William Shatner Reacts To This Wild Connection Between Star Trek and Halloween Kills
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In Mirror, Mirror — a classic 1967 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series — William Shatner’s Captain Kirk learns there is a parallel universe where brutal and sadistic versions of himself and his crew exist. Kirk never gets to meet his opposite from the other universe, but you have to wonder if he had met the other Kirk, if his reaction would’ve been like Shatner’s response to the revelation that his face had been used to create the slasher movie icon Michael Myers from the Halloween films, including the recently released Halloween Kills. Shatner recently recalled his first reaction to the bizarre reveal in an interview.
William Shatner was interviewed by Jake Hamilton at the end of September on Jake’s Takes. Toward the end of the discussion, Hamilton asks Shatner if he remembers how he reacted the first time he learned that a mask of his face had been used to create Michael Myers. Shatner, who seemed entertained by the question, said that he first thought it was some kind of joke. He then recognized it as being made from what he called, fittingly, his Star Trek “death mask.” He elaborated that the mask was made so that, should prosthetics be needed to make him “look old or evil or whatever,” the mask could be used as reference so he wouldn’t need to be there physically. Someone, Shatner said, must have then used the death mask to make a Halloween mask. You can watch the video below.
On an episode of Netflix’s The Movies That Made Us (via The Hollywood Reporter), Tommy Lee Wallace — a production designer and editor on the original Halloween from 1978 — said he bought the William Shatner mask at a shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Just in case, he also bought a clown mask based on Emmet Kelly, the legendary circus performer and clown. The crew agreed, however, the Kirk mask was definitely the creepiest of the two.
Wallace’s changes to the William Shatner mask weren’t as extensive as you might think. The mask’s hair color was darkened, the eyebrows and sideburns were removed, the eyeholes were widened, and the skin was spray-painted with appliance white. Wallace appeared in a 2014 video in which he recreates the mask using the same methods employed for 1978’s Halloween. He says the main difference between how he originally created the mask and how he does it in the 2014 video is that, strapped for time and wearing multiple hats during production, he took only about a half hour to make the changes originally. You can watch the process below.
While he’s no longer wearing the same William Shatner mask, Michael Myers is still killin’ it, literally. The latest film in the series, Halloween Kills, opened this past weekend. In spite of a disappointing 39% score on Rotten Tomatoes, Michael Myers decimated both Daniel Craig’s last outing as James Bond in No Time to Die, and Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. It grossed $50.4 million in its opening weekend, in spite of a dual release on the streaming service Peacock.
