- "Death has come to your little town, sheriff."
- ―Samuel Loomis to Leigh Brackett
Dr. Samuel Loomis is a character and one of the protagonists of the Halloween franchise. He first appeared in the original Halloween (1978).
Loomis' history is complicated by the fact that the series follows several conflicting continuities. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later and Resurrection ignore the events of Halloween 4, 5, and 6, splitting the series into two separate timelines both originating from the inaugural film and its sequel. The 2018 film further branches off from the first film into a third timeline, and the remake's own timeline exists in an entirely new, separate continuity.
Biography[]
Michael's psychiatrist[]
On November 5, 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers had been admitted to Smith's Grove Sanitarium for the October 31st murder of his older sister Judith. The child (now seven) was a blank, emotionless slate to Loomis, never speaking and barely even moving. The doctor recognized the deep-rooted trauma in the boy's psyche and knew that special treatment would be required if he were to ever help him, "I met him, 15 years ago; I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. 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." Samuel Loomis, October 31, 1978,
On May 1, 1964, Dr. Loomis met with two doctors in the sanitarium's forum chamber. Loomis suggested that his patient is confined to a maximum-security ward located at Litchfield, Illinois. The doctors brushed off Loomis' request, declaring that Michael was mere "a catatonic" exhibiting "comatose behavior" who did not react to any of his surroundings. Loomis insisted to be taken seriously because he was convinced his patient's blank behavior was an ingenious cover for his true nature. He also felt that the level of security at Smith's Grove was insufficient. He pleaded for Michael to be moved immediately to a facility where any possible escape or legalized freedom would be impossible. The doctor's superiors declined his requests and issued an ultimatum that Loomis keep Michael as his patient or he would be looked after by someone else. Loomis knew to his core that no one else could be trusted or even be safe around Michael, so he agreed to stay with him.
Driving with Marion to Smith's Grove
The break-out[]
Michael turns twenty-one on October 19. By law, he is to be presented to the court on his birthday for trial. The final verdict determines his freedom or further confinement. The trial date is pushed two weeks into the first week of November.
"He was doing very well last night! Maybe someone around here gave him lessons!"
On the rainy night of Monday, October 30, 1978, Loomis is accompanied by his friend and medical assistant Nurse Marion Chambers; they are charged with transferring Michael back to his home county for the trial. Loomis reveals to Marion that Thorazine would be used before Michael is presented to the judge. Nurse Chambers is confused as to why Michael should be heavily drugged then realizes Loomis wants Michael to have no chance to be released back to society.
When the pair reaches the gates of the sanitarium, they discover that many patients are wandering around the grounds. Loomis goes to the main gate to telephone the hospital, but Michael appears and nearly attacks Marion while she is waiting in the car.
Loomis attempting to warn the police
Myers escapes from the Illinois state hospital hijacking the car meant for his court date transfer. His plan is to return to his hometown of Haddonfield and locate his last surviving sibling. Driving the 150 miles to his destination, he arrives in Haddonfield in time for Halloween.
Loomis is on Michael's trail for the entire date of October 31. While en route to Haddonfield, Loomis stops along a rural highway in west central Illinois to call Haddonfield authorities. He has every reason to believe Michael will return home, so he urges that the police watch out for him.
"Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now, you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it."
Loomis saves Laurie, shooting several bullets into Michael, who falls off of the balcony
When the psychiatrist finally arrives in Michael's hometown, he seeks the help of Haddonfield Memorial Cemetery's grave keeper. The pair discovers that the headstone of Judith Myers had been removed and is missing. This clue is enough to assure Loomis that his patient is physically in the city. That afternoon, Loomis enlists the help of Haddonfield's sheriff, Leigh Brackett. The pair later travels to the former Myers residence at 45 Lampkin Lane. Loomis is curious to know if Michael had returned to his childhood home. With the front door being broken into and the decaying carcass of a stray dog being indoors, these two clues reassure Loomis that Michael has indeed come home. Loomis tries convincing Sheriff Brackett that Michael is a human incarnation of pure evil, that he has returned to kill again, and that Haddonfield is not safe on this night until Michael is captured.
While Michael stalks Laurie Strode and her friends, Loomis waits and watches over the house, believing that Michael will return to his home. When he discovers the stolen car, he begins combing the streets where he finds the two children that Laurie was babysitting running frantically from a house. Loomis investigates and sees Michael attacking Laurie. When she pulls Michael's mask off, he stops to re-apply it, giving Loomis the opportunity to shoot his former patient six times, knocking him to and off the balcony of the two-story house. After agreeing with Laurie that Michael was "the boogeyman", Loomis walks over to the balcony and looks down to see that Michael is gone.
Haddonfield Hospital massacre[]
The following information is only relevant to the 4-6 and H20 Timelines.
"One of their number was butchered, this is a wake!"
"It means "the lord of the dead." The end of summer. The festival of Samhain. October 31st."
Laurie is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, while Sheriff Brackett accompanies Loomis in his search for Michael. While searching, Loomis believes that he has found Myers who quickly runs away from the police only to get hit in a car crash. While everyone believes the killer is now dead, for some reason unknown to Loomis, he cannot be sure. It is at this time when Gary Hunt arrives and tells Brackett that his daughter Annie has been found dead. They arrive at the Wallace home where Brackett has to id his daughter and then leaves his duties to Hunt as he has to go tell his wife the news, but before he goes he blames Loomis for what has happened. Loomis and Hunt then go to the coroner's, where they try to identify the body that was burned. It turns out that it was in fact not Myers but teenager Bennett Tramer. Loomis and Hunt then head towards Haddonfield Elementary School, where they see Michael has written the word "Samhain" on the chalkboard in blood. It is at this time that Dr. Loomis is ordered to leave Haddonfield by the state government so as to not create panic. His assistant Nurse Marion Chambers has arrived to try convincing Loomis to leave Haddonfield. She also reveals to him one shocking fact: Michael Myers is the brother of Laurie Strode. With this newfound knowledge, Loomis realizes Michael returned to Haddonfield to kill his younger sister, Laurie. After this, Loomis hijacks the police car that is taking him away from Haddonfield using his gun and arrives at the hospital to stop Myers.
Loomis attempts to shoot Michael
Loomis races to Laurie's aid and, once again, fired multiple gunshots to Michael, which expectedly does not stop him. Loomis and Laurie run to a nearby operating room where Loomis attempts to destroy Michael with a bullet to the head. Not realizing his gun is empty, Loomis fires an empty chamber, and Michael angrily stabs him in his stomach, causing Loomis to collapse. Nevertheless, Loomis recovers, and he and Laurie fill the room with oxygen and ether. As the girl runs away, Loomis stays behind. He tells Michael that "it's time" and proceeds to blow himself up with Michael.
"It's time, Michael..."
However, Loomis survives but is severely burned, left to walk with a pronounced limp (possibly due to either the burns to his leg or the stab wound to the stomach) and wearing gloves to hide the scars on his hands. Michael also survived the explosion but also suffered serious burns as a result.
10 years later[]
For more information, see Samuel Loomis/4-6 Timeline.
In 1980, Laurie Strode had a daughter named Jamie Lloyd. Shortly afterward, it was thought the couple died in a car crash. On October 30, 1988, Michael Myers, who had been in a coma for 10 years, awakens in an ambulance when he hears that he has a niece. Coming upon the carnage resulting from a crash, Dr. Loomis unsuccessfully attempts to alert the police that Michael is now free. The killer then makes his way back to Haddonfield and Loomis once again pursues him. Arriving at a filling station, Loomis encounters Michael and attempts to reason with him, offering himself as another victim and pleading with Michael to leave the Haddonfield citizens alone, but he quickly realizes that Michael is too violent and insane to listen to reason. Loomis gets a ride from Jackson P. Sayer, who tells him that Loomis could not kill evil like you could kill a man. Sayer drops him off at the Haddonfield police station. As the doctor announces that he is looking for Sheriff Brackett, he is told that Brackett retired and the new sheriff is Ben Meeker.
Loomis fears Jamie is consumed with rage like her uncle
Unlike last time, Meeker and the rest of the police believe him. After Michael slaughters many officers in the police station, a group led by Earl Ford emerges from a local bar and they quickly form a lynch mob when Loomis, seeing no other defense for the town, tells them that the monster has returned. Loomis works with Sheriff Meeker and the few remaining officers to help protect Jamie Lloyd, Michael's young niece, from her murderous uncle. After Loomis is attacked by Michael while helping Jamie hide from him, the doctor is later seen to have recovered as he witnesses the sheriff, a few of the mob and state police shoot up Michael, sending him down an abandoned well, which they ignite and blow up, seeming to finally kill him. However, after the nightmare appears to have ended, Loomis sees the horrific sight of Jamie just having stabbed her stepmother, dressed in a clown costume similar to what Michael wore when he killed his sister as a child. Sheriff Meeker stops Loomis just as he raises his gun to Jamie, as Loomis loses his control at the thought that the evil that drove her uncle has now possessed his niece.
- "Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!"
- ―Samuel Loomis while beating Michael with a wooden plank[src]
Saving Jamie[]
When Loomis turns out to be right and Michael does arrive, he tries to reason with him
One year later, Loomis is assigned to Jamie at the Haddonfield Children's Clinic. Aware that Michael is still alive, and discovering that Jamie is psychically linked with him, Loomis constantly pressures her to inform him of her uncle's whereabouts, but Jamie is too traumatized to tell him. When Michael returns, he kills Jamie's adoptive sister Rachel Carruthers along with her associates, one of which Loomis tries to save without success. Once Tina Williams dies, Jamie agrees to help Loomis. The police and Loomis set a trap for Myers at his old house, involving the young girl to sit at the dressing table in Judith Myers's bedroom. After the police receive calls about Michael being at the clinic, they all leave, leaving Loomis, Jamie, and deputy Charlie Bloch.
Loomis suffers a stroke
Bloch is ordered to take Jamie to the police station but he is stopped by Loomis, who knows Michael would still come to the house. Loomis turns out to be right and Michael does arrive, and Loomis tries to reason with him, proposing that he fight his rage and redeem himself through a positive relationship with Jamie. Loomis' words seem to work at first, as Michael calmly listens to him and lowers his knife, but when Loomis reaches to take away Michael's knife, he slashes him across the abdomen and throws him through the banister in a frenzy. When Loomis awakens, he appears to betray Jamie, grabbing her and shouting for Michael to take her, only to lure Michael into a trap: Loomis drops a metal net over Michael, shoots him with a tranquilizer gun, then violently beats him unconscious with a wooden plank. Dr. Loomis suffers a stroke immediately after attacking Michael. Afterward, he retires and moves to a quiet hut on the outskirts of Haddonfield. There he lives a solitary, almost hermit lifestyle, choosing not to interact with other people.
The Cult of Thorn[]
In 1995, the nightmare starts all over again. It is a cold and stormy night when someone knocks on Sam's door. It is Dr. Terence Wynn, his old colleague, who had come to persuade Loomis to return to Smith's Grove. Sam declines. While the two are arguing, they hear the voice of Jamie Lloyd on the radio. She is begging Dr. Loomis to help her.
It turns out that Jamie was impregnated by the same cult that kidnapped her in 1989; however, she succeeds in escaping after giving birth to a baby boy. She takes the child with her and stops at a bus station to call Dr. Loomis. However, Michael tracks her down and kills her, but cannot find the baby.
Jamie had left her son in the bus stop bathroom. There he is found by Tommy Doyle, the boy whom Laurie Strode was babysitting in 1978, who has become a reclusive adult bent on destroying Michael Myers. He names the child Steven.
The following morning, Jamie's body is discovered, and Loomis is devastated. He had thought that the last of Michael's bloodline was killed that night, but after being approached by Tommy, who tells him about his discovery of the baby, Loomis knows he has to fight his nemesis once again in order to save the infant. Tommy tells him to meet him at the campus rally the next night to discuss what to do next.
The following night, Loomis meets up with Tommy but their meeting is cut short as they discover the body of Barry Simms falling from a tree. They both know that Michael is now in Haddonfield.
They return to Tommy's home to discover that the baby is missing as well, as are Kara Strode and her son Danny, whom Tommy was trying to keep safe. The Strodes eventually bang on the door, begging to be let in as Michael is chasing them. Tommy questions the doctor as to who knew about the baby and is told that only Loomis and Wynn knew. This is when they all hear a voice call out to Danny.
They go into the living room where it is revealed that Dr. Terence Wynn, Sam's old colleague, is actually the mysterious Man in Black that had freed Michael after his capture by Loomis years ago. Wynn, along with an old neighbor of the Myers family, had placed the Thorn Curse on Michael on the night he killed Judith. Loomis and Tommy are then drugged while Wynn takes Kara, Danny, and Steven with him to his base of operations at Smith's Grove.
As soon as they recover, the duo travels to the Sanitarium, where Loomis intends to deal with Wynn. He tells Tommy to stay put while he takes care of things. He finds Wynn in his office, where Wynn reveals he wants to experiment on Jamie's baby to re-create Michael. Loomis is about to shoot Wynn but is knocked out by Wynn's henchmen. They leave Loomis while they go to Steven and Danny. Unbeknownst to Loomis, Wynn and his accomplices are then slaughtered by Michael.
Loomis awakens and searches for Tommy and the others. He finds them running away from Michael and opens the Sanitarium's gate for them. As they get into their car, Tommy offers Loomis to come with them, but he replies that he still has some things to finish up in the Sanitarium. A loud scream was heard from inside the building in which Loomis and Myers were last seen in, and the mask of Michael Myers was found on the floor.
H20 Timeline[]
In the H20 Timeline, Loomis dies of a heart attack in front of Michael after the latter kills Elizabeth Worthington.
2018 Timeline[]
In the 2018 Timeline (which ignores the 4-6 and H20 Timelines), Loomis stopped being Michael's doctor following the killer's apprehension in 1978. The next year, Loomis gave a recorded statement claiming that Michael should be killed as there was no point in keeping him alive. Some time later, Loomis passed away, and his student Dr. Ranbir Sartain took over as Michael's doctor.
Appearances[]
| Film Appearances | ||||||||||
| "Halloween": Appears |
"Halloween II": Appears |
"Halloween III: Season of the Witch": Absent |
"Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers": Appears |
"Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers": Appears |
"Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers": Appears |
"Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later": Absent |
"Halloween: Resurrection": Absent
|
"Halloween": Absent |
"Halloween Kills": Absent |
"Halloween Ends": Absent |
Notes and trivia[]
- Loomis is named after John Gavin's character from the 1960 movie Psycho, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis' mother, Janet Leigh.
- Originally John Carpenter wrote the scene in Halloween (1978) where Loomis calls the Haddonfield police to warn them as a different scene where Loomis calls his wife to tell her what was going on. Donald Pleasence thought it would be better if Loomis had no family. Ironically, in both the comic series, Loomis is given a family. Curtis Richards, author of the novelization of Halloween, chose to use Carpenter's original scene where he calls his wife and lets her know he is alright before noticing the truck with the missing driver and the Red Lounge matchbox on the ground. In the 4-6 Timeline, he was engaged to a woman named Jennifer Hill, while in the H20 Timeline he has a son named David Loomis.
- Sam Loomis has the second most appearances in the original series. He is the main character in the first two films and the fourth, fifth, and sixth film. He then has a voice cameo in the seventh (provided by Tom Kane).
- Throughout the original timeline, Michael has shown an unusual amount of restraint when it comes to his encounters with Loomis. He frequently restrains and non-lethally wounds Loomis in his pursuit of others. This could be due to Loomis spending many years with Michael, to the point where Michael has some lingering humanity for him. The novelization of the original film heavily emphasized Michael's respect for Loomis as an authority figure and a worthy opponent, a relationship that plays out throughout Michael's stay in Smith's Grove.
- In the tie-in comics set in the H20 Timeline, Michael's restraint seems to have a more devious reasoning behind it, with the killer seemingly and deliberately goading and provoking Loomis, giving him the idea that no matter what Loomis does, he is ultimately powerless against Michael's machinations. This reaches the point that Michael starts moving things around in Loomis' room while Loomis is away, and ends in the killing of Loomis's ex-fiancé in front of him, thus causing Loomis' death via heart attack.