The Halloween franchise has a pretty inconsistent timeline, but one thing it does deliver rather consistently is what every good slasher IP should: kills. Of course, it’s a lot more than bloodletting, as some of the entries do an amazing job of building tension. But when it comes to a slasher franchise, the fanbase is buying a ticket for primarily one thing, and the tension and Laurie Strode-Michael Myers dynamic are just icing on the cake. What follows are the most memorable character dispatching of the entire franchise, and not all of them were at the hands of Michael, either. Though, as one might imagine, most of them very much were.
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Every movie in the franchise was up for consideration here. That means Halloween III: Season of the Witch, too. If you’re expecting to see a lot of Rob Zombie’s Michael doing his thing, however, prepare to be disappointed. Just because those movies are brutal doesn’t mean the kills are particularly clever. In fact, they’re so relentlessly brutal that the kills have a way of being forgotten as soon as the next one is on the screen.
10) Ice Skating Can Be Dangerous Even Without the Ice in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
Joseph Gordon-Levitt was early in his career when he played Tommy Solomon in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, and he gets what is easily the most memorable death scene of the film. That said, Sarah Wainthrope gets a protracted death sequence ending in Michael using her as a Halloween decoration that is also quite jarring.
Most off-screen kills rank towards the lower end of a film’s list of character forced departures, but this one works because an ice skate is a surprisingly rare weapon in horror films. However, Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro put them to good use in Ballerina.
Stream Halloween H20: 20 Years Later on HBO Max.
9) Very Hot Tub in Halloween II
A fantastic and underappreciated sequel, Halloween II makes great use of its iconic hospital setting. You really feel the claustrophobic aura of the dark, near-empty locale. It also has a handful of really memorable kills, including two usages of a syringe. But it’s Nurse Karen Bailey who gets the best death. After strangling her love, the jerky Vincent Scarlotti, Michael pushes her face down into a 200-degree hot tub (which some hospitals have for labor and delivery), pulling her back up a few times so we can see the increasing level of damage.
This scene also does a lot to further hint at how Michael doesn’t feel anything. His hand is down in that boiling water too, yet there’s not an ounce of flinch or, one must assume considering he’s wearing a mask, wince.
Stream Halloween II on Peacock.
8) Impaled With a Shotgun in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Kelly Meeker, aka the sheriff of Haddonfield’s daughter, has her eyes set on Rachel Carruthers’ boyfriend, Brady. And, in a win for her, she gets him. But their good time is interrupted by Sheriff Meeker, Rachel, a deputy, and Jamie Lloyd. And then, a little later, Michael. After the Shape kills the deputy, whose body Kelly discovers, he makes the odd choice of taking the deputy’s shotgun and ramming it all the way through Kelly, impaling her against the wall.
This is the best kill of the movie because it’s just so bizarre. It’s not even fully logical. One supposes Michael is strong enough to use a blunt object as a sharp one, but it’s just a pretty wild concept to have written into the script. Honorable mention goes to the film’s gut-punch of an ending, considering it’s a child holding the bladed weapon (in this case, a pair of scissors).
Stream Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers on Shudder.
7) A Jerk & a Fusebox in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Like the next character on our list, John Strode is about as unlikable as a Halloween character can get. But outside anyone in the Rob Zombie movies, Strode (brother of Laurie’s father, Morgan), takes the awful human cake.
So, naturally, he was going to get the most bombastic death of the film. That is, if you watch the theatrical cut. In that version John, who calls a kid a “Bastard” right in front of said kid, is held against a fuse box until his head explodes because of electrocution. It doesn’t make a lick of sense but it’s a fitting finale for John Strode.
Stream Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers on HBO Max.
6) Don’t Touch the Car in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
It’s rare that the Halloween franchise has taken a particular trait of a character and incorporated that in how they’re sent to the great beyond. But that’s exactly what Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers does with Mike.
Make no mistake, Revenge has got to be the most forgettable entry in the franchise. It was running on fumes at this point in time. But Mike is such a jerk, and it’s so fun to see his precious automobile get scraped, that this scene really stands out. Then, to cap it off, the same garden fork used to scratch up his car is used to scratch up his forehead.
Stream Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers on AMC+.
5) Firefighters vs. Michael in Halloween Kills
Halloween Kills is really an example of giving the target audience too much of what it wants. It’s a step away from the Rob Zombie movies, except it’s not quite as tonally unpleasant.
But it is similarly brutal, and if ever there was a scene where the audience felt Michael’s power it was in the opening of Kills. A firefighting crew get to Laurie’s house to do their job only to find something far more dangerous than a fire waiting for them. Between the Halligan bar to the eye and the circular saw it’s best to just lump these 11 kills (five of them off-screen) together.
4) Flesh-o’-Lantern in Halloween (2018)
The human Jack-o’-lantern in David Gordon Green’s Halloween is so gruesome we’re not even going to show it in this entry’s image. It’s nasty stuff.
Basically, Michael decapitates Officer Francis offscreen then pulled enough out of his head to fit in a flashlight. It’s not like he skinned the corpse (though the eyes are missing) and hung the flesh on a flashlight…he went a step further for morbid realism. As far as the most graphic single kill in the franchise goes, this is the winner.
Stream Halloween (2018) on Hulu.
3) A “Misfire” in Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch may not have Michael in it, save for a TV ad for a screening of the original Halloween, but it does not short the audience on fairly ingenious kills. In fact, as far as the franchise goes in that regard, it ranks mighty high.
Conal Cochran (who gets frozen and disintegrated by Stonehenge) has robo-henchmen who do a lot of damage to anyone unfortunate enough to learn about Silver Shamrock’s plans. They push a man’s eyes into his skull and snap his nose and rip another guy’s head off. They’re brutal. But the top dispatching goes to Marge Guttman, a saleswoman of the Silver Shamrock masks who fiddles with the badge that comes on said masks only to have a laser shoot out into her mouth, resulting in a great practical effects corpse that then has bugs climb out of it (which we would then see in even greater detail when poor little Buddy Kupfer Jr. watches the company’s commercial with his mask on).
Stream Halloween III: Season of the Witch on Peacock.
2) Big Sister in Halloween
There are four flat-out iconic kills in the original Halloween (of the five total, the lowest kill count of the franchise), so it was hard to pick here. Just missing the cut were Bob’s closet surprise and subsequent wall pinning and Annie’s suddenly unlocked car.
Michael’s first kill, his own big sister, beat them out because it’s just so horrifically poignant and shocking. He’s a little kid taking a life…it really couldn’t be more jarring. Furthermore, the scene is bolstered by the POV technique that then became a staple of the slasher subgenre. What a way to start a movie.
Stream Halloween on Shudder.
1) Ghost with a Phone Cord in Halloween
Lynda van der Klok totally just wanted to sleep with her boyfriend and have a beer. Unfortunately for her, only that first wish comes true. Once her boyfriend, the aforementioned Bob, gets pinned to a cabinet, Michael throws on a bed sheet and pretends to be a ghost, standing silently and hauntingly in a bedroom doorway until Lynda gets irritated and calls over to Laurie. Then, he sneaks behind her and uses the cord of the very phone Lynda is using to end her life.
It may have inspired any number of knock-off holiday slasher, but Halloween will forever own the notion of having its antagonist wear a bed sheet for their next kill. None of its successors ever even tried. But what makes this the number one kill is just how well-paced and nerve-wracking it is. It’s just creepy as can be.
