Goofs

(at around 18 mins) 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.

(at around 4 mins) 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.

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.

(at around 25 mins) 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.

(at around 1h 28 mins) At the end of the film, there are shots of the interior of the house as it appeared after the events. One shot is taken from an earlier shot because the knife used in the last scene is still sitting on the floor of the living room.

We find out that Michael is six when he murders Judith in 1963. The main part of the film is set in 1978 making Michael now 21. However, in the ending credits, he is credited as 'Michael (aged 23)'.

Due to Daylight Savings Time, it would be dark when Annie picks up Laurie. In 1978, clocks were turned back the last weekend in October.

After unsuccessfully trying to strangle her, Michael cuts Annie's neck with his kitchen knife. This should cause arterial spray, but there is absolutely no blood.

The television plays scenes from The Thing from Another World (1951) out of order.

(at around 27 mins.) When Laurie gets the first phone call and no one is there, she slams down the phone to hang it up. Exactly three seconds later, it rings again. All the phones shown throughout the movie are rotary phones (except a yellow phone shown very briefly in the entrance at Annie's house at around 59:44, which appears to be push-button). In any case, there's no way Annie could have realized Laurie hung up, reset the phone to get a dial tone, dialed Laurie's number, and waited for it to connect and ring at Laurie's house, all within exactly three seconds.

(at around 43 mins) 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 (at around 1h 13 mins) there is a plant hanging in front of the door.

When Michael Myers escapes and steals Dr. Loomis' car. It's shown that he is an experienced driver. Michael has been locked up in the psychiatric hospital since he murdered his sister. How could Michael be able to drive if he was never taught driving in the past 15 years however much isn't said but it is most likely that he learned it from when Dr. Loomis would drive him to sanity hearings over the years as Michael would watch closely from the back seat of the car as Loomis was driving so basically he must of learned it from Loomis.

(at around 50 mins) After Lindsay agrees to Annie's suggestion of watching the horror movie with Tommy at his house, they immediately leave with a throw and a bowl of popcorn. The TV was left on and the cushions and a newspaper on the couch were disturbed. When Annie returns for her car keys the cushions and newspaper are propped up neatly, as well as the TV being completely turned off.

Children are seen trick or treating in the late afternoon when it is still daylight out, instead of the early evening when it is starting to get dark.

(at around 10 mins) When Michael breaks the car window behind the nurse's head you can see a wrench tied to his hand.

(at around 1h 17 mins) When Laurie is trapped in the kitchen, you can clearly see which pane of glass in the door is fake glass.

When Laurie and Tommy are walking to the Myers house, they pass a parked Volkswagen Karmann Ghia bearing the same license plate number as Sheriff Brackett's patrol car.

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.

(at around 56 mins) When Laurie scolds Tommy for "scaring Lindsay," he accidentally says Laurie's line, "there's nobody out there," right before she does.

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.

While staking out the Myers house, Dr. Loomis happens to look up at one point and see the car that Michael had stolen the previous night close to the house. The car was parked on the street in plain view, and hadn't moved for at least an hour, but somehow Loomis missed this.

During the opening POV sequence, Judith and her boyfriend go upstairs. The boyfriend somehow gets undressed, has sex with her, gets dressed again and leaves all in about a minute.

At about 40 minutes, when Annie is making popcorn and when in the kitchen subsequently a yellow box of corn starch is shown. But Annie is applying it to the popcorn like it is salt.

The phone cord would not have been strong enough for Michael to effectively strangle Lynda.

As often happens, the haircuts on screen tend to reflect the times that the film was made in, and not the era of the story. In the prelude, Michael's sister's boyfriend has longish hair, hanging over his ears. Not an issue in 1978. But no high school male would have been caught dead with such a haircut in 1963.

After Annie ribs Laurie for not seeing who she spotted behind the bushes, the lines "Guys think I'm too smart" and "He was standing right there" were clearly dubbed in during post-production because in the former actress Jamie Lee Curtis' lips barely move and in the latter, they don't move at all.

(at around 10 mins) 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.

When Laurie answers the phone when she's babysitting, it continues to ring after she's picked up the receiver.

(at around 14 mins) While in the company of Tommy Doyle, Laurie places the keys to the Myers' house under the mat at her father's request. Tommy says goodbye until later that night and Laurie starts singing to herself walking down the street. Michael Myers then watches her, breathing heavily but the motions of his chest and shoulders rising and falling do not match the sound.

(at around 47 mins) While Lindsey is watching Forbidden Planet (1956) and is alone in the living room, the camera dollies across the couch. A large shadow moves across the couch from out of shot but no one should be in the room with her.

(at around 19 mins) 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.

(at around 1h 2 mins) 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]

(at around 24 mins) When Annie is by the hedgerow telling Laurie that the person who has been following them wants to talk to her, a puff of John Carpenter's cigarette smoke floats into the shot. (This was pointed out by Carpenter during the film's audio commentary)

(at around 1h 17 mins) Just after Laurie, played by Jamie Lee Curtis is slashed on her left arm by Michael's knife, she turns around screaming and then falls backwards over the stair railing to the landing below. If you watch closely when the camera shows her falling over the railing with her legs pointing upward, a harness with a rope attached can be seen around Jamie Lee Curtis' left wrist/arm as to prevent her from really falling down to the first floor.

(at around 20 mins) The scene that shows Laurie, Annie and Lynda walking home from school starts with them walking from a school with outside lockers. Schools with inclement weather, such as Illinois, do not have outside lockers.

(at around 19 mins) You can clearly see the mountains in the background, when Dr. Loomis is on the phone and sees the Rabbit in Red matchbook. Since this movie takes place in Illinois that would be impossible.

The movie is set in Illinois, but when Tommy and Laurie are going to school, the trees in the background are California palms.

When Lynda and Bob pull up to Lindsey's house, you can clearly see a California license plate on the front of the van. (blue with yellow numbers). Other vehicles in the film have the proper Illinois plates (white with black numbers).

This movie takes place in late October. Though if you look at the neighborhood around the characters, it is not an Illinois October.

Michael has his mask on when Laurie goes up to the house in the beginning of the movie and when he is watching Laurie during school. The robbery that Annie and Laurie come upon in the afternoon would make no sense as the bells would be going off all day.

Throughout the latter half of Halloween, no trick or treaters ever visit the houses Annie and Laurie are babysitting at.

Near the end at the Doyle house when Tommy and Lindsey get out of bed, Lindsey is wearing her pajamas. Lindsey lives in the Wallace house across the road, and when Annie brings her over she is not wearing her pajamas and does not bring them with her. So she still should have been wearing the same clothes she was wearing on arrival.

Annie moans about having to babysit at the Wallaces' house, and Laurie says she's babysitting at the Doyles' home which is three houses down. Later in the movie the Wallaces' house is shown to be across the street from the Doyles'.

When Bob and Lynda are talking about ripping each other's clothes off, he then says he'll rip Lindsey's clothes off. Hopefully he meant to say Annie, since Bob was 18 and Lindsey was around 8.

When Annie is in the laundry and the door blows shut, the top deadlock on the door is vertical (unlocked) but as she tries the door, the actress locks the door, presumably to simulate it being locked. She covers the view of the door for a moment as she tries the door and then a moment later the deadlock can be seen to be in a horizontal position (locked).

When Sheriff Brackett is investigating the theft at the store, and Annie and Laurie drive up, they had been smoking marijuana prior to seeing him there. As a law enforcement officer, he should have been able to detect the aroma even though they hid it.

(at around 51 mins) 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.