Nobody involved in Halloween (1978) originally planned for the story to take place on Halloween. It was shot in twenty-one days on a budget of around three hundred thousand dollars, with a crew small enough that most people handled several jobs at once. The mask came off a costume shop shelf for about a dollar ninety-eight. The autumn leaves were swept up after every take so they could be scattered again for the next shot. Laurie's entire wardrobe cost roughly a hundred dollars at a department store.

This video works through 27 secrets from the production: how the project started under a completely different title, why Michael Myers was built without a motive, which two horror icons turned down Dr. Loomis, how Jamie Lee Curtis was directed by numbers on a scale, why the opening sequence was the last thing filmed, and how a score recorded in three days changed the film's impact after an early screening fell flat. There is also the strange extended television cut NBC commissioned, the reason the streets of Haddonfield were full of crew members' children, and Donald Pleasence's own suggestion for the final moments.