Michael Myers is a fictional character from the Halloween series of slasher films. He first appears in 1978 in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his sister, Judith Myers, and then, fifteen years later, returns home to Haddonfield 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, with Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace substituting in the final scenes. The character was created by Debra Hill and John Carpenter and has appeared in ten films, as well as novels, multiple video games, and several comic books.
The character is the primary antagonist in the Halloween film series, except Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which is not connected in continuity to the rest of the films. Since Castle, Moran, and Wallace put on the mask in the original film, six people have stepped into the same role. Castle, George P. Wilbur, and Tyler Mane are the only actors to have portrayed Michael Myers more than once, with Mane being the only one to do so in consecutive films. Michael Myers is characterized as pure evil, both directly in the films, by the filmmakers who created and developed the character over nine films, and by random participants in a survey. Michael wears a Captain Kirk mask that is painted white. The mask, which was made from a cast of William Shatner's face, was originally used in the 1975 horror film The Devil's Rain.
Michael Myers appears in all of the Halloween films except Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which does not feature any of the characters from the preceding two films and has nothing to do with the character. Michael returned in the following film, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, with the title highlighting his revival. The silver screen is not the only place Michael Myers has appeared: there have been literary sources that have created an expanded universe for Michael Myers.
Michael Myers made his first appearance in the film, Halloween (1978). In the beginning of Halloween, a six-year-old Michael (Will Sandin) murders his teenage sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) on Halloween, 1963. Fifteen years later, Michael (Nick Castle) escapes Smith's Grove Sanitarium and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. He stalks teenage babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on Halloween, while his psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) attempts to track him down. After murdering several of Laurie's friends, Michael finally attacks Laurie herself, but she manages to fend him off long enough for Loomis to save her. Loomis shoots Michael six times, knocking him off the balcony; when Loomis goes to check Michael's body, he finds that he has disappeared. Michael returns in the sequel, Halloween II (1981). The film picks up directly where the original ends, with Dr. Loomis still looking for Michael. Michael (Dick Warlock) follows Laurie to the local hospital, where he wanders the halls in search of her, killing security guards, doctors, and nurses who get in his way. Loomis learns that Laurie is Michael's younger sister, and rushes to the hospital to find them. Laurie shoots Michael in the eyes, blinding him, and Loomis causes an explosion in the operating theater, allowing Laurie to escape. Michael, engulfed in flames, stumbles out of the room before finally collapsing.
Michael Myers does not directly appear in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), which does not include any story elements from the first two installments. It does include Michael in a brief television commercial for the first film. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) picks the story up ten years after the events of Halloween II. Michael (George P. Wilbur) is revealed to have been in a comatose state since the explosion. Michael wakes from his coma when he learns Laurie Strode has died in a car accident, but has a seven-year-old niece, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). Returning to Haddonfield, he causes a citywide blackout and massacres the town's police force, before being shot by the state police and falling down a mine shaft. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) begins immediately after the fourth film ends, with Michael Myers (Donald L. Shanks) escaping the mine shaft and being nursed back to health by a local hermit. The next year, Michael kills the hermit and returns to Haddonfield to find Jamie (Harris) again, chasing her through his childhood home in a trap set up by Loomis (Pleasence). Michael is eventually subdued by Loomis and taken to the local police station, but a mysterious "Man in Black" attacks the police station, kills the officers and frees him. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) takes place six years after the events of The Revenge of Michael Myers; both Jamie (J. C. Brandy) and Michael (Wilbur) have disappeared from Haddonfield. Jamie has been kidnapped and impregnated by the Cult of Thorn, led by Dr. Terence Wynn (Mitchell Ryan), Loomis' friend and colleague from Smith's Grove. Wynn is revealed to have been manipulating Michael all along, and was his mysterious savior in Halloween 5. Michael attacks Jamie, but not before she hides her infant, who is discovered and taken in by Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd). While trying to protect the baby from Michael and Wynn, Tommy learns that the cult may be the cause of Michael's obsession with killing his entire family, in addition to his seemingly supernatural abilities. Michael ultimately turns against the cult, and is finally subdued by Tommy, who injects him with large quantities of tranquilizers inside the Smith's Grove Sanitarium. The film ends with Michael's mask lying on the floor of the lab room and Loomis screaming in the background, leaving the fate of both men unknown.
Ignoring the events of the previous three films, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) establishes that Michael Myers (Chris Durand) has been missing for twenty years since the explosion in 1978. Laurie Strode (Curtis) has faked her death to escape her brother, and is now living in California under an assumed name with her teenage son John (Josh Hartnett). Michael tracks Laurie and her son to the private boarding school where she is headmistress, and murders John's friends. Getting her son to safety, Laurie willingly goes back to face Michael, and decapitates him, finally killing him. Halloween: Resurrection (2002), 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. Michael (Brad Loree) tracks down an institutionalized Laurie and kills her. He returns to Haddonfield, where one year later, he finds and kills a group of college students filming an internet reality show inside his childhood home. Contestant Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich) and show producer Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) escape by 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.
A new version of Michael Myers appears in Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007), a reboot of the franchise. The film follows the basic premise of the original film, with an increased focus on Michael's childhood: a ten-year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) is shown killing animals and suffering emotional abuse from Judith (Hanna R. Hall) and his mother's boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe), both of whom he later murders, along with a boy who was bullying him. After being committed to Smith's Grove, Michael takes up the hobby of creating papier-mâché masks and receives unsuccessful therapy from Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Michael's mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) commits suicide after witnessing him killing a nurse. As an adult, Michael (Tyler Mane) returns to Haddonfield to reunite with his younger sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton), the only person he has ever loved. 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. Zombie's story is continued in the sequel, Halloween II (2009), which picks up right where the remake leaves off and then jumps ahead one year. Here, Michael (Mane) 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 have a mental link, with the two sharing visions of their mother. During the film's climax, Laurie kills Michael by stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and face with his own knife, with the final scene suggesting that she has taken on her brother's psychosis as she dons his mask.
Halloween (2018), a direct sequel to the original film that disregards Michael and Laurie as being siblings, establishes that Michael (James Jude Courtney) was arrested following his killing spree in 1978, spending 40 years in Smith's Grove Sanitarium before escaping again and returning to Haddonfield for another killing spree. Here he comes face-to-face again with Laurie Strode (once again played by Curtis), who has been living in fear of his return. Michael is taken to Laurie's home by his deranged psychologist, where he engages in a showdown with Laurie, who severely injures him and severs two of his fingers. Michael is ultimately trapped in Laurie's burning house by Laurie, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Michael is heard breathing in a post-credits scene, suggesting that he survived.
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 to walk 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, and 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 1 December 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 1 February 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.