﻿Hi everyone, I’m Moose,
this is my new Moose-stache,
and if clothes make the man,
then the mask makes Michael Myers.
After ten onscreen appearances,
the Shape is a familiar sight to horror fans,
but despite its simple design,
the face of the boogeyman differs drastically between movies.
So today on 'Yellow Spandex,' we’re investigating the
Mysteries of Michael Myers’ Masks
And we’ll start with, what else,
The Original
John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s script for Halloween isn’t very specific about Michael’s mask.
It only makes a couple of references to it, once as:
“a large, full-head latex rubber mask, not a monster or ghoul, but the pale, neutral features of a man weirdly distorted by the rubber.”
and later:
“he wears a Halloween mask made of rubber with the grotesque features of a man.”
So we’ve got pale, neutral, grotesque, and human.
Still not a lot to go on,
so when Carpenter sent out production designer Tommy Lee Wallace out to find some candidates,
he came back with a few options:
One early frontrunner was a frowning rubber clown mask based off famous sourpuss Emmett Kelly,
which would have made sense thematically,
and considering that John Wayne Gacy was arrested the same year Halloween came out,
the combo could have kicked off the whole killer clown phenomenon nearly a decade before ‘It.’
I'll drive you crazy and I'll kill you all!
Carpenter liked the look, but he didn’t want to commit quite yet.
So they tried out the classic Richard Nixon mask,
but that’s a more appropriate for skydiving bank robbers than silent slashers.
You know 'Point Break?'
They also gave Mr. Spock a shot, and while the sulkin’ Vulcan was a little closer to the mark,
as usual, he was stuck as second banana to William Shatner.
When Nick Castle, the actor who played Michael, first tried on the $2 Captain Kirk mask,
the crew knew they had nailed it.
All it needed was a few minor touchups:
We changed a lot. We opened up the eye sockets, changed the hair.
Yanked off the sideburns, and spraypainted the whole thing fishbelly white.
Once the Shape had taken shape,
‘Halloween’ was released to critical acclaim and unprecedented box office success,
Okay, that's 'Halloween,' a horror movie we both think is pretty good!
making a sequel a no brainer.
And, luckily enough, they were able to use the exact same mask from the first film,
since producer Debra Hill had kept it in a box beneath her bed after production wrapped.
Now, if you compare the two movies, they actually look fairly different,
so some fans are skeptical that the masks are one and the same,
but there are perfectly reasonable explanations for the discrepancy.
For one thing, latex ages,
especially when its kept in the home of a heavy smoker like Hill.
Second, they definitely gave the hair a new coat of paint,
and last but not least, Nick Castle didn’t reprise his role as Mikey for part 2,
and new actor Dick Warlock’s head was a different shape than the original Shape,
so the mask didn’t sit quite the same way.
It still looked fantastic, though,
and would have been a fine send off for the babysitter slasher,
if they didn’t revive him for
The Thorn Trilogy
Part 2 was supposed to be the end of Michael Myers,
so when Dick Warlock asked if he could keep the costume,
the producers said "sure, go ahead!"
Unfortunately, that meant the original mask was nowhere to be found seven years later,
when they resurrected the Shape to hunt down his NIECE Jamie.
Spoiler alert! Okay, I'm fixing all my mistakes. You guys are right, I messed up.
The girl Jamie is Michael's neice, not his cousin,
Samhain, even though it's pronounced "Samhain" in the movie, is pronounced "sow-wen,"
The festival... of Samhain...
What other screw ups...
1998 Godzilla? Not a girl.
I don't want to say he's a boy, but he's not a girl
It's 2018.
Sorry, you got me. Cuff 'em.
Instead of finding another Captain Kirk,
they decided to create their own from scratch,
resulting in one of the worst masks in the series.
Apparently they were experimenting with a much different look early on,
since in one scene Dr. Loomis is attacked by a boogeyman wearing a pink mask with big blonde hair,
but even the more familiar final version looks pretty pathetic.
It’s super thin and wrinkly, there’s barely any detail to it,
and the thick brows, tiny eyeholes and surprised facial expression makes him look more like Mac from 'Always Sunny' than the embodiment of evil.
Granted, the differences are kind of written into the script,
since his original mask was destroyed in a hospital explosion,
and he just snagged a new one from the drug store.
Honestly, you can't expect them to keep the same masks in stock that was used to butcher babysitters ten years earlier.
That would be in poor taste.
‘Halloween 5,’ on the other hand, is supposed to be the same mask from ‘Part 4,’
but given how awful that one looked,
I’m not going to crucify the producers for whipping up a new one, continuity be damned.
It’s still not as detailed as the original Shape,
and judging from the bigass neck it doesn’t quite fit properly,
but it’s definitely an improvement over its predecessor,
and honestly, the Shape is in the shadows for so much of the movie you can barely see it anyway.
Now, say what you will about the mess that is ‘Part 6,’
it has one of the better masks in the series.
There’s no onscreen explanation as to where Michael gets it,
but he must have found a stockpile of Star Trek paraphernalia,
because it’s extremely close to the original design.
Sure, the ears are a little big and the hair is a little crazy,
but it’s not a bad way to send off the original canon.
Unfortunately, when the series was rebooted three years later with ‘H20,’
they ditched this design in favor of
Multiple Masks
‘Halloween H20’ used not one, not two, but four different masks throughout the course of filming.
The original plan was to go with the same mold used for Part 6,
but director Steve Miner had a very different vision.
He wanted the mask to be a pure, blank, white,
different than those that had come before,
and devoid of William Shatner’s chiseled jaw and devastating cheekbones.
The KNB mask, as it was known, was met with a dismal reaction during dailies,
and it was quickly replaced by a more traditional design by 'Walking Dead' FX whiz Greg Nicotero.
Then, after shooting half the movie, Miner decided he hated the new mask,
and enlisted Stan Winston’s studio to make yet another version that was sort of a mix between the two.
It wasn't like "we were hired and fired, then Stan Winston was hired and fired," it was like the mask took on a life of its own.
The result is a movie where Michael Myers’ mask is constantly changing, even in the same scene,
and at some points it even turns into the most unnecessary CGI since Wolverine’s claws in ‘Origins.’
Even at its best, the mask still leaves a lot to be desired.
My biggest beef is that thing is just too damn tight,
Michael’s eyes are almost always visible,
which kind of takes away from his whole ‘soulless, faceless boogeyman’ mystique.
‘Halloween: Resurrection’ isn’t much better,
although at least it’s consistent.
But after Busta Rhymes karate kicked him into oblivion,
Mikey went back to basics for the Rob Zombie
Reboots
Masks play a much bigger role in the 2007 ‘Halloween.’
Mikey is obsessed with them from day one,
although his sister’s boyfriend is the one who picks out the classic Captain Kirk design.
The mask is even closer to the original than ‘Part 6,’
only it’s cracked and yellowed and rotting after spending years under the Meyers’ floorboards.
‘Part 2’ takes that to the extreme,
with a mask that’s literally falling apart at the seams,
revealing more and more of Michael’s face as the movie goes on.
It’s definitely terrifying,
but, just like the H20 eyes, I feel like it humanizes the Shape just a bit too much.
That brings us to 2018, and the new ‘Halloween’ sequel/reboot from David Gordon Green and Danny McBride.
Makeup artist Christopher Nelson literally begged for the opportunity to take a crack at Michael’s mask,
and while he originally toyed with some very different ideas,
John Carpenter encouraged the team to keep the Shape “simple and relentless.”
The resulting mask is a similar sculpt to the original,
and while it might seem basic on the surface,
throughout shooting, Nelson would constantly shift the padding underneath the mask,
and change up the spatters and paint on the surface,
to give the illusion that it’s a living, decaying extension of Michael’s own aged flesh.
One touch I love about the new mask is how it bears the battle scars of the original Night He Came Home,
with a hole in the neck and stains around the eye socket where Laurie stabbed him with a wire hanger.
It really sells the idea that ‘Halloween 2018’ is a faithful follow up to the first film,
and it’s going to be a great foundation for all the inevitable sequels.
As for the original mask,
the one that kicked off the series and helped redefine the horror genre,
well, believe it or not, it still exists.
In 2017, Halloween fansite Michael-Myers.net tracked it down to Ohio haunted house owner Mark Roberts,
who purchased the prop from Dick Warlock in 2003.
Today, the Shape is in, well, rough shape,
but it’s honestly a miracle that the 40-year-old, unrestored prop hasn’t rotted away to nothingness.
It’s insured for $250,000,
which ain’t bad, considering it started life as a $2.00 Captain Kirk mask.
It just goes to show that you don’t need expensive makeup and gallons of gore to create an effective onscreen slasher.
With just a little ingenuity and oodles of atmosphere,
a simple, neutral mask became horror’s most iconic face.
You can't kill the boogeyman!