15 Seemingly Terrible Horror Castings That Totally Paid Off

9. Halloween Kills - Anthony Michael Hall

With all due respect to Anthony Michael Hall, he was a somewhat random choice for the adult Tommy Doyle in Halloween Kills. It was difficult to picture the kid from Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and National Lampoon's Vacation thriving in this kind of brutal horror story, so this case is another reaffirmation of that age-old phrase: don't judge a book by its cover. 

Regardless of what he's done in the past, Hall did a very solid job with Doyle. Even though he was stuck in that terrible "Evil dies tonight!" subplot, he did bring a grounded hardness to the role, being bad-ass without being show-offy about it. In Hall's hands, Tommy Doyle was an instantly charismatic, authoritative figure and it was easy to understand why the townsfolk of Haddonfield looked up to him as a leader in a crisis. 

In fact, Hall did a far, far better job with Doyle than a young Paul Rudd did in 1995's franchise-worst Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, and it was genuinely sad to see him snuff it at the end. 40 years after Doyle escaped Michael Myers as a child, Myers beat him to death with his own baseball bat.