William Shatner Has Mixed Feelings About Being The Face Of The Michael Myers Mask
The "Halloween" franchise has everything fans want in a slasher: a spine-tingling score, a stalking, homicidal maniac, and some good old-fashioned generational trauma. For almost 50 years, audiences have flocked to theaters to see Michael Myers' latest murderous shenanigans, and will probably do so again when "Halloween Ends" lands on big screens next month, but the successful franchise has humble beginnings.
In the Spring of 1978, John Carpenter's "Halloween" was filmed in 20 days for $325,000, which is next to nothing in the world of film budgets. With such little cash at their disposal, the production had to be really creative with the cheapest supplies they could find. This led production designer Tommy Lee Wallace to buy a cheap Captain Kirk mask on Hollywood Boulevard and transform it into the ghostly white psycho killer. Eventually, William Shatner discovered his bizarre connection to the slasher film and he wasn't exactly sure how to feel about it.
From Kirk to killer
In an interview on Jake's Takes, Shatner was asked if he remembered how he learned his face became the mask of Michael Myers. After a laugh, the actor recalled thinking someone was playing a trick on him, saying, "I don't remember the exact moment, but, I thought, 'Is that a joke? Are they kidding?'"
Although he doesn't remember seeing the movie, he does recall laying eyes on the mask, and realizing the rumor wasn't a joke:
"I recognized [the mask] as the death mask that they had made for me. They made a mask of my face on 'Star Trek' with clay so that I wouldn't have to be available for the prosthetics[...]. So that mask existed in 'Star Trek,' so somewhere along the line somebody got that mask and made a mask of it for 'Halloween'[...]. That's the story I know. How true it is, I don't know."
As it turns out, Shatner's account isn't exactly how it all went down back in '78. In a 2014 interview with Sean Clark, Wallace revealed that the original, unaltered mask wasn't a death mask, but a normal Captain Kirk mask — like this one — that a kid might wear on Halloween. Looking closely at the mask with a bit of imagination, one can clearly see the face of the infamous babysitter killer.
In the same interview, Wallace recreated the process he used to turn a Captain Kirk mask into the face of Michael Myers. All he did was spray paint the hair dark, remove the sideburns and eyebrows, cut the eye holes into a wider, almond shape, and spray paint the face white with a matte finish.
Who knew that a notorious killer could be so easily carved from the heroic "Star Trek" captain?
Shatner as Michael Myers
Most people would have conflicted feelings about their face being used as the foundation for such a ghastly character, and Shatner isn't any different. After getting over the initial shock, Shatner took the creepy altering of his face pretty well and even learned to embrace his connection to the iconic killer. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Shatner revealed he's even worn a Michael Myers mask from time to time to pull off a little mischief of his own:
"When my kids were younger, and they'd go trick-or-treating, and I would go with them, I'd wear the mask. If [people] didn't give them candy, I'd take off the mask, and blow a kiss."
Undoubtedly, that's one of the most wholesome things a grown man has ever done while wearing a Michael Myers mask.
Despite his starring role in the iconic "Star Trek" series and his decades-long career in Hollywood, Shatner has never taken himself too seriously. Over the years, Shatner has had a sense of humor about himself and his long-running career in show business, often adapting an exaggerated persona for "Saturday Night Live" performances, commercials, and talk show appearances. So it isn't a huge surprise that he laughs off his face's connection to a creepy killer, or that he has donned the mask from time to time out in the real world.
I guess the moral of this story is to never judge an actor by the horror villain's mask they inspired.