William Shatner as Captain Kirk in 1966: the face the mask began as. Desilu Productions publicity photo, public domain (published without a copyright notice), via Wikimedia Commons. No free image of the Halloween mask itself exists.
The Michael Myers mask
What it took directly
- statedThe Michael Myers mask took from a blank-faced Captain Kirk mask that production designer Tommy Lee Wallace found in a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, next to Mr. Spock"Up on the shelves were these full face masks of Richard Nixon, and down at the end was Mr. Spock. And right next to it was this blank face Capt. Kirk" Tommy Lee Wallace, in Netflix's The Movies That Made Us, quoted by The Hollywood Reporter (2021)
- statedThe Captain Kirk mask Wallace bought took from William Shatner's own face: a clay mask of it made on Star Trek"I recognized it as the death mask they had made for me" William Shatner, to the YouTube channel Jake's Takes, quoted by The Hollywood Reporter (2021)
- documentedThe Captain Kirk mask Wallace bought took from a mould of Shatner's face that Don Post Studios turned into Kirk masks for Star Trek fans"Don Post Studios used the mold to produce Captain Kirk masks for fans of the series." Screen Rant (David Stephens, 2018), which traces the cast to the 1975 film The Devil's Rain; Shatner himself remembers it as made on Star Trek
- documentedThe Michael Myers mask comes from a screenplay that first put the adult Michael in a clown mask, which the production could not afford"In the original Halloween screenplay, adult Michael Myers wore a clown mask, but John Carpenter and company couldn’t afford to buy the rights to an existing character." Dread Central (Josh Millican, 2020)
- documentedThe surviving original mask comes from actor Dick Warlock, who wore it on screen and kept it for years before selling it to Mark Roberts, who runs haunted attractions"It really is amazing that Dick thought to keep that stuff and take care of it, when I went to pick it up, he had kept the mask stored in a Elvis Presley tin container." Mark Roberts, the mask's owner, quoted by MovieWeb (2017)
- documentedWallace's choice of mask answered Emmett Kelly's sad-clown mask, the other one he seriously considered"He then found masks of Emmett Kelly and William Shatner, and seriously considered using the Kelly mask as the sad-clown aesthetic worked really well with the eerie vibe they were going for." Fox News (Lori A. Bashian, 2023), summarising Wallace's interview with The Movie Waffler
What it learned to do
- statedThe Michael Myers mask learned from Tommy Lee Wallace's hands: white paint, the sideburns pulled off, the eyeholes opened up, the hair mussed and darkened"I had, meanwhile, modified the Kirk mask a little - painted it dead white, yanked off the sideburns, opened up the eyeholes more, mussed the hair and darkened it" Tommy Lee Wallace, to The Movie Waffler, quoted by Fox News (2023)
- documentedThe Michael Myers mask learned from the masks Wallace turned down: Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, whose features were too strong"He said he was tasked with finding a mask with a blank face, saying he mostly found masks of "prominent people like Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford," but those wouldn't work because their features were too strong." Fox News (Lori A. Bashian, 2023), summarising Wallace's interview with The Movie Waffler
The tradition it sits in
- inferredThe Michael Myers mask comes from the shop-shelf trade in rubber masks of famous faces, presidents and TV stars alike"With the commercial appeal of Star Trek very apparent at the time, Don Post Studios used the mold to produce Captain Kirk masks for fans of the series." inferred — Wallace describes shelves of Nixon, Spock and Kirk masks, and Screen Rant says Don Post made the Kirk mask for Star Trek fans; neither describes that trade as a whole
Where the whole form comes from
- inferredThe mask's blankness comes from a working life cast: a copy of Shatner's face made so prosthetics could be built without him"They made a mask of my face on Star Trek out of clay so I would not have to be available for the prosthetics they would have to put on my face to look old or evil or whatever it was they were making me look like." inferred — Shatner explains what the clay mask of his face was for; that its purpose as a workshop copy is why it reads as no one in particular is our reading, not his
Start here