As a designer, I’m always interested in the design of an object, not just its function. So I love looking at the details of everyday objects and trying to figure out how things work and why they were made that way.

I started thinking about this a few years ago when my wife was pregnant with our first child. We were watching some old Halloween movies, and I started wondering: what makes a great Michael Myers mask? If you’ve seen these movies, you know that they are all about the mask. Most of them start with a shot of the mask, which has its own ominous music.

Michael Myers is scary because he’s just a blank white face with these dead eyes. There’s nothing there. You can’t reason with him; you can’t appeal to his emotions. You can’t do anything to stop him from killing you except try to distract him or get away. He’s like an emotionless machine seeking to destroy life.

So I became fascinated with this mask and started buying them on eBay and Amazon, collecting as many different versions as I could find (I now have almost 20). And as I looked at all these different masks up close, I noticed that each one seemed to have its own character–some were more menacing than others,

In 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween introduced the world to Michael Myers, the blank-faced killer who would go on to become one of horror’s most enduring icons. There’s something primal about the character’s menace, in no small part because of how he looks. His white expressionless mask is a perfect image of evil, and so effective that it has been replicated countless times in the decades since.

However, what makes a great Michael Myers mask? As we get closer to Halloween 2018, we spoke with several companies about what goes into making a convincing replica of the character’s iconic visage.

In Carpenter’s film, Myers wore a Captain Kirk mask that had been repainted white. So what was it about the William Shatner replica that made it so perfect for Michael Myers?

According to Chris Zephro of Trick or Treat Studios—a company known for its Halloween replicas—it’s all about the glasses. “The glasses on Captain Kirk were just perfect. They had this sort of roundness to them and were just very well proportioned for the face,” Zephro says. “When you paint them white there’s just something about them that looks ominous.”

For a horror franchise built around its iconic villain, the Michael Myers mask is an essential part of the Halloween series. Yet it is also something of an enigma.

If we were to look at the most famous masks in horror history, we would be hard-pressed to find another that has been the subject of so much scrutiny and discussion as the Michael Myers mask. The Jason Voorhees hockey mask is perhaps close in this regard. Both masks have been a part of their respective franchises since their first installments, and both masks have evolved over time as the films have progressed (or regressed). And both masks are also responsible for signifying the ultimate evil that is being brought upon a small town in one form or another.

But whereas Jason’s mask has gone through many permutations and alterations since its debut, the Michael Myers mask has remained relatively static, yet has still managed to become arguably just as iconic as Jason’s hockey mask over time. Sure, there have been some subtle changes here and there – often times due to practical needs such as the availability of certain materials or actors’ facial hair growing out between shooting schedules – but they are more or less one and the same with some minor tweaks along the way.

So how has this particular mask managed to become

Michael Myers, the slow-moving but implacable boogeyman of the Halloween films, is a long way from being a sympathetic character. But he has his fans. And to those fans, the mask that Michael wears is more than just a prop—it’s an icon. A work of art.

Two men are at least partially responsible for that iconic status: Nick Castle and Don Post, who created the first two Michael Myers masks worn in John Carpenter’s original 1978 horror classic. The story behind the mask is one of simple ingenuity, trial and error and a whole lot of luck.

The key to getting the right look for Michael was finding a mask that had no personality of its own. “John and I talked about how we didn’t want any emotion on Michael Myers’ face,” says Carpenter. “And so we were looking for something to take away emotion.”

Castle and Carpenter eventually found what they were looking for in a catalogue of masks sold by Don Post Studios and made from latex molds supplied by Universal Studios. “It had been used in several movies before,” says Castle. “It was just this generic Captain Kirk mask with pointed ears.”

In the horror film world, there is no more iconic character than Michael Myers, the relentless stalker of the Halloween movies. The series’ creator, John Carpenter, drew from several sources for inspiration, including an old Captain Kirk mask he found in a Beverly Hills store window and Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. But it was Don Post Studios that mastered the creation of a mass-produced mask that successfully combined elements of both.

In 1978, Don Post Studios released its first iteration of the Michael Myers mask. It was at least a decade before any other company came out with its own version of the mask. And even then, most people agreed that the Don Post Studios original was still the best.

Carpenter’s horror classic Halloween has remained popular for decades because it strikes a nerve in all of us: The idea that evil can be completely random and completely unstoppable is terrifying. There’s no reasoning with evil incarnate, and that’s what makes Michael Myers so frightening to watch on screen — he could be anywhere at anytime. This is also why so many people love dressing up as him for Halloween!

In the Halloween films, there’s a reason Michael Myers has become known as The Shape. In fact, there are two reasons: 1) He wears a white mask, which is a very basic shape, and 2) he moves with a strange, loping gait that is certainly not human.

But why does he wear that mask? It’s not like he bought it from Party City. And it’s not like he needed to cover up his face because he was an actor and had to remain anonymous. Michael Myers wears that mask because Michael Myers doesn’t have a face.

In the 1978 original film, John Carpenter’s camera lingers on Myers’ blank expression for long periods of time; we see him staring, and staring, and staring. There are no eyes behind the eyeholes of his mask. There is no mouth. There is only a void where his features should be, and looking at him too long feels as though you might fall into that void and never return…