Tyler Mane
Canadian professional wrestler
Daryl Karolat (born December 8, 1966) is a Canadian actor and retired professional wrestler, better known by the name Tyler Mane. He is known for playing supervillain Sabretooth in "X-Men" (2000), "" (2006), and "Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024), Ajax in "Troy" (2004), slasher villain Michael Myers in "Halloween" (2007) and "Halloween II" (2009), supervillain Blackstar in the Netflix series "Jupiter's Legacy" (2021) and supervillain Richard Frank / Torminox in the Max series "Doom Patrol" (2022–2023).
Professional wrestling career.
Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan he graduated from City Park Collegiate Institute.
As a teenager, Karolat travelled to Calgary, where he trained briefly with Stu Hart. He later began training with Red Bastien in 1986, and completed further training with Mando Guerrero. Mane began his career in 1986 under the name "Skywalker Nitron" in his native Canada. In 1987 he wrestled as Sky High Lee in Pacific Northwest Wrestling (Portland), billed from California.
In 1987, he wrestled in South Africa, which resulted in an invitation to wrestle for Joint Promotions in the United Kingdom, where he arrived in November. Billed as "'Sky' Walker" he appeared in one match on ITV, a disqualification loss to Pat Roach. His furious reaction to the referee's decision was later incorporated into the standalone wrestling show's title sequence.
The following year, he toured New Japan Pro-Wrestling as "Gully Gaspar", alongside Billy and Barry as a bunch of hockey-masked pirates managed by KY Wakamatsu. He could also be seen in WCW occasionally as the bodyguard of the tag team Doom along with Woman late in 1989, specifically Starrcade 1989.
In 1990, Karolat began wrestling in Puerto Rico and toured with All Japan Pro Wrestling, where he participated in the World's Strongest Tag Determination League. He then joined the Mexican promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre.
In 1993, he signed with World Championship Wrestling, under the name "Big Sky" and teamed with Vinnie Vegas. After Vegas left WCW to become Diesel in the WWF, Mane was left in limbo and left WCW by the end of the year. In 1994, he joined Herb Abrams' Universal Wrestling Federation and became the only UWF MGM Grand Champion, defeating Steve Ray to win the vacant title. After Abrams' death and eventual dissolving of the UWF in 1996, Mane retired.
Film and television career.
In 1992, during his time within Mexico with Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, Mane made his film debut in "Luchadores de las Estrellas" playing the villain of the movie, El Vampiro Interespacial. While part of WCW, he auditioned for and received a part in the television series "Smokey and the Bandit".
After retiring from wrestling, he appeared in numerous films, including "X-Men" as Sabretooth, "How to Make a Monster" as Hardcore, "Joe Dirt", "The Scorpion King", "Troy" as Ajax, "Hercules" as Antaeus, and "The Devil's Rejects" in the uncredited role of Rufus. The role of Sabretooth was initially intended for Kevin Nash (Mane's former wrestling tag team partner) but was awarded to Mane due to Nash's scheduling conflicts.
In 2007, he played Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's remake of "Halloween". After winning the role, he noted that he consecutively watched seven of the eight "Halloween" films (excluding the because Michael Myers does not appear apart from in an ad for the first movie) to better understand his character. He is the tallest actor (6' 8") to portray the character.[] In 2009, he reprised the role again in "Rob Zombie's H2", being only the second actor to play Michael Myers more than once, and the first actor to play the role in consecutive films.
In 2010, he and his wife launched their own production company: Mane Entertainment. Their first feature, "Compound Fracture", was released in 2013.
In 2016, Tyler co-starred in Fuzz on the Lens Productions comedy/fantasy film "Abnormal Attraction", reuniting with Malcolm McDowell ("Halloween"), Leslie Easterbrook ("Compound Fracture") and his wife Renae Geerlings.
In 2019 Mane co-starred in the comedy "Playing with Fire" alongside fellow professional wrestler John Cena.
On June 28, 2024, it was revealed Mane would reprise his role as Sabretooth in Marvel Studios' "Deadpool & Wolverine".
Personal life.
Mane was previously married to Jean Goertz from 1988 to 2003. He married actress Renae Geerlings in 2007.
References.
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The Devil's Rejects
2005 film by Rob Zombie
The Devil's Rejects is a 2005 American black comedy horror film written, produced and directed by Rob Zombie. It is the second film in the "Firefly" film series, serving as a sequel to Zombie's 2003 film "House of 1000 Corpses", and followed by its own sequel in 2019, "3 From Hell". The film is centered on the three fugitive members of the psychopathic antagonist family from the previous film, acting as the film's villainous protagonists, with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie reprising their roles, and Leslie Easterbrook replacing Karen Black as the matriarch.
"The Devil's Rejects" was released on July 22, 2005, to minor commercial success, and mixed reviews, although it was generally considered an improvement over its predecessor. It was the final film to feature Matthew McGrory before his death the same year, although he did have a posthumous cameo in 2017's "The Evil Within", which had been filmed in 2002, and the film's DVD release was dedicated to his "loving memory".
Plot.
On May 18, 1978, Texas Sheriff John Quincey Wydell and a large posse of state troopers issue a search and destroy mission on the Firefly family, who are responsible for over 75 homicides and disappearances over the past several years. The family arm themselves and fire on the officers. Rufus is killed, and Mother Firefly is taken into custody while Otis and Baby escape. They steal a car, kill the driver, and go to Kahiki Palms, a run-down motel.
At the motel, Otis and Baby take a musical group called Banjo and Sullivan hostage in their room, and Otis shoots the roadie when he returns. Meanwhile, Baby's father, Captain Spaulding, decides to rendezvous with Baby and Otis. His truck runs out of gas on the way, and he frightens a boy and assaults the boy's mother before stealing her car. Back at the motel, Otis rapes Roy Sullivan's wife, Gloria, and demands Adam Banjo and Roy come with him on an errand. Otis drives his two prisoners to a place where he buried weapons. While walking to the location, the two prisoners attack Otis, but Otis bludgeons Roy and cuts off Adam's face.
At the motel, Adam's wife, Wendy, tries to escape through the bathroom window. When Gloria attempts to rebel, Baby kills her. Wendy runs out of the motel but is caught by Captain Spaulding, who knocks her unconscious. Otis returns, and all three leave the motel together in the band's van. The motel maid comes to clean the room and discovers the murder scene. The maid enters the bathroom, where she sees "The Devil's Rejects" written on the wall in blood; she is startled by Wendy, who is accidentally killed when she runs out to the highway to seek help while she is in shock.
Wydell calls a pair of amoral bounty hunters—the "Unholy Two"—Rondo and Billy Ray, to help him find the Fireflys. While investigating, they discover an associate of Spaulding's named Charlie Altamont. Wydell begins to lose his sanity when Mother Firefly reveals that she murdered his brother. After having a dream in which his brother commands him to avenge his death, Wydell stabs Mother Firefly to death. The surviving Fireflys gather at a brothel owned by Charlie, where he offers them shelter from the police.
After he leaves the brothel, Wydell threatens Charlie to give up the Fireflys. With the help of the "Unholy Two", the sheriff takes the family back to the Firefly house, where Wydell tortures them, using similar methods they used on their victims. He nails Otis' hands to his chair and staples crime-scene photographs to Otis's and Baby's stomachs, then he beats and shocks Captain Spaulding and Otis with a cattle prod and taunts Baby about the death of her mother.
Wydell sets the house on fire and leaves Otis and Spaulding to burn, but he lets Baby loose outside so he can hunt her for sport. Charlie returns to save the Firefly family, but Wydell kills him. Baby gets shot in the calf of her left leg, brutally horse-whipped, and then strangled by Wydell. Tiny suddenly arrives and intervenes, breaking Wydell's neck and saving the Firefly family. Otis, Baby, and Spaulding escape in Charlie's 1972 Cadillac Eldorado and leave behind Tiny, who walks back into the burning house. The trio drives, badly injured. As Otis drives down the road with Baby and Spaulding asleep in the back seat, he notices a police barricade ahead of them. Realizing that they will not make it out alive, he wakes Baby and Spaulding and hands them each a gun. They speed toward the barricade, guns blazing as the police return fire, fading to black.
Cast.
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Production.
When Rob Zombie wrote "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003), he had a "vague idea for a story" about the brother of the sheriff that the Firefly clan killed coming back for revenge. After Lions Gate Entertainment made back all of their money on the first day of "Corpses"' theatrical release, they wanted Zombie to make another film and he started to seriously think about a new story. With "Rejects", Zombie has said that he wanted to make it "more horrific" and the characters less cartoonish than in "Corpses", and that he wanted "to make something that was almost like a violent western. Sort of like a road movie." He has also cited films like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), "The Wild Bunch" (1969), "Badlands" (1973) and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974) as influences on "Rejects". When he approached William Forsythe about doing the film, he told the actor that the inspiration for how to portray his character came from actors like Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw. Sheri Moon Zombie does not see the film as a sequel: "It's more like some of the characters from "House of 1000 Corpses" came on over, and now they're the Devil's Rejects."
Zombie hired Phil Parmet, who had shot the documentary "Harlan County, USA" (1976), because he wanted to adopt a hand-held camera/documentary look. Principal photography was emotionally draining for some of the actors. Moon Zombie remembers a scene she had to do with Forsythe that required her to cry. The scene took two to three hours to film and affected her so much that she did not come into work for two days afterward.
The film went through the MPAA eight times earning an NC-17 rating every time until the last one. According to Zombie, the censors had a problem with the overall tone of the film. Specifically, censors did not like the motel scene between Bill Moseley and Priscilla Barnes, forcing Zombie to cut two minutes of it for the theatrical release. However, this footage was restored in the unrated DVD release.
Soundtrack.
Zombie, who is also a musician, decided to go with more southern rock to create the mood of the film. The film's soundtrack itself was notable as being one of the first to be released on DualDisc, with the DVD side featuring a making-of featurette for the film and a photo gallery.
In 2019, Zombie announced that Waxwork Records would release the soundtrack on vinyl along with the two other Zombie films in the trilogy, "House of 1,000 Corpses" and "3 from Hell" (2019). The record included an essay written by director Rob Zombie and a 12x12" booklet that contained behind the scenes photographs.
Reception.
Box office.
"The Devil's Rejects" was released by Lions Gate Films on July 22, 2005, in 1,757 theaters and grossed USD$7.1 million on its opening weekend, recouping its roughly $7 million budget. It grossed $17 million in North America and $2.3 million internationally for a total of $19.4 million.
Critical response.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 54% rating based on 135 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "Zombie has improved as a filmmaker since "House of 1000 Corpses" and will please fans of the genre, but beware—the horror is nasty, relentless and sadistic." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Critic Roger Ebert enjoyed the film and gave it three out of four stars. He wrote, "There is actually some good writing and acting going on here, if you can step back from the [violent] material enough to see it." Later, in his 2006 review for the horror film "The Hills Have Eyes", Ebert referenced "The Devil's Rejects", writing, "I received some appalled feedback when I praised Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects", but I admired two things about it [that were absent from "The Hills Have Eyes"]: (1) It desired to entertain and not merely to sicken, and (2) its depraved killers were individuals with personalities, histories and motives." In his review for "Rolling Stone", Peter Travers gave "The Devil's Rejects" three out of four stars and wrote, "Let's hear it for the Southern-fried soundtrack, from Buck Owens' 'Satan's Got to Get Along Without Me' to Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird', playing over the blood-soaked finale, which manages to wed "The Wild Bunch" to "Thelma & Louise"." Richard Roeper gave the film "thumbs up" for being successful at its goal to be the "sickest, the most twisted, the most deranged movie" at that point of the year (2005).
In her review for "The New York Times", Dana Stevens wrote that the film "is a "trompe-l'œil" experiment in deliberately retro film-making. It looks sensational, but there is a curious emptiness at its core." "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a "C+" rating and wrote, "Zombie's characters are, to put it mildly, undeveloped." Robert K. Elder, of the "Chicago Tribune", disliked the film, writing "[D]espite decades of soaking in bloody classics such as the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "I Spit on Your Grave", Zombie didn't absorb any of the underlying social tension or heart in those films. He's no collage artist of influences, like Quentin Tarantino, crafting his movie from childhood influences. "Rejects" plays more like a junkyard of homages, strewn together and lost among inept cops, gaping plot holes and buzzard-ready dialog."
Horror author Stephen King rated "The Devil's Rejects" the 9th best film of 2005 and wrote, "No redeeming social merit, perfect '70s C-grade picture cheesy glow; this must be what Quentin Tarantino meant when he did those silly "Kill Bill" pictures."
James Berardinelli was very negative giving "The Devil's Rejects" half a star (out of a possible four stars) and called it a "vile, reprehensible movie", saying the action was "more formula than plot". He described the dialogue as "a pastiche (at least I think that's the intention) of the kind of bloodthirsty, overripe lines found" in a genre of films from the 1970s about "outcasts who defy society by destroying it". He was extremely critical of the acting, directing, and the production values, with an ending that was "a cataclysmic misfire", and overall was not "engaging cinema".
In 2015, Taste of Cinema ranked the film 23rd among the "30 Great Psychopath Movies That Are Worth Your Time".
Sequel.
In January 2018, it was rumored that a sequel, "3 from Hell", was in production. Rob Zombie confirmed this via Instagram in March 2018, sharing a photo from the director's seat. A teaser trailer for "3 from Hell" was released in June 2019, and the film opened on September 16, 2019.
References.
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Halloween (2007 film)
Film by Rob Zombie
Halloween is a 2007 American slasher film written, directed, and produced by Rob Zombie. It is a remake of John Carpenter's 1978 horror film of the same name and the ninth installment in the "Halloween" franchise. The film stars Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, and William Forsythe. The "reimagining" follows Michael Myers who murdered his family as a child and becomes institutionalized at an asylum, before breaking out and stalking Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night.
Working from Carpenter's advice to "make [the film] his own", Zombie chose to develop the film as both an origin story and a remake, allowing for more original content than simply re-filming the same scenes.
"Halloween" was released in the United States on August 31, 2007, by the Weinstein Company, under their Dimension Films banner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but grossed over $80 million worldwide against a production budget of $15 million. A sequel, "Halloween II", was released in 2009.
Plot.
On Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois, having already exhibited signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers murders school bully Wesley Rhoades, his older sister Judith, her boyfriend Steve Haley, and his mother's abusive boyfriend Ronnie White out of revenge. He only spares his infant sister, Angel. After one of the longest trials in the state's history, Michael is found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis.
Michael initially cooperates with Loomis, and his mother Deborah, who he dearly loves the most, visits him regularly. Over the following year, Michael becomes dissociative, fixating on papier-mâché masks and withdrawing from the people around him, even his mother. When Michael kills a nurse as Deborah is leaving from one of her visits, she is unable to handle the situation and commits suicide.
For the next 15 years, Michael continues making his masks and not speaking to people. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, attempts to move forward with his life and closes Michael's case. Later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove, killing the guards and hospital staff in the process. He then kills a truck driver for his clothes and makes his way back to Haddonfield. On Halloween, Michael arrives at his now-abandoned childhood home, where he recovers the kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored under the floorboards the night he killed his sister.
Laurie Strode and her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok prepare for Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Later that night, Lynda meets up with her boyfriend Bob Simms at Michael's abandoned home. Michael appears, murders them, and then heads to the Strode home. There, while Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle, he murders her parents, Mason and Cynthia. Dr. Loomis, having been alerted of Michael's escape, arrives in Haddonfield looking for Michael. After obtaining a handgun, Loomis attempts to warn Sheriff Leigh Brackett that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Loomis and Brackett head to the Strode home, with Brackett explaining along the way that Laurie is really Michael's baby sister, having been adopted by the Strodes following their mother's suicide.
After convincing Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace while spending time with her boyfriend Paul, Annie is attacked by Michael after he kills Paul at the Wallace residence. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie badly injured on the floor but still alive and calls for help. Michael attacks Laurie and chases her back to the Doyle residence. Loomis and Brackett hear the call over the radio and head toward the Wallace residence. Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to their old home. He tries to show Laurie that she is his sister, presenting a picture of them with their mother. Unable to understand, Laurie stabs Michael before escaping the house. Michael chases after her, but Loomis arrives and shoots him three times.
Recovering, Michael recaptures Laurie and heads back to the house. Loomis intervenes, but Michael subdues him by gouging at his eyes. Laurie takes the gun and runs upstairs, but Michael corners her on a balcony and charges her head-on, knocking both of them over the railing. Laurie awakens on top of an unconscious Michael. Laurie aims the gun at Michael, with Michael's hand grabbing her wrist just as the gun is fired. Laurie drops the gun and starts screaming maniacally.
Cast.
<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>* Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Samuel Loomis
Production.
After the release of "" (2002), there were various ideas on how to proceed with a ninth installment. After the release of "Freddy vs. Jason" in 2003, Dimension Films attempted to produce a crossover with the "Hellraiser" franchise featuring Pinhead and the Cenobites. One of the pitches involved a young Michael Myers opening the Lament Configuration and being possessed with Samhain fleeing from Hell, providing the source of his murderousness and invincibility; the remainder of the film would have involved the Cenobites pursuing him. An earlier pitch from the late 90s from Dave Parker was rejected by Dimension, as they believed "Freddy vs. Jason" would bomb at the box office. According to Doug Bradley, Clive Barker agreed to write a script while John Carpenter was being considered to direct. Bradley said that Barker "wasn't interested in a mano-a-mano confrontation. He was interested in finding the places where the "Hellraiser" and "Halloween" landscapes might have crossed over" and that he envisioned Michael Myers as "a sadomasochistic sexual pervert and serial killer which would be enough to pique Pinhead's interest." The project was ultimately cancelled after 52 percent of respondents to an online poll disapproved of the project and Moustapha Akkad was not interested.
Akkad continued to try to develop a sequel. Josh Stolberg, who also unsuccessfully proposed a "Hellraiser" crossover with Bobby Florsheim, pitched "Halloween: Bad Blood", which would have brought back Jamie Lloyd. A 2004 script from screenwriting duo Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton, titled "Halloween: Retribution", would have begun with Michael killing Busta Rhymes's character Freddie Harris and involved Laurie Strode's son John Tate and Sheriff Leigh Brackett plotting to kill Michael Myers in revenge for her death in the previous film; the film would have ended with Tate drowning Michael in a frozen lake but implying that he would take his place as a murderous killer. Also in 2004, a script from Matt Veene, entitled "Halloween: Asylum", had Michael Myers breaking free from death row. Another prospective screenplay written by Jake Wade Wall was "Halloween: The Missing Years", which would have been a prequel centered around Michael Myers returning to Smith's Grove Sanitarium in the early 1980s during the events of ' (1982), with flashbacks revealing details about his childhood at the asylum after murdering his sister in the 1960s. At the same time Moustapha Akkad and his son Malek were working on a story revolving around Dr. Wynn from ' (1995). Development on a direct sequel suddenly halted when Moustapha Akkad was killed in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings while attending a wedding in Jordan, and his son Malek decided to take the series in a different direction.
On June 4, 2006, Dimension Films announced that Rob Zombie would be creating the next installment in the "Halloween" film series. The plan was for Zombie to hold many positions in the production; he would write, direct, produce, and serve as music supervisor. Bob Weinstein approached him about making the film. Zombie, who was a fan of the original "Halloween", jumped at the chance to make a "Halloween" film for Dimension Studios. Before Dimension went public with the news, Zombie felt obligated to inform Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie to "make it his own". During a June 16, 2006, interview, Zombie announced that his film would combine the elements of prequel and remake with the original concept, and insisted that there would be considerable original content in the new film as opposed to mere rehashed material. The BBC reported that the new film would disregard the numerous sequels that followed "Halloween".
Zombie's intention was to reinvent Michael Myers because he felt the character, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead, had become more familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary. The idea behind the new film was to delve deeper into Michael's backstory and add "new life" to the character. Michael's mask would be given its own story to provide an explanation as to why he wears it, instead of having the character simply steal a random mask from a hardware store as in the original film. Zombie explained that he wanted Michael to be true to what a psychopath really is, and wanted the mask to be a way for Michael to hide. He also wanted the young Michael to have charisma, which would be projected onto the adult Michael. In addition, he decided that Michael's motives for returning to Haddonfield would be more ambiguous, explaining, "[W]as he trying to kill Laurie, or just find her because he loves her?" Michael speaks as a child during the beginning of the film, but while in Smith's Grove he stops talking completely. Zombie originally planned to have the adult Michael speak to Laurie in the film's finale, simply saying his childhood nickname for her, "Boo". Zombie explained that this version was not used because he was afraid having the character talk at that point would demystify him too much, and because the act of Michael handing Laurie the photograph of them together was enough.
Moreover, Michael would not be able to drive in the new film, unlike his 1978 counterpart who stole Loomis' car so that he could drive back to Haddonfield. The Dr. Loomis character was also to be more intertwined with that of Michael; Zombie reasoned that the character's role in the original was "showing up merely to say something dramatic". Although Zombie added more history to the Michael Myers character, hence creating more original content for the film, he chose to keep the character's trademark mask and Carpenter's theme song intact for his version (despite an apparent misinterpretation in an interview suggesting the theme would be ditched). Production officially began on January 29, 2007. Shortly before production began, Zombie reported that he had seen the first production of Michael's signature mask and commented, "It looks perfect, exactly like the original. Not since 1978 has The Shape looked so good". Filming occurred in the same neighborhood that Carpenter used for the original "Halloween".
On December 19, 2006, Zombie announced to "Bloody Disgusting" that Daeg Faerch would play the part of ten-year-old Michael Myers. On December 22, 2006, Malcolm McDowell was officially announced to be playing Dr. Loomis. McDowell stated that he wanted a tremendous ego in Loomis, who is out to get a new book from the ordeal. On December 24, 2006, Zombie announced that Tyler Mane, who had previously worked with Zombie on "The Devil's Rejects" (2005), would portray the adult Michael Myers. Mane stated that it was very difficult to act only with his eyes. After winning the role, he noted that he consecutively watched seven of the eight "Halloween" films (excluding the third because Michael Myers does not appear) to better understand his character. Scout Taylor-Compton endured a long audition process, but as director Zombie explains, "Scout was my first choice. There was just something about her; she had a genuine quality. She didn't seem actor-y." She was one of the final people to be cast for a lead role after Faerch, Mane, McDowell, Forsythe, and Harris. Heather Bowen, a fan who won a contest for a walk-on cameo appearance in 2005 when it was still intended to be a sequel, played a news reporter who covered Michael's arrest, but her scene was cut from the film and does not appear in the deleted scenes. In the film's original ending, Loomis is successful in convincing Michael to let go of Laurie as he is surrounded by police officers, telling Michael he "did the right thing". Despite Loomis' protests, however, Michael is killed shortly afterwards in a hail of gunfire, and the film ends with Loomis looking down sadly at his former patient's corpse.
Release.
Approximately four days before the theatrical release of the film, a workprint version of "Halloween" appeared online and was circulated around various BitTorrent sites. Upon hearing of the leaked copy, Zombie stated that whatever version had been leaked was an older version of the film, unlike what was about to be released in theaters. The leak of Zombie's workprint led to speculation that the film's box office success could be damaged, as director Eli Roth attributed the financial failure of his film that released earlier the same year, "", to the leaking of a workprint version. Dark Horizons webmaster Garth Franklin noted that watching the workprint allows a viewer to see what was changed after test screenings of the film in June 2007. For example, one particular scene—the rape of one of the Smith's Grove female inmates—was replaced in the final version. "Halloween" was officially released on August 31, 2007, to 3,472 theaters in North America, giving it the widest release of any of the previous "Halloween films".
Reception.
Box office.
On its opening day, "Halloween" grossed $10,896,610, and immediately surpassed the opening weekend grosses for "Halloween II" (1981) at $7,446,508, "Season of the Witch" at $6,333,259, ' (1988) at $6,831,250, ' (1989) at $5,093,428, and "The Curse of Michael Myers" at $7,308,529. From September 1–2, "Halloween" earned $8,554,661 and $6,911,096, respectively, for a 3-day opening weekend total of $26,362,367. The film would earn an additional $4,229,392 on Labor Day for a 4-day holiday weekend gross of $30,591,759, making it the highest ever for that holiday. As a result, the 2007 film would immediately surpass the total box office gross for "Halloween II" (1981) at $25,533,818, "Halloween III" (1982) at $14,400,000, "Halloween 4" (1988) at $17,768,757, "Halloween 5" (1989) at $11,642,254, "The Curse of Michael Myers" (1995) at $15,116,634, and "Halloween: Resurrection" with $30,354,442.
Following its first Friday after its opening weekend, "Halloween" saw a 71.6% drop in attendance, earning $3,093,679. The film, which earned the #1 spot at the box office in its opening weekend, earned only $9,513,770 in its second weekend—a 63.9% decrease—but still claimed the #2 spot at the box office just behind "". The film continued to appear in the weekend top ten going into its third weekend, when it earned $4,867,522 to take sixth place. It was not until the film's fourth weekend that it fell out of the top ten and into twelfth place with $2,189,266. "Halloween" would fail to regain a top ten spot at the box office for the remainder of its theatrical run.
Thanks to its opening weekend of $30.5 million, the film broke the box-office record for the Labor Day weekend, surpassing the record set in 2005 by "Transporter 2" with $20.1 million. It remained the top Labor Day weekend grosser until the release of "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" in 2021. "Halloween" was also the 8th highest-grossing R-rated film of 2007, and finished out the year in 44th place for domestic box office gross. With its $58 million box office gross, "Halloween" was the second highest-grossing film among the recent slasher remakes, taken over by "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010) with $63 million. However, it is third in the list which consists of "When a Stranger Calls" (2006) at $47.8 million, "Black Christmas" (2006) at $16.3 million, "Prom Night" (2008) at $43.8 million, "My Bloody Valentine 3D" (2009) with $51.4 million, and "Friday the 13th" (2009) leading the group with $60 million. "Halloween" is also ranked eleventh overall when comparing it to all of the horror remakes, as well as eighth place for all slasher films in general, in unadjusted dollars.
In addition to the film's North American box office, it opened alongside "Michael Clayton" and "Mr. Woodcock" in foreign markets on the weekend of September 29, 2007. "Halloween" led the trio with a total of $1.3 million in 372 theaters – "Michael Clayton" and "Mr. Woodcock" took in $1.2 million from 295 screens and $1 million from 238 screens, respectively. By November 1, 2007, "Halloween" had taken in an additional $7 million in foreign markets. Ultimately, the film would earn approximately $21,981,879 overseas. By the end of the film's theatrical run, the film had taken a worldwide total of $80,253,908. When adjusting for the 2018 inflation, Zombie's "Halloween"—which adjusts to $77.4 million domestically—is sixth, behind Carpenter's "Halloween" at $183.6 million, Halloween (2018) at $155.7 million, "" at $107.3 million, and "Halloween II" at $84 million.
Critical response.
Based on 122 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, "Halloween" received a 28% approval rating, with an average rating of 4.40/10. The consensus reads, "Rob Zombie doesn't bring many new ideas to the table in "Halloween", making it another bloody disappointment for fans of the franchise." By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a 47 out of 100 from the 18 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was "B−" on an A+ to F scale; it also reported that 62% of the audience was male, with 57% being 25 years or older.
Peter Hartlaub, of the "San Francisco Chronicle", felt Zombie was successful in both "[putting] his own spin on "Halloween", while at the same time paying tribute to Carpenter's film"; he thought Zombie managed to make Michael Myers almost "sympathetic" as a child, but that the last third of the film felt more like a montage of scenes with "Halloween" slipping into "slasher-film logic". Nathan Lee of "The Village Voice" disagreed in part with Hartlaub, feeling that "Halloween" may have placed too much emphasis on providing sympathy for Michael Myers, but that it succeeded in "[deepening] Carpenter's vision without rooting out its fear". The film critic Matthew Turner believed the first half of the film, which featured the prequel elements of Michael as a child, were better played than the remake elements of the second half. In short, Turner stated that performances from the cast were "superb", with Malcolm McDowell being perfectly cast as Dr. Loomis, but that the film lacked the scare value of Carpenter's original. Jamie Russell from BBC News agreed that the first half of the film worked better than the last half; she stated that Zombie's expanded backstory on Michael was "surprisingly effective"—also agreeing that McDowell was perfectly cast as Loomis—but that Zombie failed to deliver the "supernatural dread" that Carpenter created for Michael in his 1978 original.
"New York Daily News" critic Jack Matthews believed the film lacked tension, and went more for cheap shocks—focusing more on enhancing the "imagery of violence"—than real attempts to scare the audience; he gave the film one and a half stars out of five. Dennis Harvey, from "Variety" magazine, echoed Matthew's opinion that the film failed to deliver on the suspense; he also felt that you could not tell one teenage character from the next, whereas in Carpenter's original, each teenager had real personalities. Writing 11 years after the film's release for "The Washington Post", Sonny Bunch speculated that "The blowback theory of Michael Myers may have been comforting for a post-9/11 America mired in the Iraq War trying to get a sense of how evil comes to be, but it’s deeply dissatisfying as the peg on which to hang a slasher movie villain." In contrast, Rossiter Drake of "The Examiner" applauded Michael's backstory, feeling that it was a "compelling take on the mythology" that managed to be "unique" and "shocking" at the same time. In agreement with other critics, "Empire" magazine's Kim Newman felt that, because Zombie seemed less focused on the teenagers being stalked and killed by Michael, the film "[fell] flat" when it came to delivering suspense or anything "remotely scary", though Newman did praise McDowell for his portrayal of the "dogged psychiatrist". Ben Walter, of "Time Out London", felt Zombie added "surprising realism" to the development of Michael Myers’ psychopathic actions, but agreed with Newman that the director replaced the original film's "suspense and playfulness" with a convincing display of "black-blooded brutality".
Frank Scheck, of "The Hollywood Reporter", believed that even though Zombie's remake of Carpenter's "Halloween" was better than getting another sequel in the long running franchise, it still was not comparable to the 1978 original. For Scheck, Zombie replaced Carpenter's building suspense, which made it so "brilliant", with graphic violence and extended scenes of nudity; he also criticized McDowell for lacking the intensity that Donald Pleasence brought to the Loomis character. By contrast, "TV Guide"'s Ken Fox felt that Zombie did deliver a "scary horror movie", not by copying Carpenter, but by making the film his own. Fox noted that Zombie seemed to follow more in the footsteps of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper's "savage, greasy-haired '70s" films, which allowed him to bring Michael back to his roots and successfully terrify an audience which has grown accustomed to the recent "torture porn" horror films. Bill Gibron of "PopMatters" believes that audiences and critics cannot compare Carpenter's film to Zombie's remake; where Carpenter focused more on the citizens of Haddonfield—with Michael acting as a true "boogeyman"—Zombie focuses more on Michael himself, successfully forcing the audience to experience all of the elements that Michael went through that would result in his "desire for death".
Quentin Tarantino claims to have disliked the film when first viewing it in the theater, but grew to appreciate it for Harris and Faerch's performances and Zombie's "Sam Peckinpah aesthetic."
"Halloween" won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Film of 2007, drawing in 550 votes, the most ever in the history of the award. The film also won the 'Best Remake Award' at the 2008 Spike TV Scream Awards. Dan Mathews, vice president of PETA, sent Rob Zombie a thank-you letter for what he perceived as Zombie sending a message to audiences when he depicted the young Michael Myers torturing animals, something he felt demonstrated that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals are likely to move on to humans. Mathews went on to say, "Hopefully, with the attention focused by your movie on the link between cruelty to animals and human violence, more people will recognize the warning signs among people they know and deal with them more forcefully. We wish you continued success!"
Carpenter himself was ambivalent about the film; during an audience Q&A in 2016, Carpenter stated that he took issue with Zombie's comments that he was "cold" when they discussed the project and noted that it will color his perception of the film and lamented that giving Myers a backstory took away from the mystique. He later clarified that he is on good terms with Zombie. Carpenter, serving as an executive producer and creative consultant for the 2018 sequel to "Halloween" (1978), expressed his disagreement with Zombie's portrayal of Myers, "I thought that he took away the mystique of the story by explaining too much about [Michael Myers]. I don't care about that. He's supposed to be a force of nature. He's supposed to be almost supernatural."
Awards and nominations.
The film was nominated for multiple awards for best film and acting. "Halloween" was nominated by the Sitges Film Festival for "Best Film", as did the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, for which it won. Sheri Moon Zombie was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Fright Meter Awards.
Soundtrack.
The film's soundtrack was released on August 21, 2007; it includes 24 tracks, consisting of 12 dialogue tracks and 12 instrumentals. The album contained both new tracks, as well as ones recycled from the original "Halloween" and its sequel. Tyler Bates' interpretation of John Carpenter's original "Halloween" theme is the first musical track, with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," which appeared in the original "Halloween", and "Mr. Sandman", which appeared in "Halloween II" and "", performed by Nan Vernon. Writing about its selection from the 1981 film, one reviewer for the BBC commented that it worked well to "mimic Laurie’s situation (sleeping a lot)", making "the once innocent sounding lyrics seem threatening in a horror film". The album also includes Kiss's "God of Thunder", Rush's "Tom Sawyer", Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed", Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way", Nazareth's "Love Hurts", Bachman–Turner Overdrive's "Let It Ride", Misfits' "Halloween II", and an Iggy Pop live version of The Stooges' "1969" among others.
Home media.
On December 18, 2007, the film was released on DVD in the United States; both the theatrical (110 minutes) and an unrated director's cut (121 minutes) were released as two-disc special editions containing identical bonus features. The film was released on DVD in the UK on April 28, 2008, known as the "Uncut" edition. On October 7, 2008, a three-disc set was released. This Collector's Edition of "Halloween" features the same bonus features as the previous unrated edition, but includes Zombie's four-and-a-half-hour "making-of" documentary similar to the "30 Days in Hell" documentary for Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects".
References.
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Nick Castle
American film director, actor and screenwriter
Nicholas Castle (born September 21, 1947 in Kingsport, Tennessee) is an American screenwriter, film director, and actor. He is known for playing Michael Myers in John Carpenter's horror film "Halloween" (1978). He also had a cameo as Myers in "Halloween" (2018). Castle also co-wrote "Escape from New York" (1981) with Carpenter. After "Halloween", Castle became a director, taking the helm of films such as "The Last Starfighter" (1984), "The Boy Who Could Fly" (1986), "Dennis the Menace" (1993), and "Major Payne" (1995).
Career.
Castle's film credits include "Dark Star" where he played the beach ball alien, "Major Payne", "Dennis the Menace", "The Last Starfighter", and "Connors' War" as a director. He wrote the screenplays for the films "Escape from New York" and "Hook". He was the writer and director of the film "Tap".
In 1978, he played the iconic starring role of Michael Myers in the classic horror film "Halloween", directed by former USC classmate John Carpenter, and was paid 25 dollars a day. Castle's subsequent collaborations with Carpenter included his name being used as one of the main characters' names in "The Fog", co-writing the script of "Escape from New York", and performing the title song of "Big Trouble in Little China" as part of the band The Coup De Villes, alongside Carpenter and another friend, writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace. After "Halloween", Castle had his directorial debut in "", followed by taking the helm of films such as "The Last Starfighter", "The Boy Who Could Fly", "Dennis the Menace", and "Major Payne".
Castle wrote "August Rush", a musical-drama directed by Kirsten Sheridan and starring Freddie Highmore, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Robin Williams, and Keri Russell, which was released in 2007. He also stars as himself in the 2010 documentary "Halloween: The Inside Story" by Filipino filmmaker Nick Noble.
In 2018, Castle had a cameo as Michael Myers in the direct sequel, "Halloween", directed by David Gordon Green, becoming the third actor to play Michael Myers more than once. The announcement of Nick Castle's participation was widely reported as his retaking the role of Michael Myers he originated, with stunt performer James Jude Courtney only doing additional work as the character. However, an interview with Courtney revealed that Castle's screentime was minimal and that the great majority of the work under the mask was done by Courtney himself, which led to the question of whether the return of Castle had been misrepresented by the production. While Courtney was involved in every scene featuring Myers, including those of Castle, who was only involved for a minimal amount of filming, which Castle described to the journalists on set as a cameo appearance, Castle reprises his role in one scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and did all of Michael Myers' breathing sounds in post-production. Courtney referred to collaborating with Castle as an "honor", while Castle described it as a "passing of the torch".
Castle won a Saturn Award for Best Writing for "The Boy Who Could Fly", a Silver Raven (for "Delivering Milo"), a Grand Prize (for "The Last Starfighter"), a Bronze Gryphon, and a Gold Medal of the Regional Council.
References.
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Michael Myers (Halloween)
Fictional character in the Halloween franchise
Michael Myers is a character from the slasher film series "Halloween". He first appears in 1978 in John Carpenter's "Halloween" as a young boy who murders his elder sister, Judith Myers. Fifteen years later, he returns home to Haddonfield, Illinois, to murder more teenagers. In the original "Halloween", the adult Michael Myers, referred to as The Shape in the closing credits, was portrayed by Nick Castle for most of the film and substituted by Tony Moran in the final scene where Michael's face is revealed. The character was created by John Carpenter and has been featured in twelve films, as well as novels, video games, and comic books.
The character is the primary antagonist in all the franchise's films with the exception of "", which is a standalone film disconnected from the continuity of the other films. Since Castle and Moran put on the mask in the original film, six people have stepped into the same role. Castle, George P. Wilbur, Tyler Mane, and James Jude Courtney are the only actors to have portrayed Michael Myers more than once, with Mane and Courtney being the only actors to do so in consecutive films. Michael Myers is characterized as pure evil directly by the filmmakers who created and developed the character over nine films. He typically kills using a chef's knife. In the films, Michael wears a white Halloween mask, as well as coveralls, which he usually steals from a victim. The mask used in the first film was a Captain Kirk mask that originated from a cast of William Shatner's face made for the 1975 horror film "The Devil's Rain".
Appearances.
Michael Myers appears in all of the "Halloween" films excluding the standalone "", although he is briefly seen on a television advertisement for the original film. Myers has also appeared in expanded universe novels and comic books.
Films and canons.
Michael Myers’ story has gone through different timelines and canons, with some retconning previously established plots.
The Original timeline.
Myers made his first appearance in the 1978 film "Halloween". At the beginning of "Halloween", a six-year-old Michael murders his teenage sister Judith on Halloween night in 1963. Fifteen years later, he escapes Smith's Grove Sanitarium and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he stalks a teenage babysitter named Laurie Strode, while his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, attempts to track him down. After murdering three of Laurie's friends, Michael attacks her as well. She fends him off long enough for Loomis to arrive and shoot Michael six times, knocking him off a balcony; when Loomis goes to check the body, he finds that Michael has disappeared. "Halloween II" (1981) picks up directly where the original ended. Michael follows Laurie to the local hospital and kills the staff one by one. Loomis discovers that Laurie is Michael's younger sister and rushes to the hospital to find them. Laurie shoots Michael in the eyes, and Loomis blows up the operating theater while Laurie escapes. Michael emerges from the explosion, engulfed in flames, before finally collapsing dead.
The Thorn timeline.
Michael does not appear again until ' in 1988, which picks up ten years after the events of "Halloween II". In this canon, known as the “Thorn Timeline”, Michael survived the explosion, leaving him in a coma. He awakens when he learns Laurie has died in a car accident but has a nine-year-old daughter, Jamie Lloyd. Returning to Haddonfield, he causes a citywide blackout and massacres the town's police force and some civilians before being shot by the state police and falling down a mine shaft. ' begins immediately after the fourth film ends, with Michael escaping the mine shaft and being nursed back to health by a local hermit. One year later, he kills the hermit and returns to Haddonfield to find Jamie again, chasing her through his childhood home in a trap set by Loomis. He is eventually subdued by Loomis and taken to the local police station, but a mysterious "Man in Black" kills the officers and frees him.
"" takes place six years after the events of the previous film. Jamie, now fifteen, has been kidnapped and impregnated by a druid cult led by the Man in Black, later revealed to be Dr. Terence Wynn, Loomis' friend and colleague from Smith's Grove. After giving birth, Jamie escapes with her baby, only to be killed by Michael. The baby is found by Tommy Doyle, whom Laurie babysat in the original film. Upon returning to Haddonfield once more, Michael kills relatives of Laurie's adoptive family, who are living in his childhood home. He is revealed to be inflicted with the Curse of Thorn, which drives him to kill his family. Wynn and his cult kidnap Jamie's baby, as well as Kara Strode and her son Danny. Loomis and Tommy follow them to Smith's Grove, where Michael ultimately turns against the cult and slaughters them all. Tommy injects Michael with chemicals and beats him unconscious. Loomis stays behind as the others escape. In the theatrical version, Michael's mask is shown on the ground as Loomis screams in the distance, leaving their fates unknown. In the longer “Producer’s Cut”, however, Loomis unmasks whom he thinks is Michael, but instead is revealed to be the dying Dr. Wynn (the “Man in Black”), passing the Mark of Thorn on to Loomis as Michael, now donning the outfit of the “Man in Black”, escapes.
The H20 timeline.
' establishes a new timeline ignoring the events of the previous three "Thorn" films. In this particular film, Michael has been missing since the hospital explosion twenty years ago. Laurie Strode has faked her death and gone into hiding in California under an assumed name. She is the headmistress of a private boarding school and has a teenage son named John. Michael tracks them down and murders John's friends. After getting her son to safety, Laurie decides to face Michael and ultimately decapitates him. ', which picks up three years after "H20", retcons Michael's death, establishing that the man Laurie decapitated was a paramedic whom Michael had attacked and swapped clothes with before escaping. Michael tracks down an institutionalized Laurie and kills her. He returns to Haddonfield, where one year later, he kills a group of college students filming an internet reality show inside his childhood home. Contestant Sara Moyer and show producer Freddie Harris escape after electrocuting Michael. Michael's body and the bodies of his victims are then taken to the morgue. As the medical examiner begins to inspect Michael's body, he awakens.
The Rob Zombie timeline.
The series was rebooted in 2007 with Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remake. The film establishes from the beginning that Michael and Laurie are siblings, and has an increased focus on Michael's childhood: a ten-year-old Michael is shown killing animals and suffering emotional abuse at home. After killing his sister Judith and three others, he is committed to Smith's Grove where he takes up the hobby of creating papier-mâché masks and receives unsuccessful therapy from Dr. Sam Loomis. His mother Deborah commits suicide after witnessing him killing a nurse. As an adult, Michael returns to Haddonfield to reunite with Laurie. However, Laurie has no memory of Michael and is terrified of him, ultimately shooting him in the head in self-defense after he kills her friends and adoptive parents. In an unused alternate ending, Michael is shown listening to reason as Loomis convinces him to release Laurie and drop his weapon. He then begins to approach them, intentions unclear, before being shot down by Sheriff Brackett's overzealous men.
Zombie's story is continued in the sequel, "Halloween II", which begins in the moments after the 2007 remake ends. The subsequent events and Michael's fate differ between the theatrical cut and extended Director's Cut of the film; in the former, the events of the film take place one year later, whereas in the latter, it is two years later. In both versions, Michael is presumed dead but resurfaces after a vision of Deborah informs him that he must track Laurie down so that they can "come home". In the film, Michael and Laurie are implied to have a mental link, with the two sharing visions of their mother. During the climax of the theatrical cut, after Michael has murdered Loomis, Laurie kills Michael by stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and face with his knife, with the final scene suggesting that she has taken on her brother's psychosis as she dons his mask. In the Director's Cut ending, Michael speaks a single word, 'die', before killing Loomis. He is then gunned down by the Haddonfield police. Laurie approaches Loomis' body whilst holding Michael's knife, and appears to raise the knife before she too is shot dead by police.
The Blumhouse timeline.
Michael's appearance in the 2018 film "Halloween" establishes the “Blumhouse timeline”. This version is a direct sequel to the original film in which Michael and Laurie are not siblings. It is established that after being shot by Loomis, Michael fled to his childhood home and was arrested by the Haddonfield police. After forty years at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, he escapes again and returns to Haddonfield for another killing spree. He again encounters Laurie, who has been living in fear of his return. She shoots off two of his fingers and, with the help of her daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson, traps him in the basement of her house, which they then set on fire. Michael is heard breathing at the end of the credits, indicating that he survived.
"Halloween Kills" is a direct sequel to the 2018 film in which Michael escapes the burning house when the fire department arrive to stop the blaze before it becomes too intense. As Michael resumes his killing spree, the enraged townspeople form a mob to hunt him down. While the mob proves to be unnecessarily destructive, they do eventually swarm him and seemingly kill him. As they attempt to confirm he's really dead, Michael rises again and massacres them all. He returns to his childhood home, where he kills Karen as well. "Halloween Ends" (2022) picks up four years after its predecessor, revealing that Michael went into hiding after killing Karen. Now in a badly weakened condition, Michael inhabits a sewer cavern where a troubled young man named Corey Cunningham, who is dating Allyson, encounters him. Corey begins helping Michael kill people and starts to manifest the same evil. He eventually steals Michael's mask and murders several people who wronged him. He also goes after Laurie, but is shot down a stairwell. Michael arrives to retrieve his mask and kills Corey. Laurie pins Michael to a table and slits his throat, but he chokes her with the last of his strength. Allyson intervenes and breaks Michael's arm, allowing Laurie to fatally slice his wrist. A town-wide procession takes place, where everyone watches Laurie dispose of Michael's corpse in an industrial shredder, ending his rampage once and for all.
Literature.
Michael Myers made his literary debut in October 1979 when Curtis Richards released a novelization of the film. The book follows the events of the film but includes references to the festival of Samhain. A prologue provides a possible explanation for Michael's murderous impulses, telling the story of Enda, a disfigured Celtic teenager who butchers the Druid princess Deirdre and her lover as revenge for rejecting him; the king subsequently has his shaman curse Enda's soul for walking the earth reliving his crime for eternity. It is later revealed that Michael Myers suffers nightmares about Enda and Deirdre, as did Michael's great-grandfather before shooting two people to death at a Halloween harvest dance in the 1890s. The novel shows Michael's childhood in more detail; his mother voices concern over her son's anti-social behavior shortly before he murders Judith. Dr. Loomis notices the boy's effortless control and manipulation of the staff and patients at Smith's Grove during his incarceration. Later in the story, Michael's stalking of Laurie and her friends is depicted as more explicitly sexual than was apparent in the film, with several references to him having an erection. Michael returned to the world of literature with the 1981 adaptation of "Halloween II" written by Jack Martin; it was published alongside the first film sequel, with the novel following the film events, with an additional victim, a reporter, added to the novel. The final novelization to feature Michael was "Halloween IV", released October 1988. The novel was written by Nicholas Grabowsky, and like the previous adaptations, follows the events of "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers".
Over a four-month period, Berkley Books published three young adult novels written by Kelly O'Rourke; the novels are original stories created by O'Rourke, with no direct continuity with the films. The first, released on October 1, 1997, titled "The Scream Factory", follows a group of friends who set up a haunted house attraction in the basement of Haddonfield City Hall, only to be stalked and killed by Michael Myers while they are there. "The Old Myers Place" is the second novel, released December 1, 1997, and focuses on Mary White, who moves into the Myers house with her family and takes up residence in Judith Myers' former bedroom. Michael returns home and begins stalking and attacking Mary and her friends. O'Rourke's final novel, "The Mad House", was released on February 1, 1998. "The Mad House" features a young girl, Christine Ray, who joins a documentary film crew that travels to haunted locations; they are currently headed to Smith Grove Mental Hospital. The crew is quickly confronted by Michael Myers.
The character's first break into comics came with a series of comics published by Brian Pulido's Chaos! Comics. The first, simply titled "Halloween", was intended to be a one-issue special, but eventually two sequels spawned: "Halloween II: The Blackest Eyes" and "Halloween III: The Devil's Eyes". All of the stories were written by Phil Nutman, with Daniel Farrands—writer for "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers"—assisting on the first issue; David Brewer and Justiniano worked on the illustrations. Tommy Doyle is the main protagonist in each of the issues, focusing on his attempts to kill Michael Myers. The first issue includes backstory on Michael's childhood, while the third picks up after the events of the film "Halloween H20".
In 2003, Michael appeared in the self-published comic "One Good Scare", written by Stefan Hutchinson and illustrated by Peter Fielding. The main character in the comic is Lindsey Wallace, the young girl who first saw Michael Myers alongside Tommy Doyle in the original 1978 film. Hutchinson wanted to bring the character back to his roots, and away from the "lumbering Jason-clone" the film sequels had made him. On 25 July 2006, as an insert inside the DVD release of "Halloween: 25 Years of Terror", the comic book "Halloween: Autopsis" was released. Written by Stefan Hutchinson and artwork by Marcus Smith and Nick Dismas, the story is about a photographer assigned to take pictures of Michael Myers. As the photographer, Carter, follows Dr. Loomis; he begins to take on Loomis's obsession himself, until finally meeting Michael Myers in person, which results in his death.
In 2008, Devil's Due Publishing began releasing more "Halloween" comic books, starting with a four issue mini series, titled "Halloween: Nightdance". Written by Stefan Hutchinson, "Nightdance" takes place in Russellville, and follows Michael's obsession with Lisa Thomas, a girl who reminds him of his sister Judith. Lisa is afraid of the dark after Michael trapped her in a basement for days, and years later, he starts sending her disturbing, childlike drawings and murdering those around her on Halloween. Meanwhile, Ryan Nichols is hunting Michael down after seeing him attack and kidnap his wife. In the end, Michael frames Ryan for the murders and buries Lisa alive. Hutchinson explains that "Nightdance" was an attempt to escape the dense continuity of the film series and recreate the tone of the 1978 film; Michael becomes inexplicably fixated on Lisa, just as he did with Laurie in the original "Halloween", before the sequels established that a sibling bond was actually his motivation for stalking her. Included in the "Nightdance" trade paperback is the short prose story "Charlie", which features Charlie Bowles, a Russellville serial killer who taps into the same evil force which motivates Michael Myers. To celebrate the anniversary of the "Halloween" series, Devil's Due released a one-shot comic entitled "Halloween: 30 Years of Terror" in August 2008, written by Hutchinson. An anthology collection inspired by John Carpenter's original film, Michael appears in various stories, tampering with Halloween candy, decapitating a beauty queen, tormenting Laurie Strode, and killing a school teacher.
Concept and creation.
The character derives his name from English film distributor Michael Myers, who successfully distributed "Assault on Precinct 13" in the UK through his Miracle Films. According to John Carpenter, Myers helped "push "Assault on Precinct 13" into the London Film Festival, that's where my reputation kind of began, so I felt I owed him. So that was my tribute to him, he was this dearest, dearest man". Carpenter wanted to "raise this Michael Myers character up to a mythic status; make him human, yes, but almost like a force. A force that will never stop, that can't be denied." He did not want to give Michael a backstory, but put him immediately into a "legendary kind of situation". To elaborate, Carpenter explained that he was influenced by Yul Brynner's "killer robot that couldn't be destroyed" in Michael Crichton's "Westworld". Carpenter felt this kind of character, one that was "a force", would be more terrifying than personifying him. Michael's mask was meant to help illustrate this further, because it would "blank out his human features […] Making him then just some sort of force of evil that is irrational, unstoppable."
When developing the 2007 "Halloween" remake, Rob Zombie commented on his intentions for the character, stating that he wanted Michael Myers to be the lead character in the film. Zombie felt the character could be made "more intense" if he was more than just a "faceless thing floating around in the background". Zombie believed it was important to be able to see the events that shape the character, making it "more disturbing" to the audience.
Developing "The Shape".
In the original film, three actors portrayed Michael Myers. Will Sandin played a six-year-old Michael, who murders his sister Judith on Halloween night. Later in the film, Tony Moran and Nick Castle would portray the adult Michael, with Moran credited as "Michael Myers (age 23)" and Castle credited as "The Shape". Nick Castle was a friend, and former University of Southern California schoolmate, of John Carpenter. Production on "Halloween" was taking place near Castle's house, so he asked Carpenter if he could hang around the set, because he was attempting to get his own movies "off the ground". Carpenter agreed on the condition that Castle play the role of the masked killer. For his part, Castle was paid $25 a day. Debra Hill remarks: "[Nick Castle's] father was a choreographer for Fred Astaire, and he just moved great. And I think John really wanted to play him as that, where he just looks, and his head turns, and he's enamored by this sister-like character that he sees in Laurie Strode. He makes the connection; he breaks out of the insane asylum and gets to his house, and sees this young girl, and makes this sort of subtle connection."
Castle's motivation while filming was simple, "walk from this point to the end point, and "roll""; this was reflected in Carpenter's directing, or lack thereof, as Carpenter himself admits that the only bit of direction he gave Castle was, "Do nothing, just walk. Don't act, just walk." To elaborate, during filming Castle tried to find extra motivation for the character, attempting to get into the mind of someone who is mentally ill. Carpenter had to keep reminding him to keep it "simple"; he wanted Castle to make sure the character moved "gracefully" and was a "blank slate that we can project everything into, and make it much more horrifying". Jamie Lee Curtis believes Castle kept the character from being nothing more than just a "thug in a suit". Castle was replaced by Tony Moran for the scene where Michael is unmasked, because Carpenter and Hill wanted someone who had more of an "angelic" face.
Moran, who was looking for work, received a call from his agent about an audition for a "B flick", where he would be playing a "psycho". Moran prepared for his audition by neglecting to sleep, shave, shower or wash his hair for three days. He wore tattered clothes, with hiking boots to the audition. After being introduced to John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence, Moran proceeded to slam his feet up on the table and demand some coffee. He startled everyone at the table, and that afternoon received a phone call that he had gotten the job. Moran would take up the role from the point that Michael is strangling Laurie, as production designer Tommy Lee Wallace had performed the job during the scene where Michael breaks through the closet and Nick Castle in the part up to that scene. Moran would film the rest of the scenes—the removal of Michael's mask, being shot by Loomis and then falling over the balcony—except where Michael's body lies on the ground outside. In response to the "angelic face" remark made by Castle, Moran contends that he was not made aware of that "concept" when he was hired, but after viewing some photos of him and Carpenter on an A&E special, he "kind of sees what [Castle] means".
Stunt performer Dick Warlock played Michael Myers in "Halloween II", replacing Castle who was beginning a career as a director. Warlock's previous experience in film was as a stunt double in films such as "The Green Berets" (1968), "Jaws" (1975) and the 1974 television series "". Warlock had not seen the original film before he was hired, but after getting the job he watched the film "two or three times", modeling his behavior after the few scenes Tommy Lee Wallace performed. Wallace portrayed the character in the scene where Michael attacks Laurie in the closet, and the scene where he sits up and turns toward Laurie, after having fallen down wounded from her counter-attack. Warlock modeled his movements for "Halloween II" after those scenes, as well as the scene where Michael tilts his head to the side while staring at the body of Bob stuck on the wall. Warlock took on Michael's characteristic "breathing", which was heard in the original film, while he was behind the mask. Debra Hill claims that although "the Shape" had no lines, Castle's portrayal gave them the presence that they wanted for the movie; she goes on to say that Dick Warlock was unable to emulate that presence, despite studying Castle's performance. George P. Wilbur did not study any of the previous "Halloween" films when he took over the role in "The Return of Michael Myers".
Nick Castle would return to portray Michael in the 2018 sequel for select masked scenes. Newcomer James Jude Courtney would take over primary duties for the film and its subsequent sequels.