The best and worst Michael Myers Halloween masks

Over 40 years the Halloween movie has been synonymous with Michael Myers, a blank-faced white face and one character: Michael Myers. He even makes an appearance in the standalone version. Halloween III: Season of the Witch courtesy of a “Heh heh. Get it?” commercial playing on a TV.) Famously the result of taking a William Shatner Star Trek mask and retooling it to provide even more mindless evil, that mask is right there with Jason Voorhees’ notorious hockey mask when it comes to embodying the slasher genre as a whole.

But not all the masks will be created equal. As the Halloween series progressed, various redesigns would cause a Rise and Fall and Rise of sorts, and if you’re the kind of person who deeply cares (the right kind of person) you’ll notice each one gives Michael a distinctly different vibe.

Halloween 1978: The Classic

Compass International Pictures – Image

John Carpenter, who directed the movie, was so good at seeing where shadows should be. This makes the Michael Myers mask romantic. The cheekbones provide a little underline in dark close-ups so it doesn’t look like Myers is wearing a mayonnaise container on his head, and very rarely do you see Michael’s actual eyes, lending him that inhuman quality of “The Shape.” Combine that with the slight tussle in his hair and you have a grade-A maniac mask, one that totally alienates the audience from any sort of human connection or empathy.

Halloween II (1981) The Dye Job

Universal Pictures

The mask is Halloween II isn’t too dissimilar from the first, but there’s one key difference: The hair has been given a brownish touch, and depending on the light, it can look redder or even blonder. It’s also much more slicked-back here, making Michael look like he’s already wearing a toupee to relive his glory days from three years earlier. It’s not a bad mask, but just as much of Halloween IIThe franchise seems to be working hard in order to maintain the popularity of the slasher culture it created. It does not feel like an efficient product.

Halloween IV: Michael Myers Return (1988): The Bland One

Image: Trancas International Films

The fact that Myers would buy a mask that barely looked like the original 10 years later makes perfect sense story-wise. At this point, the company producing them has probably changed hands a couple of times in the Reagan ’80s. The mask has had all of the cool details removed and now has the “bought it at CVS Pharmacy at 6:04 p.m. on Oct. 31 in a panic just before trick-or-treating” look. It’s a shame it looks so cheap and corny in every single shot because otherwise, RetourIt’s a great movie for Halloween with tons of atmosphere.

Halloween 5: Michael Myers’ Revenge (1989): At the Bottom of the Barrel

Magnum Pictures

It’s a debate that’s raged for centuries, or, ya know, at least since the ’90s. Which is the worse mask: 1989 or 1988? Retour’s is bereft of any menacing features to an ironic extent and RevengeIt has many wrong features. The neck is way too large, meaning the rubber is left just kind of flapping around the stuntman’s throat. Meanwhile, the nose is way too thin, which, when mixed with the grungy hair, gives it a real Timothée Chalamet vibe.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1996): The Goofball

Miramax

After a six-year hiatus, the Halloween franchise would return with a mask that’s a little better than the one in the previous two installments. This one has scruffy hair and a blank expression, but that expression doesn’t exude pure unreasonable malice; instead, it’s a puppy-dog innocence that looks like Michael Myers is having trouble with a trivia question at all times. The confusion makes sense, though — at this point in the franchise, the Halloween lore had spiraled out of control, losing the original intent of faceless, unexplainable evil and instead having Myers transform into an incestuous bull stud for a Celtic-themed doomsday cult.

Halloween H20 (1998) The Mixed Bag

Image credit: Dimension Films

Returning the franchise to its roots, ignoring the past four sequels, and reintroducing Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode character to the series definitely made for a sleeker experience. It would be great if the mask could keep up. Multiple masks are used in the various locations. H20CGI and other CGI versions. The results of the Myers main mask (the one seen in the famous scene when Laurie is confronted by Michael through a small window), are not very good. The mask detail is there, but without Carpenter’s shadows (being able to see his wide eyes so clearly all the time does no favors for Michael’s mystique) and with an onion-tuft of hair, there’s little in the way of results.

Halloween Resurrection (2002): EVIL One

Image: Dimension Films

The most famous film of the series. Halloween ResurrectionIn its first sequence Laurie Strode would be killed and Busta Hymes would become a reality television producer. In short, it’s a weird watch. However, it’s not too bad if you want your Michael to appear very sinister. Michael’s unkempt cheeks, arched eyebrows, and painted shadows look very unhappy. This is a man who has to endure vapid, starving teens in order to be successful in the seventh installment of his family.

Halloween (2007): The Scarred Model

Image by Dimension Films

Rob Zombie covers his Michael Myers mask in dirt and other imperfections to reimagine him during horror remake wars of the mid-aughts. It’s the result of having been left under some floorboards for 15 years, and it doesn’t look so bad — at the very least, it appears to be the product of an actual artist and not a frantic dash to a Spirit Halloween. We get to see a close replica of the original, too, in the film’s first act — a brief nod to fans of the series before Zombie goes and does whatever he wants with it.

Halloween II: The Beard

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

With even more scarring and actor Tyler Mane’s big beard poking out of the neck of it, the mask from Rob Zombie’s second go-round with the series is either a travesty or a testament to an artist’s ability to divert from the source material. Zombie takes even more liberties when he has one of Myers’ victims claw off a rough third of the mask, leaving Myers with one visible eye and one under the mask. It looks great visually, particularly when Myers’ victim takes off a third of the mask. This is an excellent balance to Zombie’s other times where he has Michael just walk about naked, taking in the fall breeze.

Halloween 2018: The Old Man

Universal Pictures

Like Zombie’s weathered approach, the mask in the direct sequel to the first HalloweenAlso, it is getting older. But this time, we’re offered a few more wrinkles and a ton of dust — meaning that this mask, like Michael, has been locked away to be forgotten about. Of course, that doesn’t happen, and Michael is back to strolling around Haddonfield like in the good old days. For the most part, the mask works, and unlike Michael’s last (now non-canonical) family reunion with Laurie Strode, it keeps the eyes hidden and the expression impenetrable.

Halloween is Dead (2021), and Halloween Comes to an End (2022).

Universal Pictures

Thanks to a fire at the end of the 2018 film, Michael’s mask in Halloween killsAnd the future Halloween endsThe one-side of the () shows a Harvey Dent-esque flame. In darkness, it looks pretty cool — the little bits of charred rubber sticking out from the side add some neat intricacies to what is now the eleventh design in the series. Meanwhile, in plain sight, it’s still recognizably Michael. And as the series has proven over the years, that’s all you can really ask for.