Slasher movies left an unforgettable mark on cinema by showing that horror’s best chance at success is to embrace the idea that less is more. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was one to use this idea as it captured the attention of audiences without relying on overt gore to get the point across. Meanwhile, Friday the 13th, while violent, wasn’t about the next great kill but more so about the mystery unraveling about whom the killer really is. Still, nothing matched the terrifying simplicity of John Carpenter’s Halloween and its killer Michael Myers.
Halloween followed the rampage of Michael Myers, an escaped psychiatric patient famous for killing his older sister as a child. Returning to Haddonfield, Illinois, he preyed on unsuspecting teenagers like Laurie Strode, who was babysitting on Halloween night. With a pale white mask, Michael embodied pure evil and was unstoppable in his mission to sew chaos in the town. As a result, he became one of the most violent and terrifying slashers in the genre. But the source of his evil came from a real and unsettling event that director John Carpenter experienced.
What Made Michael Myers Such a Scary Slasher?
Jason Voorhees had his power and resilience while Freddy Krueger had his creativity and jokes that allowed these killers to become iconic. But what made Michael Myers stand out was the very thing that sent shivers down the spine of the victims in the franchise. Michael was often described as pure evil made evident through his black and soulless eyes. These same eyes were what his victims would see before they were killed, as well, and became a prominent factor in his characterization. In fact, Michael’s pure evil fed into what made him so scary, and no matter the sequel, this remained a constant.
Michael Myers never ran, overexerted himself or thought hard about how to take a life. Instead, he worked with what he had and used his creativity to create a horror show no matter where he went. This was proven as early as the first Halloween when Michael killed a man and stabbed him into a wall with a kitchen knife, only to strangle his girlfriend with a telephone cord moments later. Michael wasn’t trying to make a statement or explain his actions, and it was proven by the evil he exuded through his black eyes that turned him into a grounded and real terror. But the scariest thing about Michael was that the most terrifying aspect of his character was born from a trip John Carpenter took that greatly influenced the character.
A Fateful Trip Changed John Carpenter Forever
John Carpenter made a statement with Halloween that horror comes to those that embrace a false sense of security. Even the safest places, like a suburban neighborhood, can be a place of horror if a person isn’t on their guard. Carpenter felt this in his own way when he took a trip to a psychiatric facility as a university student. As explained in the documentary, Halloween – A Cut Above the Rest, Carpenter had at least two influences for Halloween, with the first being Yul Brenner’s killer cowboy in Westworld and his relentlessness in killing. But the second was from a personal experience that stuck with him forever.
According to Carpenter, for a college class, he took a trip to a mental hospital where they encountered deeply disturbed individuals as a way to better understand what they went through. Carpenter explained that he met a child no older than 12 or 13 who had a haunting look in his eyes that deeply impacted Carpenter enough to express his feelings in a line expressed by Dr. Loomis. The scene where he spoke of a young Michael having eyes of pure black evil was the same thing that Carpenter explained he saw; a “schizophrenic stare.” In that same instance, he knew that he had encountered true terror and while it may not be perfect, Michael Myers likely embodied that stare and feeling from the moment he appeared on the screen.
When audiences encounter Michael Myers, a key thing about the character has been his eyes. Whether visible or shrouded in black, the darkness in Michael’s soul was always visible. There was often no emotion and no motivation but the drive that pushed him to kill was always bubbling below the surface. In a way, this made him scarier than the scariest slasher in cinema as nothing could stop him because there was nothing deeper to understand. His eyes were all the audience could get, and those eyes wanted only one thing: to kill.
Michael Myers’ Eyes Were the Key to His Popularity
Focusing on the eyes of a killer was something other slashers had never done. Neither Jason nor Leatherface — who had masks as well — never had attention brought to their eyes as their actions did most of the talking. Meanwhile, killers like Chucky and Freddy had motivations that they wore on their sleeves. They may have loved to kill, but they killed for a reason the moment they became otherworldly. In the case of Michael, his eyes were what made him popular as it was the only thing people ever saw on his face. While the Rob Zombie remake and the original Halloween showed him without a mask briefly, it wasn’t enough to better understand the killer, which was for the best.
Eyes have often been described as the window to the soul and with Michael, what audiences saw was what they got. But what they got was nothing short of terrifying because there wasn’t anything tangible to understand. Michael had ascended beyond humanity and was a force that couldn’t be stopped by any means. What made this aspect of Michael scarier than anything else, however, was that it was born from reality. A chance encounter John Carpenter experienced had planted a seed that would affect him for the rest of his life. It would prove once and for all that Michael Myers’ terror was effective because it was real and could happen to anyone.