The 20 Best Michael Myers Kills Ranked

In his 43-year-long career, Michael Myers has killed 121 people on screen, and he's only getting started. Poised to murder dozens more with the release of the aptly titled "Halloween Kills" this October, few genre icons, if any, are as ceaselessly bloodthirsty as Michael. An unstoppable icon whose kills are more grounded than those of other slasher icons — there are no cryogenically-smashed heads or marionette murders here — Michael is the perennial monster in the closet, unknowable and unstoppable.

Here, we're counting down 20 of Michael's best, grisliest, and gnarliest kills. The only qualification is that the kill needs to have occurred on screen. As good as some of the off-screen kills are — including the gory carvings in David Gordon Green's "Halloween" — the audience doesn't actually see them. As such, they're ineligible for entry. Look, Michael's kills are very serious business around these parts. Let's begin.

Poor Bucky. More than both Jason and Krueger, Michael Myers seems hellbent on killing blue collar workers. Custodians, gas station attendants, EMTs — if they're working in uniform, they have targets on their backs. Such is the case with Bucky, the electrical worker played by Harlow Marks in "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." Michael, as the title suggests, has returned to Haddonfield, this time in pursuit of his niece, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) after Laurie Strode's canonical (in this timeline, anyway) off-screen death by dint of an auto accident.

Bucky is working at the Haddonfield power plant when Michael inexplicably appears. He grabs Bucky and throws him into a transformer. Bucky is instantly zapped. He squirms and screams as sparks abound. Then, Haddonfield is thrown into darkness. It's a quick kill of a bit character, but it works in service of both Michael's dramatic return home and in giving Michael another notch in his belt. As always, it's nice when it isn't a knife.

No one is immune from overkill in Rob Zombie's first "Halloween" remake, not even genre stalwart Dee Wallace (yes, the mom from "E.T."). Speaking with Forbes, Rob Zombie remarked that making "Halloween" was a "miserable experience," largely on account of interference from the Weinstein brothers. Still, Zombie's distinct visual and narrative style breaks through intermittently, and his regard for the icons of the genre's past is clear.

Wallace plays Cynthia Strode, Laurie's adoptive mother. Once Laurie has left to babysit Tommy Doyle, Cynthia and her husband, Mason (Pat Skipper), pass out candy to straggling trick-or-treaters. Cynthia heads inside. Once she does, Michael appears and murders Mason. He drags him inside and corners Cynthia. He throws her onto a glass table and shoves a photo of Laurie into his face. Her maternal instincts in full swing, Cynthia begs for Michael to leave her baby alone. Michael, always a recalcitrant killer, isn't wont to listen. Instead, he stabs her off screen, snaps her neck, and leaves her for dead. It's a brutal, efficient kill punctuated by a great jump scare when Michael first appears.

All Bob wanted to do was sneak out and spend some alone time with girlfriend, Lynda (P.J. Soles). Look, it was tough being a teenager in the late '70s. The only place to have sex was the bedroom of the parents of the kids your girlfriend's best friend happened to be babysitting. That was it. There were no other options.

As such, Bob and Lynda do, in fact, have sex in the upstairs bedroom of the Wallace household. Afterwards, Lynda asks Bob for a beer. Luckily, there were plenty downstairs. Why the couple unpacked in the house like they were living there isn't explained. 

Anyway, Bob traipses downstairs for a brew and thinks he hears someone. He opens the pantry, but it's empty. He then opens the other door behind him, and when he does, Michael appears, stabs Bob in the chest, and pins him to the door several feet off the ground. It's a memorable death, one that Rob Zombie recreated in his remake, and despite its shaky physics, it's a fun, quick, scary kill.

As previously noted, Rob Zombie's "Halloween 2" is a mixed beast. Quasi-supernatural, the prologue is a truncated version of the original, while the final act largely abandons supernatural hooey for sheer, brutal slaughter. Scout Taylor Compton's Laurie Strode has just discovered that she's Michael's sister, and after her friends are unceremoniously slaughtered for being friends with the wrong person at the wrong time, she escapes.

While running, she encounters Sean Whalen's Becks on the road. He offers her a ride, and Michael appears. Michael throws Becks through the windshield and then flips the car, Laurie still inside. It's a goofy exhibition of Michael's strength — he literally lifts a car — but it's a frenetic scene, one in which the chaos augments the horror. Michael is truly unstoppable here. From what's been evinced from the trailer, it appears to be an early template for what David Gordon Green and company look to accomplish in "Halloween Kills."

Kelly and Oscar aren't the greatest, but John Strode (Bradford English) is the absolute worst. One has to wonder what, if anything, necessitates his character being just so awful. He's cruel to his children, batters his wife, and even moves his family (inexplicably) into the Myers house. That's right, the original Myers household. Why? It's never really explained beyond "because John Strode is terrible, that's why."

John returns home one night, unaware that his wife was hacked to death hours earlier. He goes to the basement to fuss with the fuse box, and notices that the washing machine has flooded. Inside are bloody sheets. Oh no. 

Michael appears and throws John into the fuse box. John shakes and foams at the mouth, and within moments, his entire head explodes. John is the rare character in the franchise who not only deserves their death, but deserves one this horrific. "Halloween 6" isn't great, but John's death is one of the gnarliest kills in the entire series. It's ooey-gooey practical magic.

Alice Martin (Anne Bruner) is a bit player in the original "Halloween 2." She's on screen for less than five minutes, yet her death is impactful enough to crack the top 10. Picking up directly where the original left off, Dr. Loomis is racing through Haddonfield to track Michael down after unloading six shots into his chest. Alice is home alone, on the phone with her friend.

What's terrifying is that Alice doesn't even know that anything has happened. It isn't until her friend mentions it that Alice remarks that she can "hear the sirens." She's just a girl home alone, unaware that a serial murderer is stalking her sleepy suburban town.

As Alice wanders into her living room, she hears something. She puts the phone down and calls out. At first, there's nothing. No one is there. Then Michael, in a fantastic scare, pops up behind her. Swiftly, he plunges a knife into her chest as blood splatters on her face. 

"Halloween 2" quickly cuts away and never returns to Alice or her home. Granted, Alice's death probably only exists to pad the movie's body count, though it does establish Michael as more than just a singularly-driven killer. Here, killing at random in a stranger's house, he really is the boogeyman.

Sex equals death. It's a trope that "Halloween," more than any other slasher franchise, cemented. To have sex is to invite the killer into the bedroom to slice and dice. There's no escaping it. Annie (Nancy Kyes) is inexplicably horned up on Halloween night and can't wait to meet up with her boyfriend, Paul (voiced on the phone by none other than director John Carpenter).

After spilling butter on her shirt, Annie walks out back to the curiously isolated laundry room and finds herself trapped. Audiences expect her to die, especially since Michael had already been skulking about the premises. Annie, though, is lucky. It isn't until she's trapped in the garage that she's murdered.

Forgetting her keys, Annie walks back inside, returns, then immediately gets into the car. It takes her a moment to realize that the car was already unlocked and, stranger still, is filled with condensation. Michael then emerges from the backseat and strangles her. It's a terrific scare, and the erotic sounds Annie emits are an exemplar of some classic slasher tropes.

Horror sequels are usually about upping the ante when it comes to kills and gore. However, "Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later," despite its profoundly stupid title, was considerably more restrained than its forebears. Modeled after Carpenter's original movie more than its sequels or its '90s slasher peers, "H20" focused on atmosphere and tension, not graphic kills.

That is, of course, not counting than the death of Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) whose demise is uncharacteristically violent and cruel — not just for the movie, but for the entire franchise. In the kitchen of her boarding school's dining hall, she's cornered by Michael. The only method of escape is a dumbwaiter along the far wall. Unfortunately, her deceased boyfriend's body is inside, but Sarah still manages to crawl in and shut the door as Michael stabs her leg with his knife.

As she ascends to the next floor, Sarah struggles to get out, her foot pinned beneath her boyfriend's body. Downstairs, Michael begins to slice the frayed rope. When he does, the dumbwaiter collapses, crushing Sarah's leg in the process. The next we see, her leg is nearly cut in two, broken and bloodied. If that isn't enough, Michael then stabs Sarah several times and later, off screen, hollows her out and hangs her in the pantry. It's the murder showcase of "H20," and might just be Michael's most thorough kill.

Dr. Sartain's character in David Gordon Green's "Halloween" is tough to explain. Even when his motivations are made plain, it's never clear what his role is. Is he the new Loomis? An antagonist? A plot device? He's something of all three and then, paradoxically, none of them at all. His curious role in the movie, though, doesn't detract from just how awesome his death scene is.

One thing David Gordon Green did exceptionally well was make "Halloween" visually his own. With the use of blues, reds, and greens, certain scenes have an almost giallo-like quality to them, and Dr. Sartain's death is no different. Pulled from the front seat of a cop car by Michael and thrown on the side of the road, the red and blues of the siren lights obfuscate his face. Michael then, without hesitation, stomps Sartain's head into the ground, squishing it like a Halloween gourd. It's a quick, brutal, gooey kill, rendered practically in-camera. David Gordon Green was maybe just a little too keen to keep his kills off-camera, so I'm glad this one made the cut in all its gory glory.

Lynda's death in John Carpenter's "Halloween" is a great kill independent of Ghost Michael. As Lynda places a call to Laurie, unsure of where Annie is, Michael approaches from behind. The audience hears the phone ring across the street and waits with bated breath for Laurie to answer. She's too slow, though. Michael wraps the telephone cord around Lynda's neck and chokes her out. She moans and gasps for breath, noises Laurie first interprets as an obscene phone call. She grows concerned, though, as Michael kills Lynda and lets her body slowly slump to the floor before disconnecting the call.

As a scene, this kill is tense, well-choreographed, and gorgeously composed. But it also has Ghost Michael. Carpenter was never afraid to show Michael getting a little playful, and dressing himself in a sheet as a ghost (and making Lynda think it's Bob) is a great, darkly comic touch. It's a visual that captures the essence of the series as a whole. Ghost Michael rules, forever and always.