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.

Clowns

When you think of fearsome movie monsters I bet this one doesn’t pop into your mind, but it is nevertheless something that many people fear. They dress in bright colors, paint their faces, and are meant to inspire joy in children… but more often than not they inspire such deep fear that these children continue to be afraid well into adulthood. I’m talking about clowns, and the movies like IT that gave us terrible complexes about them.

The easiest way to do a clown costume for Halloween is to buy it, to be honest. There are many different ‘clown outfits’ available, and the difference between making yourself into a regular clown and making yourself into an evil scary clown is the face paint. Perfectly painted circles, teardrops, stars and triangles on your face would be sufficient to be a clown, and scary on a very casual basis. But a more smeared or jagged way of face painting (maybe something similar to the joker in The Dark Knight …without actually ripping it off of course) would make for a scarier clown. The more it looks like someone mentally unsound put that make-up on, the more unnerving it will be for everyone you encounter; especially if you make a point to smile big and develop some kind of deranged laugh.

If you really didn’t want to fuss with paint or a wig though, there are plenty of masks available that will scare the living **** out of your friends (or the neighborhood children). Not everyone has Jim Carey’s ability to make wild facial expressions at the drop of a hat, and the makeup can only do so much to accentuate parts of your face. But with a mask you don’t have to worry about how you look underneath. It takes care of all the features for you.