It’s now a part of cinematic history that Halloween movie icon Michael Myers and Star Trek icon William Shatner (sort of) have the same face. The Michael Myers mask was made from a Shatner mask and has grown to be both iconic and lucrative merch following those humble beginnings. The question is: does William Shatner make any money off a mask designed using a mask made in his likeness?
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“No, no, no,” Shatner confirmed to ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian. “That mask was made on my face to allow the makeup people at Star Trek to use it to apply appliances, beards, and mustaches and pieces of plastic that altered my appearance. They used that instead of using me, who didn’t have the time to do that.
So at one point they didn’t, the [Star Trek] series was canceled and I don’t know what happened to the mask. Somebody found it and then it ended up in a Halloween thing [costume shop], and then my understanding of the story is the director of Halloween said, ‘Go get a mask,’ and somebody grabbed that mask. It’s all inadvertent, as far as I know.”
So there you have it: the ‘William Shatner mask’ was just a piece of Star Trek prop memorabilia, which wouldn’t entitle Shatner to any merchandising rights, sadly. Just another Hollyweird coincidence that ended up becoming major pop-culture history.
How Halloween’s Michael Myers Mask Got Made
As William Shatner (loosely) recounted:
When original Halloween (1978) director John Carpenter was putting together the film on an indie budget (over $300K), he had to use something to create the mask of his killer (“The Shape” as the credits labeled). Carpenter and Co. wanted to give The Shape a soulless, inhuman persona, which has since defined Michael Myers as a character.
Halloween (1978) production designer/art director/location scout, and co-editor, Tommy Lee Wallace, purchased the Captain Kirk makeup mask from a Hollywood Boulevard costume shop and altered it, widening the face and moth holes and painting it white. He once stated that the “idea was to make him almost humorless, faceless—this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not.”
It’d be interesting to know how many people were subtly affected by the connection between Shatner and Michael Myers – surely there had to be a few people who watched Star Trek OS reruns in the 1980s and came away with an uncanny sense of dread. Or, you know, the people who watch Halloween movies and come away with unexplained fascinations with space and astronomy. Either way.
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Image Courtesy of Compass International
