Raise the horror quotient, HalloweenThe central threat is referred to as “The Shape” in the closing credits. And the shape of most of the original film belonged to Carpenter’s friend. Nick’s Castle.
“Maybe he got paid a few hundred dollars or whatever,” Curtis told Rotten Tomatoes of Castle. “I mean, no one got paid anything. I think I got paid $8,000 for the whole movie, which at the time, for the lead in the movie, was $2,000 a week.”
Carpenter explained: “I liked the way he moved. He came from a family of dancers, so he had a grace, a strange grace about him. Plus, he was free. He was cheap. So he put the costume on and I said, ‘Now go from here to here.’ And that was it.”
Tommy Lee Wallacewho edited the film with Charles Bornsteinalso spent time with the mask to help make ends meet, and Antoine Moran » Michael played for the brief moment you see his face. But Castle instinctively invented that terrifying head tilt.
“The direction on the first one sucked,” Castle recalled to Movie Web in 2018. “It was really just, ‘Cross the street and walk towards me.'”
Ultimately, he said, “If there’s one lesson to be learned from all of this, it’s that sometimes things happen for no reason, and you have the right things at the right time.”
A number of increasingly beefy stuntmen then donned the mask, starting with Dick Warlock like “The Form” in Halloween II. He was replaced by George P. Wilbur (twice), Don Shanks, Chris Durand And Brad Loree. Wrestler Tyler Mane took over in the Rob Zombie-directed restarts, and James Jude Courtneyteamed with Castle, did the honors in the last three films starring Curtis.
