Every Michael Myers Halloween mask tells a story

polygon.com:

For over 40 years, the Halloween franchise has been associated with one character and one mask: Michael Myers and his blank, white visage. (He even appears in the stand-alone Halloween III: Season of the Witch courtesy of a “Heh heh. Get it?” commercial playing on a TV.) Famously the result of taking a William Shatner Star Trek mask and retooling it to provide even more mindless evil, that mask is right there with Jason Voorhees’ notorious hockey mask when it comes to embodying the slasher genre as a whole.

However, not all of the masks are built equally. As the Halloween series progressed, various redesigns would cause a Rise and Fall and Rise of sorts, and if you’re the kind of person who deeply cares (the right kind of person) you’ll notice each one gives Michael a distinctly different vibe.

The romantic ideal of the Michael Myers mask, the original works so well mainly because the director of the film, John Carpenter, is so adept at knowing where shadows are supposed to be. The cheekbones provide a little underline in dark close-ups so it doesn’t look like Myers is wearing a mayonnaise container on his head, and very rarely do you see Michael’s actual eyes, lending him that inhuman quality of “The Shape.” Combine that with the slight tussle in his hair and you have a grade-A maniac mask, one that totally alienates the audience from any sort of human connection or empathy.

The mask in Halloween II isn’t too dissimilar from the first, but there’s one key difference: The hair has been given a brownish touch, and depending on the light, it can look redder or even blonder. It’s also much more slicked-back here, making Michael look like he’s already wearing a toupee to relive his glory days from three years earlier. It’s