The 1980s is still viewed by many as the Golden Age of the slasher movie where the genre reached the peak of its commercial and cultural popularity, with iconic figures like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger terrorizing both audiences in the theater and hapless teenagers on the big screen with increasing regularity.
Despite their status as legends of the medium, however, the men behind these characters often found themselves being replaced with the notable exception of Robert Englund, who has played Freddy in every live-action appearance apart from the dismal 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, where Jackie Earle Haley donned the fetching sweater and fedora combination.
Nine actors have thrown on the boiler suit to play Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise, but only three of them have done it on more than one occasion, with Tyler Mane the only one to have played The Shape in consecutive movies. Original star Nick Castle, meanwhile, returned for the first time in 40 years in the 2018 reboot, and the 72 year-old will reprise the role again in sequels Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. But in a recent interview, he revealed he has one major regret about John Carpenter’s classic original.
“I wish I would have let the stunt guy do the first scene where it’s in the rain and I’m jumping up on the car, so I didn’t have to freeze to death. That was horrible. The worst part on the show, for me, because it was like 40-something degrees that night and it was late and they put on the hoses and there’s no warm water coming out of the hose. Those big-ass hoses. And when those drops came down on me, through the gown, it was like knives. And then, of course, John had to go, ‘Take two’.”
In the grand scheme of things, the risk of catching a chill isn’t all that bad when it resulted in a long and successful association with one of horror’s most enduring characters, but having learned his lesson 40 years ago, Castle likely won’t be putting himself through the wringer again for director David Gordon Green’s highly-anticipated follow-ups, not when there’s plenty of stuntmen out there that would be more than happy to be shot, stabbed, frozen, blown up or set on fire in a Halloween movie.
