20 Wild Horror Movie Casting Choices We Almost Got

16. Christopher Lee - Dr. Loomis (Halloween)

The Halloween franchise simply wouldn't be what it was without Donald Pleasence's impeccable performance as psychiatrist Dr. Loomis, and yet he wasn't actually director John Carpenter's first choice for the part.

Carpenter initially approached horror legend Christopher Lee, who turned the part down, apparently due to the low pay on offer, per the film's $325,000 budget - a tiny sum even for the standards of 1978 filmmaking.

And so, Carpenter went on to hire Pleasence instead, who of course made the role entirely his own, appearing in five Halloween films until his death in 1995.

Carpenter and producer Debra Hill later recounted that they ran into Lee at a party and he said that turning down Halloween was the biggest regret of his career.

And yet, Lee would've brought a very different, almost Hammer Horror-like energy to the role of Loomis, and in turn transformed the tone of the movie in a major way. Everything worked out as it should have here.