HALLOWEEN: The History of Michael Myers

Halloween (1978): The original written and directed by John Carpenter, tells the story of Michael Myers as he stalks and kills teenage babysitters on Halloween night. The film begins with six-year-old Michael (Will Sandin) killing his seventeen-year-old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) on Halloween 1963. He is subsequently hospitalized at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. Fifteen years later, Michael (Nick Castle and Tony Moran) escapes and returns to his hometown where he stalks Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends as they babysit. The film ends with Michael being shot six times by his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence).

Halloween II (1981): More of the night that comes home picks up where the events of Halloween left off. Michael’s body is missing from the front lawn, where it fell when Loomis shot him. Michael follows Laurie to the local hospital, killing everyone who gets between him and Laurie. The story reveals that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister: she was given up for adoption as an infant. Michael corners Loomis and Laurie in an operating room, where Loomis causes an explosion as Laurie escapes. Michael, engulfed in flames, stumbles out of the room toward Laurie before finally falling dead.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982):  The story line of the third film has no connection to the previous two Halloween films. Season of the Witch follows the story of Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins) as he tries to solve the mysterious murder of a patient in his hospital. He, along with the patient’s daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), travels to the small town of Santa Mira, California. The pair discover that Silver Shamrock Novelties, a company run by Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), is attempting to use the mystic powers of the Stonehenge rocks to resurrect the ancient aspects of the Celtic festival, Samhain, which Cochran connects to witchcraft. Cochran is using his Silver Shamrock Halloween masks to achieve his goal, which will be achieved when all the children wearing his masks watch the Silver Shamrock commercial airing Halloween night. Challis contacts the television stations and convinces all but one of the station managers to remove the commercial. The film ends with Challis screaming for the final station to turn off the commercial.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988): As the title suggests, features the return of Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) to the film series. The film reveals that Michael survived the fire in Halloween II but has been in a coma since that night. While being transferred back to Smith’s Grove, Michael comes out of his coma and overhears that Laurie Strode, who died in a car accident, has a daughter, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). Michael escapes the transport and heads to Haddonfield in search of Jamie. Fellow survivor Dr. Loomis also goes to Haddonfield after learning that Michael has escaped transfer. Eventually the town residents track Michael down and shoot him several times before he falls down a mine shaft.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989): Picking up directly where the previous film ends,  Michael (Don Shanks), surviving the gunshots, and the fall down the mine; stumbles upon a hermit who bandages him up and nurses him for a year. One year later, and showing signs of a metaphysical connection to Jamie, Michael tracks Jamie to a local child mental health clinic. Using Jamie as bait, Loomis manages to capture Michael. The film ends with Michael being taken into police custody, only to be broken out of jail by a mysterious stranger, all dressed in black.

Halloween 666: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995): This movie picks up the story approximately six years after the events of The Revenge of Michael Myers. The mysterious stranger who broke Michael out of jail kidnaps Jamie Lloyd (J. C. Brandy) in an effort to obtain her illegitimate child. Jamie escapes with her newborn, with Michael (George P. Wilbur) in pursuit. Michael kills Jamie and continues searching for her baby; the infant is found by Tommy Doyle (Paul Stephen Rudd)—the young boy who was babysat by Laurie Strode in the first film—who brings it home for safety. It is revealed that Michael is driven by the Curse of Thorn, which forces a person to kill their entire family in order to save all of civilization. The mysterious stranger is revealed to be Dr. Loomis’s colleague, Dr. Wynn (Mitchell Ryan), who is part of a group of people who protect the chosen individual so that they may complete their task. With the help of Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan), Laurie’s cousin, Tommy keeps the infant from Michael, who slaughters Wynn and his followers. Michael is finally subdued by Tommy, who injects him with large quantities of tranquilizers inside the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. The film ends with Loomis walking back into the sanitarium to find Michael.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998): The events between Halloween 4 and Halloween 6 are effectively ignored in this movie. This film opens twenty years after the events of the second film. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has faked her own death so that she could go into hiding from her brother Michael. Now working as the head mistress of a private school under the name Keri Tate, Laurie continues to live in fear of her brother’s return. Her own son, John (Josh Hartnett), attends school where she teaches. Laurie’s fear becomes reality when Michael shows up at the school and begins killing John’s friends and eventually he and Laurie come face-to-face. Laurie manages to get John and his girlfriend (Michelle Williams) to safety, but decides to return to the school to face Michael once and for all. Laurie succeeds in stopping Michael, but not satisfied until she knows that he is truly dead, Laurie steals his body from the paramedics where he awakens and the siblings fight for the last time with Laurie decapitating Michael end his reign of Halloween terror once and for all… so she thinks.

Halloween: Resurrection (2002): Three years after H20, it’s revealed that after Lauire knocked Michael over a balcony – Michael swapped clothes with a paramedic after crushing the paramedic’s larynx so that he could not talk—and that was who Laurie killed. Unable to deal with killing an innocent man, and the fact that Michael was still out there, Laurie is committed to a mental institution. Michael (Brad Loree) shows up at the institution, but Laurie captures him. Her fear of making the same mistake twice gets the better of her, and when she attempts to remove Michael’s mask he surprises and kills her. Michael travels back to Haddonfield, but finds a group of college students filming an Internet ghost hunters type reality show in his family home. Michael proceeds to kill everyone, until he is finally electrocuted by the only surviving student, Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich), and the show’s creator Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes).

Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007):  A remake of the original Halloween, this film focuses on the events that lead Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) to kill his family. It also identifies Laurie as Michael’s sister early on, which was something not done in the original 1978 film. On Halloween, Michael murders a school bully, his older sister and her boyfriend, as well as his mother’s boyfriend. Committed to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, Michael closes himself off from everyone. Seventeen years later, Michael (Tyler Mane) escapes and heads to Haddonfield to find his younger sister, with his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) in pursuit. Michael finds his sister living with the Strode family, and going by the name Laurie. After killing all of her friends and family, Michael kidnaps Laurie and attempts to explain to her that he is her brother through the use of a picture that he has kept of himself and her as an infant. Unable to understand, Laurie fights back; eventually, Laurie uses Loomis’s gun to shoot Michael in the head.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009): A sequel to the remake picks up right where the latter leaves off and then jumps ahead one year. Here, Michael (Mane) is presumed dead, but resurfaces after a vision of his deceased mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) informs him that he must track Laurie (Taylor-Compton) down so that they can “come home” together. In the film, Michael and Laurie have a mental link, with the two sharing visions of their mother.

Untitled Halloween Sequel (TBD):  The log line is currently being kept under wraps. Michael Myers has taken a long break from the big screen and we know fans are eager to see him return.  John Carpenter, the multiple award-winning and legendary filmmaker and creator of the original Halloween films, will return to the franchise as executive producer on a new production of the iconic horror movie. Carpenter said “38 years after the original Halloween I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all.” He is also working with Jason Blum and the whole team at Blumhouse. Jason Blum said “Halloween is one of those milestone films that inspired everyone at our company to get into the world of scary movies. The great Malek Akkad and John Carpenter have a special place in the hearts of all genre fans and we are so excited that Miramax brought us together. We cannot wait to find and collaborate with the right filmmaker to give Halloween fans the movie they deserve.”

The Halloween franchise has also seen profitability through various merchandise like toys, dolls, statues, model kits, bobbleheads, snow globes, movie posters, masks, T-shirts, hats, and more. Michael Myers has made appearances in the form of dolls and toys from McFarlane Toys, Sideshow Collectibles, and NECAEven Dr. Loomis has been immortalized in plastic alongside Michael Myers in a two-figure set produced by NECA. In 1983, Wizard Video, who had also released a video game version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released a Halloween game for Atari. In the game, the player was a babysitter who had to protect her children from Michael Myers, who had managed to get inside the house. Although the game was called Halloween, and featured the film’s theatrical poster as its cover art, the game itself never refers to any characters, including the killer, by their names in the film.

The Michael Myers mask has been reproduced over the years by Don Post, the mask company responsible for the creation of the masks from several of the Halloween films (the Silver Shamrock novelty factory seen in Halloween III was actually shot on location in one of Don Post’s factories).While Don Post reproductions of the Michael Myers mask are still commonly found in costume stores every Halloween, the license to produce Michael Myers masks has since been given to Cinema Secrets, the company commissioned with the creation of the Michael Myers mask for Halloween: Resurrection.

The Halloween series also lives on in home video collectors sets. Many versions of the original Halloween (often including special extras like free merchandise or additional footage missing from previous DVD releases of the film) as well as several of its sequels have been published by Anchor Bay Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Dimension Films. On October 2, 2007, the original Halloween was sold on Blu-ray for the first time by Anchor Bay Home Entertainment. In December 2007 there were reports that the Producer’s Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers might get a DVD release in the future. 5 Years of Terror is a DVD released on July 25, 2006 featuring a documentary on the Halloween films, narrated by P. J. Soles and featuring interviews from many of the cast members as well as filmmakers of the Halloween films and a lot of footage from the series as well. It has panel discussions with members from the casts and crews of most of the Halloween films, plus other celebrities and filmmakers such as Rob Zombie and Clive Barker as well as film critics. All of the panel discussions took place at a 25-year Anniversary convention in Pasadena, California (one of the filming locations of the original Halloween) in October 2003. It also has extended versions of interviews featured in the documentary, and much more.

The Halloween Horror Nights Mazes

Halloween: The Life and Crimes of Michael Myers (Hollywood – 2009)

Michael Myers, in scrubs and a bandaged face, was shown escaping from Smiths Grove Sanitarium BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES! Michael was butchering people mere feet from you – and they were splattered with blood. Or, at least, it sure seemed like DNA (Murdy says the blood is really just harmless water) The entire maze was intricately scored with music and sound effects from the original “Halloween,” further immersing visitors into this “movie come to life.” As fans know, Michael’s appearance is always accompanied by an audio “stinger,” and there’s no exception here. In some portions of the maze, scare actors portraying Michael Myers tripped a switch to cue the “stinger” as well as lighting effects to completely disorient you while they move in for the kill. Michael came at visitors from trap doors, the ceiling, and anywhere else you probably won’t expect him. The set decorators paid keen attention to detail includes ensuring that each prop, piece of furniture, and other dressing is authentic to the time period where each walk thru scene is from – either 1962 or 1977 –.  As mentioned, you literally followed Michael’s trail of the dead, so while you’re admiring the avocado green and mustard yellow 70’s era sets, you also could trip on dead bodies, including Judith’s scantily clad corpse

The Horror Nights’ maze incorporated the scent of rotting flesh and urine to make the environments more realistic. For the Myers maze, in addition to the lovely smell of pine for the outdoor scenes, Murdy also made sure the Smiths Grove Sanitarium had the authentic smell of raw sewage. “Have you ever spent much time in mental hospitals? Unfortunately, I have,” he says, quickly adding it was as a 16-year-old delivering meds to medical facilities, where he noticed every sanitarium shared the same raw sewage bouquet.

Orlando, death is coming to your little town. The boogeyman finally made his way as Universal Orlando for HHN24. (Un)fortunately, for us west coast Halloween fans he didn’t make a detour to Hollywood this year.

This maze will be based on the original 1978 movie, which established the blood-print for modern slasher horror movies. With his iconic mask, Michael will set out for new blood and will stop at nothing as he stalks his victims. Every scene tells the tale of a different kill, and if you’re not careful, you could be next. It seems that this maze will be very similar the Halloween maze we experienced at HHN Hollywood back in 2009 where we followed in Mike’s footsteps from his first act of murder as a child, through his temporary stay at Smith’s Groove Sanitarium, to stalking babysitters in Haddonfield, and his final confrontation with Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis. The entire maze will also be intricately scored with music and sound effects from the original “Halloween,” further immersing visitors into this “movie come to life.”

“My experience watching this film growing up is as vivid now as it was years ago. The team and I are beyond thrilled to bring one of the most iconic horror films and characters to life at Halloween Horror Nights.” said Michael Aiello, Director of Entertainment – Creative Development, Universal Orlando Resort. “Halloween began what would become the slasher film genre and still represents the genre as its horrific crown jewel. Guests will come face to face with Michael Myers as we recreate the kills committed on the night He came home.