Over the weekend I attended the For The Love Of Horror convention in Manchester, England. I got to meet Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney, Doug Tait, Tom Morga and Don Shanks. They did Q&As, autographs and I even got a “Five Michaels” photoshoot with them - in my Michael costume, of course!
During the Doug Tait & Tom Morga Q&A, I asked Tom about the blonde mask that is seen in the schoolhouse - if it was him under the mask and if he has any recollection of why it was used. I believed Morga to be the one playing Michael in that scene, as I had assumed that the blonde mask was used very early in production (a theory I had many years ago when I wrote ‘The Masks & Mysteries of Halloween 4’ articles on this very site!)
Tom said ‘Short answer, no!’ in regards to him wearing the mask. Tom confirmed that he played Michael throughout the garage sequence (but did not say anything about Michael in the asylum or the ambulance), as well as during the Kelly Meeker kill. He stated definitively that all Michael shots in the schoolhouse - including those with the blonde hair and tan mask - were George P. Wilbur.
I had originally speculated that the ‘hero’ mask went through a number of changes, roughly in this order -
• Blonde ‘schoolhouse’ mask
• Kelly Meeker kill scene
• Vincent Drug Store (hung up)
• Brady kill scene (smaller eye holes)
• Larger eye holes for the rest of the movie
Nope. Tom confirmed that he is the one who gets up from the chair and kills Kelly Meeker with the shotgun. The mask does have a different look to anything George shot during this scene.
Many, including myself in my article years back and this site (https://www.horrorcostumeindex.com/halloween-iv-the-return-of-michael-myers.html) believed the schoolhouse mask and the Kelly Meeker mask to be one and the same. George being the one in the blonde mask means that Kelly’s death was shot earlier, as Tom was replaced by George. Therefore, they cannot be the same mask.
Now that’s interesting. Morga definitively stated that George wore the blonde mask, not him.
The fire extinguisher shot however is clearly the same blonde and tan mask.
Two steps forward, one step back…
So, according to Tom himself, he played Michael in:
• The garage kills/confrontation with Loomis/escape from Loomis
• Vincent Drug Store
• Kelly Meeker kill
• Schoolhouse fire extinguisher stunt
And yet George was the one who wore the blonde mask?
That doesn’t add up. If they had converted the blonde & tan mask into the ‘hero’, then why would George shoot a scene with another blonde and tan mask after Tom was gone?
It’s likely that Morga is just mistaken. I’m more inclined to believe information from before seeing as he’s in his 80s now and I’m sure doesn’t recall the exact details from the film he shot 36 years ago. The only way to prove any of it would be a call sheet with shooting times/orders etc, and god only knows where those are.
The school mask definitely isn’t the hero though. It has the hallmark Kirk features (as does the Kelly meeker kill mask) that are all washed out on the hero.
The video has gone up where Tom Morga confirms that a) it was George P. Wilbur in the blonde Myers mask and b) that he did the Kelly Meeker kill (4:24 timestamp!)
When they recast the existing mask and made theirs they likely copied how the one looked. Then they needed them to look right, so they changed one they changed all.
The h4 isnt a kirk its a clay pressing with differnt ears and brows… Pretty much a 84 dps with kirk eyes and as far as the Tan thats really not paint its the tint of the latex… BUT The mysteries will always continue
The latex is more pink than it is tan. I don’t think anyone has said the H4 mask is a Kirk when talking about the majority of them, at least not in this thread. We are specifically talking about the school in Kelly Meeker kill mask, which are both traditional Kirk’s and not of the H4 mold.
So are you saying that the school scene is a kirk and the Meeker scene is a kirk? Just trying to understand… I dont think the school scene is a 75, but the lighting in the meeker scene was wosers had an h2 kirk vibe… At the end of the day none of us was there so we speculat… It would be really cool to have the right answer tho… Maybe one day we will get all the facts.
That is correct. Both of these masks can be seen having features that match an OG Kirk which are not present on the H4 hero mold.
You’re not wrong that all we can do is speculate, but that speculation can be proven as fact with what we can actually see recorded at that time vs stories the stuntmen are telling so many years later.
Now if the school scene and KM kill scene masks are the same, but converted- there isn’t a way to tell. It’s just always been said because it’s the most likely scenario.
