Roles That Halloween Actors Probably Want Us To Forget About

From "Friday the 13th" to "Scream," the horror genre is packed with iconic franchises, but "Halloween" predates them all. The 1978 masterpiece "Halloween" not only introduced mainstream audiences to the slasher flick, but one of cinema's greatest villains, the masked madman Michael Myers. A psychotic killer, Myers wreaks havoc on the small town of Haddonfield, on a quest to kill teenage babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), while being pursued by his former psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence). 

Over the course of 44 years and 13 films, the story of Michael Myers has grown, expanded, twisted around on itself, been erased, rewritten, and rebooted. Each new movie added new characters to the saga, while star Jamie Lee Curtis has left and returned to the series multiple times. A reboot from rocker-filmmaker Rob Zombie started fresh in 2007 with an entirely new cast, before Curtis returned for a relaunched trilogy in 2018.

With such a sprawling cast across four decades of films, there's plenty of actors involved who went on to become stars. As the "Halloween" movies propelled their careers, some might look back with regret on a rotten role or terrible film they probably wish had never existed. So put out that bowl of candy — and lock your doors — because we've found some treats: a list of movies that Halloween actors probably want us to forget about.

Actress P.J. Soles was already a Hollywood horror great before the first "Halloween," having starred as the vile Norma Watson in Brian De Palma's "Carrie" two years earlier. But in the original John Carpenter classic, Soles played Lynda, one of Michael Myers' many victims. She's strangled by a telephone cord while talking to Laurie Strode, who sits unaware on the other end. Through the 1980s, Soles appeared in many more horror movies, most of the B-movie variety, but none are quite so weird or regrettable as the 1995 family film "Little Bigfoot."

Ostensibly a fun family adventure, "Little Bigfoot" sees young Payton, his sister, and parents — including mom P.J. Soles — taking a quiet getaway in the mountains. But little do they realize that in the area is Bigfoot and his child, the eponymous Little Bigfoot. Into the film comes the cliched villainous logging company magnate Mr. Largo, who wants to deforest Little Bigfoot's home in a plot that injures Big Bigfoot, leaving his offspring to get help from Payton and his sister.

A cheesy, cringeworthy family film that often makes little sense, it's awkward, uncomfortable, and sloppily made. While TV Guide called it a shameless copy of Spielberg's "E.T.," we think Soles might indeed feel a little bit of shame over this one. Incredibly, it somehow managed to get a sequel, but Soles was smart enough not to return.

Unless you were paying attention to the string of '90s "Halloween" sequels, you might not even have known that Paul Rudd starred in one of them. Playing an adult version of Tommy Doyle in "Halloween 5: The Curse of Michael Myers," Rudd is one of several actors to take over the role originated in the 1978 original. Since he's one of Hollywood's golden boys, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Tinseltown with a bad thing to say about Rudd. But his movies are another matter: he's got a few that he might regret, the most notable being the boneheaded 2002 sci-fi action thriller "Gen Y Cops."

A sequel to the 1999 Hong Kong action movie "Gen X Cops," this follow-up brought in Rudd, perhaps to get it some attention in the United States. Relegated to being a Sci-Fi Channel original, it was relabeled "Jackie Chan Presents: Metal Mayhem" in some places, which is curious because Chan has absolutely nothing to do with it. It follows an advanced American crime fighting robot called RS-1 that comes to China but goes haywire, leaving it up to a team of slick, well-dressed Hong Kong detectives — and FBI agent Ian Curtis (Rudd) — to stop it.

A nonsensical sequel that tries to be too cool for school, "Gen Y Cops" is shockingly awful, with bad special effects, and winds up being accidentally stupid and too silly to take seriously.

Josh Hartnett wasn't the only future star to appear in "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later." The movie that brought back original series lead and Hollywood legend Jamie Lee Curtis for the 20th anniversary of the franchise also brought in then-TV star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, years before he became a big screen leading man. Since then, Levitt has had his share of roles he might regret, and one of them certainly looks bad even on paper: the 2010 indie comedy "Elektra Luxx."

A sequel to the box office bomb and critical dud "Women in Trouble," the film re-introduces Carla Gugino as adult film actress Elektra Luxx, who returns pregnant and looking to put her past behind her. Training housewives in how to have sex, she finds she just can't escape her former wild life. Deeply unfunny and ludicrously lame, we can only laugh at the hubris of "Elektra Luxx" as a sequel to a bad movie that hardly called for one, didn't make any money, and that nobody was asking for. Though there are some decent performances, the film totally wastes a star-studded cast that also includes Timothy Olyphant ("Justified"), Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men"), and Malin Åkerman ("Watchmen"). We hope Levitt had a good time making it, because we're pretty certain nobody had a good time watching it.

"Halloween" has reinvented itself every decade. In the '90s, "Halloween H20" wiped the slate clean as a direct follow-up to "Halloween II." In 2018, the simply titled "Halloween" was a retconned sequel that erased all previous entries and served as a direct continuation of the original 1978 film. But in between, musician-turned-director Rob Zombie rebooted the franchise with "Halloween" and "Halloween II," with former "X-Men" star Tyler Mane playing the new Michael Myers. Though roasted by fans, neither of these reboots were Mane's most regrettable film. That honor falls on a difficult-to-explain 1992 oddity called "Starfighters."

Decades before Mane donned the mask to become the "Halloween" villain, the former wrestler starred as a luchadore — a Mexican wrestler — in a Mexican film titled "Luchadores de las Estrellas," renamed "Starfighters" here in America. A bizarre sci-fi B-movie, it follows a princess from outer space on the run from a space vampire lord named Nitron (Mane). After she crash lands on Earth, the princess is rescued by a pair of masked Bolivian wrestlers and decides to seek refuge with them and become a fighter herself.

Made on a shoestring budget, there's really not much else to say about this one other than it's an utter embarrassment for Mane. Maybe it got him a paycheck, maybe it was something to do on a slow weekend, but we can't imagine he's showing it off in his demo reel.

In 2021, "Halloween Kills" added '80s icon Anthony Michael Hall to the cast as a middle-aged version of Tommy Doyle. He took over the role from Paul Rudd, though technically he's a different version of the same character, as the events of "Halloween 5: The Curse of Michael Myers" were no longer in continuity. By the time he joined the franchise, Hall was far from his awkward teen roles of the '80s and now a Hollywood veteran with a long and winding career. But there's still at least one role that many people may actually have forgotten that he might want to keep that way: the 1990 family comedy "A Gnome Called Gnorm."

A movie led by a former teen star and a puppet made by VFX wizard Stan Winston — who also directed — "A Gnome Called Gnorm" is a strange beast. It's all about an underground gnome who comes to the surface world and becomes the only witness to a murder (leaving us to simply scratch our heads and ask "why?"). To catch the killer, LAPD detective Casey Gallagher (Hall) teams up with the gnome, who proves more trouble than he's worth. A buddy cop comedy about Anthony Michael Hall paired with a hideous puppet wasn't exactly a premise audiences were flocking to theaters for, and the inexplicable choice to make Gnorm an ugly, sex-crazed, hairy creature didn't help matters.

Danielle Harris has a unique distinction in the "Halloween" franchise as an actor who appeared in one of the original series films and in Rob Zombie's 2007 reboot — as two different characters. In "Halloween 4: The Curse of Michael Myers," Harris played Jamie Lloyd, the young daughter of Laurie Strode, reprising the role for the sequel, "Halloween 5." In the reboot nearly 20 years later, Harris would star as Annie Brackett, best friend to Laurie and daughter of the town sheriff (Brad Dourif). In between her "Halloween" stints, however, Harris starred in a movie that definitely isn't worth rebooting, the 1999 comedy "Goosed."

An offbeat rom-com, "Goosed" stars Meg Tilly ("Psycho II") as Charlene, a lovelorn beauty who keeps striking out with every man she meets. But a trip to a local psychic reveals that she's soon going to find her forever beau, and all she knows is that he'll be a doctor named Steve. Not content to wait around, Charlene goes on the hunt for this mystery doctor, leading to wacky romantic hijinks with a number of different Steves. A flop in every sense, "Goosed" comes across like a bad episode of a mediocre TV show, with lame attempts at comedy and limp performances from its cast, including Harris as a young Charlene in flashbacks.