Since his 1978 debut, Michael Myers has remained one of the original slasher movie mascots. After
all, he's already survived multiple decades' worth of evolution, retcons, and reinventions.
It's hard to believe that an evil force of nature like Michael Myers could actually exist. Based on
the way Dr. Loomis talks about him throughout the series, Myers seems more like an ancient figure
from folklore than an actual human being. However, director John Carpenter credits
the creation of Michael Myers to a school trip where he and his peers visited a mental asylum.
Carpenter discussed this fateful trip in the documentary "A Cut Above the Rest," saying,
"We visited the most serious, mentally ill patients. And there was this kid,
he must have been 12 or 13 and he literally had this look."
That image stuck with Carpenter, who incorporated the idea into the original "Halloween" film,
in which a young Michael Myers stares into the camera unmasked having committed a heinous crime.
It's fairly common knowledge that Michael Myers' iconic mask was actually an augmented
William Shatner mask. In fact, the script contained no description of what Michael
Myers' mask should actually look like. While on a panel at the Fright Night
Film Fest and Horror Weekend August 2008, filmmaker Tommy Lee Wallace,
who worked behind-the-scenes on the original "Halloween," explained,
"The script asked for a blank-faced mask [...] that makes you feel eerie."
The killer was also never referred to as Michael Myers, and instead was simply called
"The Shape." With no specific instructions, Wallace went to a costume shop on Hollywood
Boulevard looking for the perfect mask. He selected the fated William Shatner mask,
choosing the Emmett Kelly clown character Weary Willie as a backup.
While they ultimately picked the Shatner mask, young Michael does wear a clown mask
when murdering his sister. Wallace would later bring an eerie clown to
the screen when he directed the 1990 TV adaptation of Stephen King's "It."
Since Michael Myers is just a guy in a mask, almost anyone could play the part.
John Carpenter's longtime friend Nick Castle is credited as "The Shape" in the first film,
but he wasn't the only actor to play the role in 1978's "Halloween."
During the movie's opening, a young actor named Will Sandin plays a 6-year-old Michael
who brutally murders his older sister. We see his face when the clown mask is ripped away
for a shocking reveal. During the climax of the film, Michael's mask is torn off again,
and this time, he's played by actor Tony Moran. However, they weren't the only
actors responsible for bringing one of cinema's greatest boogeymen to life in the original movie.
In fact, producer and co-writer Debra Hill had to step in to play the role of 6-year-old
Michael's hands. The point-of-view sequence was so complicated that the filmmakers were
unable to bring in another child to be Michael's hands. In Adam Rockoff's book "Going to Pieces:
The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986," Hill explained,
"We couldn't afford another kid to hold the knife later that night,
so that's my hand holding the knife that stabs Michael Myers' sister. I had the littlest hands."
The antagonistic relationship between Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers provides the mythic
undertones of the "Halloween" series. Loomis is determined to end Michael's reign of evil,
especially as it was Loomis who tried to treat Michael following
the original murder. Basically, no one knows Michael better than Loomis.
"If you don't find him in four hours, I'm sure I will."
That connection runs even deeper when you realize that the actor who played Loomis,
Donald Pleasence, worked with stuntman Dick Warlock, who portrayed Michael in
the original "Halloween II," on the 1975 Disney film "Escape to Witch
Mountain." Discussing his time working with Pleasence, Warlock told Halloween Daily News,
"I found him to be a gentleman. People have said that he had a sense of humor,
but I never saw it. When he came on set, he was ready to work, he knew your dialogue and mine. He
was the consummate professional. You couldn't find anybody who was better to work with."
"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is usually referred to as "The 'Halloween' movie without
Michael Myers." On the surface, this is a totally fair statement. While "Halloween"
and "Halloween II" are one continuous story detailing the night Michael Myers came home,
the third installment was intended to take the franchise in a totally different direction. In
the documentary "Stand Alone: The Making of 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch,'"
director Tommy Lee Wallace explained the decision to create an anthology movie, saying,
"Each year, let's come out with a new movie on the subject of Halloween, All Hallows' Eve,
and everything that comes with it. It could go in any direction it wants,
and each one could spinoff any number of their own sequels."
"And I don't know what the hell is going on."
At the time, the film wasn't a hit with moviegoers, and everyone's favorite masked
killer was brought back in "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." Still,
it could be said that Myers' presence is felt throughout the movie, as Dick Warlock,
who played Michael in "Halloween II," appears in a new role. Plus, a TV spot for the original
1978 film featuring Michael Myers is shown on television in "Halloween III." He may not
be the huge presence audiences were hoping for, but he still made it into the film.
One of the few actors to play Michael Myers more than once is George P. Wilbur, who portrayed The
Shape in "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers" and "Halloween: The Curse of Michael
Myers." Interestingly, the stuntman credits John Wayne with his career in show business.
After serving in the navy, Wilbur got a job at a dude ranch in Tucson, telling Racks & Razors,
"They were filming the movie 'El Dorado' nearby,
so I went to the set and got a job as an extra and a stand-in for John
Wayne [...] Shortly afterward, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a stuntman."
That career certainly paid off as he went on to add over 100
credits to his name and got to play The Shape on two separate occasions.
"Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers" is a flawed film, to say the least. While
the fourth installment did an excellent job of bringing the franchise back to basics,
part five took the series into surreal territory. One of the movie's more
bizarre concepts depicts a mysterious Man in Black with the same tattoo as Michael,
roaming around Haddonfield and breaking Michael out of prison. In the sixth film, the Man in Black
was revealed to be Dr. Terence Wynn, a character with only one scene in the original "Halloween."
"I protect Michael."
However, that wasn't always the intention. In fact, Don Shanks,
who played Michael in the fifth film, revealed that the movie's
director originally had different plans for the character. As Shanks told Halloween Daily News,
"I was going to be the Man in Black because I played him too. I did bits and pieces,
I didn't do all of him, but there would be scenes where I'd go out
one door here and I'd just put on the coat and come through the other door."
However, this idea doesn't make a lot of sense,
which is probably why it was dropped. As underwhelming as the Dr. Wynn reveal was,
having Michael be the Man in Black would've just been plain confusing.
In 1998, "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later" came out, rebooting the franchise and creating a
brand new timeline in the process. The idea to continue Laurie Strode's story two decades on
actually came from Jamie Lee Curtis herself, as she told Entertainment Weekly in 2018,
"When Halloween was, like, 19 years old, I remember calling John [Carpenter] and Debra [Hill]
and we had lunch [...] I said to them, 'Guys, the movie’s going to be 20 years old next year,
and we’re all still doing the job 20 years later.' I said to them, 'Why don’t we revisit it?'"
"Halloween H2O" ignored everything that took place after "Halloween II," and it was supposed
to depict Laurie taking down Michael Myers once and for all. As the project continued,
however, Curtis started reading scripts that left Michael's demise more ambiguous. That's
when she learned that producer Moustapha Al Akkad, who had control over the character,
included a clause in the contract that said Michael Myers cannot be killed.
A compromise was made, and a new ending was produced in which Laurie appears to
chop Michael's head off. The idea was it would make the audience feel like Michael is finally,
officially dead, but it could also easily be explained away in a sequel. Indeed,
its successor, "Halloween: Resurrection" revealed that Laurie had actually killed a
man that Michael had dressed in his clothes, allowing the murderer to escape. Sadly,
the audience of "Halloween H20" was robbed of a truly satisfying ending.
"Oh my God, she killed the wrong person."
When the time came to officially reboot the "Halloween" franchise in 2007,
Rob Zombie was brought in to remake the original film in his own vision. He decided his Michael
Myers should be the most visually intimidating Michael to date, so he cast the 6-foot 9-inch
actor and former professional wrestler Tyler Mane. Although his face is obscured throughout
most of the film, some viewers recognized him as Sabertooth from 2000's "X-Men."
Zombie's 2007 remake of "Halloween" and its 2009 follow-up are much darker and
more brutal than the original. Aside from a handful of scary moments, a young person could
watch John Carpenter's "Halloween" and walk away relatively unscathed. Zombie's reboot,
however, is incredibly violent and crude, so much so that even the child actor playing
a young Michael Myers in the movie wasn't allowed to read the entire script. During
an interview with Movieweb to promote the film, actor Daeg Faerch explained,
"I only read my part. And then my mom read it and said, 'You're not gonna read that."
And once the film was finished, Faerch still wasn't allowed to see it. The young actor
revealed that he would be allowed to watch the beginning of the film, but would have to leave
the premiere and go do something else after that, on account of Zombie's flick being too gruesome.
"I am going to be kept away,
even for the premiere. I'm gonna watch probably the first 10 or 15 minutes."
Given the film's onslaught of profanity, grotesque violence, and grisly murders, it's easy to see why
Faerch wasn't allowed to watch the entire movie, despite playing such a major role.
2018's "Halloween," which was directed by David Gordon Green,
gloriously rebooted the franchise by largely ignoring all of its sequels,
even "Halloween II." The filmmakers worked hard to honor the original 1978 film by bringing
back Jamie Lee Curtis, and enlisting John Carpenter to score the new movie.
In another important nod for hardcore fans, Nick Castle was also brought back to occasionally
embody the role of Michael Myers, which he helped originate. Although Castle didn't play
the character for any large stretch of time in 2018's "Halloween," fans loved his inclusion in
the movie. Although Castle wasn't on set for the filming of "Halloween Kills," his voice,
or should we say breath, was used extensively. As James Jude Courtney,
the actor and stuntman who portrays Michael Myers in Green's trilogy, told Halloween Daily News,
"So when I'm stalking and you hear the breathing in the mask, it's Nick Castle breathing,
which I think again is very poetic, because Nick is the spirit of this
character [...] It's Nick's spirit that I reached in and grabbed to manifest the 2018 character."