P.J. Soles Remembers 35 Years of 'Halloween' [Interview]

Posted By Matt Artz on October 31, 2013

This year is the 35th anniversary of director John Carpenter’s groundbreaking 1978 classic Halloween, and we had the awesome pleasure of meeting one of the film’s top-billed stars, P.J. Soles (Carrie, Stripes, Rock and Roll High School) at the third Blood at the Beach Convention in Virginia Beach earlier this year, where we found the iconic actress to be just as beautiful and cool in person as she appears on screen.

We were fortunate to get to interview P.J. for our “Halloween at 35″ retrospective series that was published this month at our sister site, HalloweenDailyNews.com, and you can read a portion of that interview below!

P.J. told us that this was her first time visiting the area, but hopefully not the last.

“I’m not familiar it (the area) at all, not that I won’t be in the future, so I’ll my doors open,” she said. “That was a nice convention. There were a lot of good people that came to that. It was small, but it was really nice I thought, and I loved the venue. It was a great hotel.

“My son and his wife drove down from D.C. on Saturday and that night we did drive to the coast, and it was dark and rainy, but I did see a little bit. I saw the big King Neptune statue. I saw the restaurants down there. We tried to go to a few, but they were like an hour wait, because of course it was a Saturday night at eight o’clock. Then driving back out on Sunday, it was nice, beautiful area.

“I definitely would like to come when it isn’t raining and check out the beach some time, because it looks like a nice place.”

As we did with all of our “Halloween at 35” interview subjects this year, we asked P.J. if she had a personal favorite scene from Halloween.

“The ‘See anything you like?’ scene, because that was totally improvised,” she said. “After Michael Myers kills my boyfriend, he puts the sheet on and his glasses and comes back upstairs, I just love the sound of the door creaking, and Lynda not having any idea that that’s not Bob, being really annoyed. ‘What is your problem? You’re not talking, you’re just breathing.’

“That was just in the script that he comes back upstairs. John took me aside and said, ‘What I want you to do is try to entice him, try to get Bob to come back into bed with you, you’re like very frustrated. He’s supposed to bring you a beer, you don’t see a beer. How come he’s not coming back into bed with you? What is going on? You’re getting really annoyed.’ 

“And then he said, ‘And if you could just do something a little sensual or sexual that would be great, but if you don’t want to, it’s okay.’

“He was really nervous about asking me. I said, ‘You mean like nudity or something?’, and he said, ‘Yeah, just anything you can think of.’  I’m thinking, ‘Wow, my parents already saw Carrie and I was the only one in the shower scene in the opening credits who made sure that my underwear were on.’ I have towel on over my underwear in the shower, because I knew my parents were going to see my first movie.

“This was my second, so the only think I could think of was just to quickly flash, like pull the sheet down for a second, ‘See anything you like?’, and try to entice him as per John’s instructions to get him to come back into bed. 

“I’m very proud of that scene because I accomplished what the director asked me to, it’s a favorite of fans, and it wasn’t too bad for my parents to see. I never asked them what it was like to see their daughter get strangled in the movie, but that wasn’t even part of it for me, because for me that was just acting and silliness. To people watching it, it was scary, but to me it was just funny.”

While P.J.’s death scene is no laughing matter for Lynda, Laurie and the gang, Soles fondly remembers that there was plenty of laughter on set while filming it.

“That scene was Nick Castle,” she said. “I think Tommy Lee Wallace was doing something. Usually he was putting on the jumpsuit and the mask, but he was busy doing something and Nick was always hanging around, so he was the one.

“When it came to putting the cord around my neck, he was just tickling me. I was like, ‘Nick, please, you’re going to have to do it a little bit harder. You’re making me laugh.’ I mean he was literally making me laugh. Usually we did one or two takes, but this was three or four only because Nick was just not pulling it tighter. I don’t blame him, I wouldn’t want to hurt an actor either, but it was funny.

“Then I remember thinking, ‘John wants me to go out of frame, but I don’t want my screen time to end’, so I just kept that gargling and gurgling going because I didn’t want him to yell ‘Cut’.”

Be sure to click HERE for Part 1 and HERE for Part 2 of our full interview with P.J. Soles, and then click HERE for our entire “Halloween at 35″ retrospective series, including additional interviews with Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, Caroline Williams, and more!

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