Nick Castle was the silent killer in Halloween and then spent the 1980s and 1990s directing films as gentle as that one was not. The best film with his name on it is the one he wrote with John Carpenter; his own are sunny, tidy and seldom surprising.
Fi1m perspective
The figure in the mask in Halloween (1978) was Nick Castle, a film-school friend of John Carpenter's who was on the set mainly to hang around. It is a strange beginning for a director whose own films are nearly all sunshine. Put him behind the camera and the lawns turn green, the children get up to mischief rather than murder, and nothing is allowed to hurt for long.
He came up through Carpenter's circle: a small part in Dark Star (1974), the mask in Halloween, then the co-writing credit on Escape from New York (1981). He has said Carpenter asked him onto the second draft to give it a little more humour, and that is what he did. The film is a lean, surly thriller, and its sardonic streak, the refusal to take its own premise entirely seriously, is the part that still works. Our review found the plot thin and the middle hour drifting, and recommended it anyway, on the strength of the mood and Kurt Russell's whisper.
Then he went off to direct, and the dark stayed behind. Tag: The Assassination Game (1982) was the debut. The Last Starfighter (1984) is the one with the early digital effects, folded into a science-fiction adventure for a young audience. The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), which he also wrote, is the one critics have been kindest to, for holding a coming-of-age fantasy steady where it might have turned to syrup, though some thought it turned anyway and took its time doing it. Tap (1989) and Major Payne (1995) followed. By Mr. Wrong (1996) the word that kept turning up was formulaic.
Dennis the Menace (1993), produced by John Hughes, shows the method up close, and the method is to get out of the way. Thomas E. Ackerman shoots the neighbourhood in soft, even sun, James D. Bissell fills Wilson's house with breakable china, Jerry Goldsmith chatters along on woodwind and pizzicato, and Alan Heim keeps the gags short. Castle lets Walter Matthau be the only real person in it and arranges everything else around him. We sat through it in complete comfort and without a single surprise, and about an hour in we realised that comfort was all it had to offer; it is competence without appetite, and we could not quite recommend it.
That is the pattern. Castle is a careful, kindly director of films for families, good at tone and good with children, and the nearest he has come to danger on screen was when someone else was directing and he was wearing the mask. He put it back on, briefly, for the Halloween films of 2018 to 2022. Start with Escape from New York, then The Last Starfighter if you have a child to watch it with; after that, his own films reward affection more than attention.
Biography
Nick Castle is an American actor, screenwriter and film director. He played the Alien in John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974) and co-wrote the screenplay for Escape from New York (1981) with Carpenter. He is also known for playing Michael Myers, credited as The Shape, in Halloween (1978) and reprising the role in later entries in the franchise.
Castle studied film at the University of Southern California. He later directed films including The Last Starfighter (1984), Dennis the Menace (1993) and Major Payne (1995). He wrote the screenplay for August Rush (2007).
