The king of your nightmares

The horror movie genre wouldn’t be complete without the slasher film legends of Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers.

Jason as a boy ‘drown’ at camp while the two teenagers who were supposed to be supervising while he was swimming were off somewhere having sex. The films center around either his revenge for the death of his mother (who killed those teenagers in revenge for the death of her son and was beheaded) or just gore for gore’s sake. If you were to dress as Jason for Halloween, all you would need are some casual clothes, a jaceket, a hockey mask, and some kind of weapon to kill with. A machete is generally the best choice.

Freddy was a despicable man who murdered children, but the law was not able to punish him accordingly so the parents of those children (and others) trapped him in a building and burnt him alive. Instead of simply being killed though, he became the stuff of their nightmares; literally. He manages to continue existing in the dream realm, but if he is in your dream and he hurts you; you will wake up with the same damage he inflicted. The look of this man is possibly the most fear-inducing of the three and hardest to replicate without wearing a mask. His skin is peeling and scorched, revealing muscle underneath, he wears black pants, normal black shoes, a red and green striped sweater, a black fedora hat, and his right hand is covered by a glove which razor sharp blades attached to each finger.

Michael Myers killed in his movies simply because he was insane. Insane, and possibly evil from birth. He wears a dark colored jumpsuit and a white mask with light brown hair attached. Bring a knife with you to the party for this one, he gets in stabby moods sometimes.

Of course all of these men/monsters are well known enough that merchandise has bubbled up around their movie empires and there are plenty of places to purchase all of the items I mentioned. This is one of those cases where it would be so much easier and cheaper to buy the costume, that attempting to make it yourself just seems silly.

The beginning of the movie Halloween is set in 1963 where a young boy by the name of Michael Myers (then aged six) takes a knife from the kitchen and murders his seventeen year old sister while their parents are away. The parents return and find their daughter murdered and their son in a trance-like state. Not know what else to do with him, they send him to a sanitarium where a child psychologist by the dame of Sam Loomis works with him for eight years in an attempt to figure the boy out or help him in some way. By the end of the eight years however, Dr. Loomis is completely convinced that there is no helping the boy because he is clearly pure evil. He tries to ensure that Michael stays locked up but when the time comes for him to be tried as an adult, and they make the move to transfer him to another institution he escapes and returns to his home town (after killing a truck driver and stealing the jumpsuit we see him wear in the film).

Michael Myers

The remainder of the film is what pioneered the way for most other slasher films that would follow in the next two decades. Needless to say, a few teenagers were brutally murdered, and that even after being stabbed two times with household objects, and once in the chest with a knife he was still going strong. It wasn’t until the end of the movie when he was shot six times did it seem like he might stop killing. However, after being shot he fell off of the second story balcony of the house, and by the time the main characters looked outside to see the body, he was gone.

The movie was good enough to warrant seven sequels, and inspire many many other fantastic horror films.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow