, Michael is merely stalking random babysitters. If anything, it's a mistake for the sequel that introduced this plot element.
Correction: That's not a crew member's arm, it's Laurie's moving shadow being cast on the wall as she turns twice.
Super Grover ★