How Michael Myers' Kill-Admiring Head Tilt In Halloween Came To Be

Michael Myers of the "Halloween" franchise is the go-to example for a faceless slasher villain. In director John Carpenter's original 1978 picture, actor Nick Castle is credited not as playing "Michael Myers" but as "The Shape" — Michael is an extension of the shadows, stretching out to kill on pure instinct before receding back into the darkness where he belongs. 

In that original "Halloween," five people are murdered by the Shape:

1. Michael's older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) in the movie's opening flashback.

2. The offscreen Christopher Hastings, who Michael kills to steal clothes after he escapes the sanitarium.

3. Teenager babysitter Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes), who has her throat garrotted and cut. 

4. Bob Simms (John Michael Graham), who is dressed as a ghost for the holiday.

5. Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles), Bob's girlfriend who Michael ambushes by wearing his ghost costume.

Michael is a dispassionate killer; he slices Annie's neck with a quick strike, not savoring the kill the way Freddy Krueger might. His pursuit of Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is relentless, but more like a tiger stalking a deer. When he's unmasked after killing Judith, his face is empty of guilt or malevolence. 

The most human moment Michael has with one of his kills is his murder of Bob. He lifts Bob, pins him to a kitchen wall, and stabs him; the knife goes all the way through and Bob's corpse is left hanging. After Michael lets go of the knife, he keeps staring at Bob's still body and tilts his head from side-to-side. Like any signs of Michael's humanity, this moment is a cipher where you can read what you want. Is he savoring the kill? Looking at Bob with curiosity like a child might be at a wounded bug? Either way, Michael never spills what's in his head.

Michael's murder of Bob, and his head tilt, is the scene where he's both the most human and inhuman; inhuman because of his greater-than-average strength (he lifts Bob with just one hand), human because for once, he isn't reacting to his actions like a robot programmed only for stabbing.

In 2018, ahead of David Gordon Green's "Halloween" sequel (where Castle returned as the Shape), the actor discussed the head tilt moment with Entertainment Weekly. Castle said it was all John Carpenter's idea and he only learned about it while they were shooting:

"John had me stand and look at the character, and I was behind the mask, and while the camera's rolling he said, 'Okay, tilt your head to the right, now tilt your head to the left.' I had no idea what he was trying to get at until I saw the movie and I said, 'Oh, how cool, it looks like I'm admiring my kill.' That was John's kind of inherent talent, coming up with that idea."

On a "Halloween" commentary track recorded with Curtis, Carpenter describes Michael's head tilt as resembling how one might "look at a butterfly that's stuck," while Curtis compared it to how a hungry dog moves its head.

Rob Zombie's 2007 "Halloween" remake (which we've argued is underrated before) changes the site of Bob's (Nick Mennell) death to a stairwell, but the shot sequencing is near-identical and Michael (Tyler Mane) still tilts his head at the corpse. In a small but consequential difference, though, the low angle framing makes it harder to notice the head tilt than in the original.

No one makes a movie quite like John Carpenter does.