He's big. He's mean. He's silent, but deadly. He wears a white fright mask, a dirty mechanic's jumpsuit and he carries a really big knife. He has a real sick thing for his sister, and he's been hacking up teenagers for 23 years. Even though he's been shot, stabbed, blown up, beaten with chains, injected with poison, burnt to a crisp and beheaded, he always comes back on Halloween night.

He's John Carpenter's Bogeyman, the scourge of Haddonfield, Illinois, Michael Myers. Since he first donned "the mask" in the 1978 film "Halloween," he has stalked and slashed his way through six sequels and two separate story lines. But for all of you who thought you saw the last of the first of the "New Age Monsters" in "Halloween Resurrection" (2002) think again. Halloween series producer Moustapha Akkaid has announced that Michael will be back for another round of mayhem in 2004, just in time for the 25th anniversary of the original film.

According to the official Halloween movie site, the script for Halloween 9 is currently being written. And although Akkaid is closed mouth about the story, fans can probably expect more of what Michael does best, namely, help with Midwest small-town teenage population control. Of course, he no longer has doing in his sister, Laurie as a motivation for action in this new film, since he stabbed her and then dumped her from the top of a mental institution at the beginning of "Halloween Resurrection" last year. But as fans of the 1998 film, "Halloween, Twenty Years Later (H20)" might remember, Laurie did have a teenage son he could always stalk instead.

Then again, in light of the success of New Line Cinema's latest monster mash, "Freddy Versus Jason," there is always speculation that Michael's next appearance will be in tandem with the two movie monsters the "Halloween" films inspired, Jason Voorhees ("Friday the 13th") and Freddy Kruger ("A Nightmare on Elm Street"). Of course, rumors and speculation about who will join Freddy and Jason in their expected rematch have been running rampant since before the summertime release of the film. So far the unsubstantiated buzz is that Bruce Campbell will resurrect his Ash character from the "Evil Dead/Army of Darkness" trilogy to face the demented duo. Even though Dimension Films and Cabin Fever executives haven't said anything official about the possibility of Michael Myers joining the fray, they did place an amusing full-page ad in Fangoria magazines official "Freddy Versus Jason" edition featuring a picture of Michael along with the challenge, "bring us the winner."

It would only be fitting if negotiations were worked out for Michael to appear in the "Freddy Versus Jason" sequel since "Halloween" ushered in a new genre of fright films instantly nicknamed "slasher" films featuring the kind of killer/monster first hinted at in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960s classic, "Psycho." Following the unexpected success of "Halloween" in 1978 and it's sequel, "Halloween II" in 1979, a whole series of clone pictures appeared and for awhile it seemed that no holiday was safe from a maniacal slasher. There was "Friday the 13th," "Mother's Day," "My Bloody Valentine," "Silent Night, Deadly Night" and "New Year's Evil" among others – all of which (with the exception of "Friday the 13th") came and went without much notice.

Oddly enough, the film that started all the mayhem nearly didn't get off the ground itself. Carpenter's screenplay about an escaped lunatic stalking a teenage baby sitter and her friends didn't garner much interest from producers in its original form. It was only when the script was rewritten to place the story on Halloween night that the project took off.

"Halloween" tells the now familiar story of Michael Myers, who at six years old senselessly murdered his older sister with a butcher's knife on Halloween night. After having been locked away in Smith's Grove Sanitarium for 15 years, he escapes to his childhood home of Haddonfield, Illinois to stalk a baby-sitter, 17-year-old Laurie Strode, and her friends on Halloween night while being relentlessly pursued by his Doctor, Sam Loomis.