Black cats and goblins and broomsticks and ghosts! Yes Horror Fans, the witching hour approaches, and in celebration of another fine Halloween experience, we are looking at the ultimate Halloween “Boogieman”, Michael Myers. Halloween has always been one of my favourite film series, and it’s great to explore some cool facts about the man in the mask, especially considering that we are about to see Myers back on the big screen next year. So, without any further delay, here are 12 awesome facts about Michael Myers.

The Man in the Mask

Michael Audrey Myers is the central character and the main antagonist of the Halloween franchise. As a six-year-old child, Michael was admitted into a psychiatric hospital for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers. Myers broke out of the asylum, after 15 years of captivity, to hunts down and kill the rest of his family. With his psychiatrist hot on his heels, Michael returns to Haddonfield on Halloween night 1979, to his old family home. Source; Halloween

The Shape – A Man with No Name

Michael Myers is simple referred to as “The Shape” in the Halloween script. In fact, not one single person calls him by his full name in the original film, leaving the killers identity a mystery. You’ll notice that psychiatrist Dr Loomis likes to play the noun game, calling the killer “it” and “him”. The only time we hear anyone utters the name Michael, is in the opening moments, first by his sister and then his father. For an extended TV version of the film, John Carpenter shot additional scenes, whilst filming Halloween 2. In one new scene, Loomis confronts a young Michael in the psychiatric ward after brutally killing his sister, and it’s only this scene in which the doctor calls him by his name. It was not until the second film, in which we establish that the killer is indeed Michael Myers. Source: IMDB

Michaels Mask Only Cost $1.98

The original script did not describe what Michaels mask looked like. The only instruction production designer Tommy Lee Wallace had was to find one that had neutral features, referring to the screen plays dialogue “I met this six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes ”. Wallace visited a costume store a purchased a handful of masks, including a $1.98 1975 Captain Kirk mask. It was William Shatner effigy in which Wallace choose to use. He replaced the hair and ripped out then sideburns, then spray painted the entire thing white. The final touch was to widen the eye holes, giving us the iconic Myers look. However, the Captain Kirk mask was not the first mask Wallace and Carpenter tested. They first toyed with a Don Post Emmett Kelly smiling clown mask that they put frizzy red hair on, but ultimately decided that a more emotionless face would be creepier. Yes, William Shatner is literally the face of evil.

Myers Can Talk

One Michael Myers most prominent psychical attributes is his heavy masked breaths we hear as his stalks his pray. He doesn’t utter one single word in the entire series (not counting the Rob Zombie Remakes). However, that does not mean that he can’t speak. In the Halloween novelization by Curtis Richards (a pseudonym that was used by author Dennis Etchishon), Dr Loomis mentions that “This Catatonia is a conscious act. There’s an instinctive force within him. He is waiting.” Loomis hints that Michael is fully capable of speech, just that he chooses not to. Source: Googlebooks

Michael Heard Voices

One of the biggest mysteries surround Michael is why he kills. He is clearly driven by something and is obsessed by his own family, but it’s never fully explained. Halloween 6 introduced the curse of Thorn into the mix, explaining it as a cultish curse that appears at Halloween, but the film never looked at the curses origins. The novelisation of Halloween delves even deeper, with a prologue that takes place at the dawn of the Celtic race in Ireland. The book tells how Enda, a disfigured 15-year-old boy, killed two lovers out of jealousy and rage, and was subsequently executed by the townsfolk. This left him cursed to walk the earth every Halloween, recreating the events of that night. In another early chapter, the book explores the strange things in young Michaels head, explaining that he heard voices, possible the voice of Enda. “It was the voice. the voice stirred up the hatred. It had done so in his dreams and now it was doing it in real life. It had begun with the strange pictures in his head at night, pictures of people he had never seen–oh, maybe in comic books or on television, but never in real life. People in strange costumes, animal skins, armor, leather, drinking and dancing wildly around a fire. One couple in particular. They looked like Judy and Danny, madly in love with each other, dancing in a circle around a huge bonfire while he, Michael, stood in the crowd hating them, burning up with jealousy” Source: halloweenmovie

Michael’s Obsession

In Halloween and Halloween 2, Michael is obsessed with killing his last living relative, his sister Laurie Strode. But strode is her foster name. She was actually born Cynthia Myers. On January 3, 1966, her parents were killed in an automobile accident and Cynthia went into the foster care system where she was immediately adopted by Morgan and Pamela Strode. Her name was changed to Laurie, but that was not enough to keep Michael from discovering her true identity. On October 30, 1978, Michael Myers escaped Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, and headed out into the night to find his sister. Source: halloweenmovie

Michael’s Hands

When they were shooting Michael’s POV scenes for the start of the Halloween, they couldn’t get the 6-year old child actor, Will Sandin, until the last day of the shoot. Instead, movie’s producer, Debra Hill, volunteered to be Michael for the scenes where his hands come into view, such as when he stabs his sister. This is why the nails on young Michael’s hands are well manicured and even varnished. This is much clearer thanks to Blu-ray versions of the film. A little detail missed on lower quality transfers. Debra Hill even stood in for “The Shape” in several wide shots. Source: IMDB

Death Has Come To Your Town!

Michael is one hard cookie to kill, considering that he is human. Unlike his villainous rivals, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger and Chucky, Michael has never officially died, despite undergoing several injuries that would have surely killed anyone else. Michael has been stabbed, shoot, burned, electrocuted, hit by a car and even survived fallen down a mineshaft with grenades lobbed on top of him. Rob Zombie’s remakes left it a little vague to Michaels fate, leaving it open for more sequels, whilst the H20 time line made it clear that Michael was down but not out.

Michael has three different time lines

Did you know that Halloween deals with alternate universes? There were 6 Halloween films leading up to 1995, with ‘Halloween 3 : Season of the Witch’ being a spin off.  The seventh film went all timey-wimey and winded back the clock, wiping out Halloween 4 to 6 from its timeline. A “Producers cut” of Halloween 6 took the series on a further time jump, whilst Rob Zombie’s Halloween started a new time line entirely. Zombie’s remake gave Michael a much deeper backstory and tons more gore, but ignored any continuity from previous films. The upcoming 2018 sequel “Halloween” looks to be re-writing a few things too, with actress Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode, who has already been killed off twice before. The film will pick up after Halloween, ignoring any other films. Michael wll be 70 odd years old and not related to Laurie.

Source: Wiki

Let the Dangertainment Begin!

Michael Myers has appeared in two fully licenced video games, first appearing in the 2013 game, Call of Duty: Ghosts. ‘The shape’ appeared as a playable reward for an exclusive DLC map called ‘Fog’. When a player becomes Michael Myers, they wield an axe which they can use to kill enemy players and “harvest” their souls, while his theme song plays in the background. Not the most faithful interpretation of Michael, but still a fun nod to the Halloween star. He appeared next in the 2016 survival horror game ‘Dead by Daylight’, a gamer which sets players as either a villainous serial killer or a survivor. Michael appeared as a DLC villain, in which he comes with special ability befitting his character. Michael can “stalk” his victims, becoming more powerful over time, with a rare ability to kill victims with one hit. Once again, his theme song come into play as he chases victims, really immersing the player in the moment. Sources: Wiki , Gamepedia

Unmasked

Michael is unmasked twice in the entire series. First in a struggle with Laurie Strode, where his face is revealed to be somewhat disfigured (something that was never really explored further than the reveal.) and secondly, in a more tender moment with Laurie’s daughter Jamie Lloyd. Jamie asks her “Boogieman” uncle to show her his face, to which he does, shedding a single tear as they share some sort of connection. The undertones of this scenes are slightly changed when you consider the next fact. Sources: Halloween , Halloween 5

Michael Has One Child

The legendary “Producer’s Cut” of Halloween 6 was only just recently released in 2015, after years of circulation as a bootleg collector’s piece. In this alternative version of the sixth film, it’s revealed that Jamie Lloyd child is actually Michael’s. Halloween 5 introduces the Man in Black, who is revealed to be the administrator of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium and leader of The Cult Of Thorn, Dr Wynn. This dastardly character arranged the incestuous rendezvous between Michael and his now 15 year old niece. The result of which is Jamie giving birth to her uncle’s child. Creepy stuff indeed.

“Morti” The Mortician