18 - Dr. Loomis

Played by: Donald Pleasance

Film(s): Halloween (1978)

"I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil." With that one statement, Donald Pleasance's psychiatrist, the man charged with finding out just what the hell is wrong with impassive killer Michael Myers, blows doctor-patient confidentiality out of the window. Later on, he blows Myers himself out of the window with six shots from a revolver, and hippocratic oath be damned. Sam Loomis is, of course, the only person who knows how dangerous Michael Myers can be, and so tracks him all the way from his escape from the lunatic asylum to Haddonfield, where he's fairly sure Michael is going to go loco once more. Pleasance, here starting a fruitful relationship with John Carpenter, is brilliant: part Basil Exposition, part hero, never unafraid to show that Loomis is utterly bricking it and, perhaps more importantly, that prolonged exposure to those blackest eyes, the devil's eyes, has driven Loomis more than a little bit mad himself.