Dr. Samuel James Loomis is a fictional character in the Halloween film series. He is the main protagonist of the 1978 classic Halloween and its many sequels (except from III, H20 and Resurrection). Donald Pleasence plays the character of Dr. Loomis in all five films. Throughout the Halloween franchise, he has become somewhat of a nemesis to the series' main character, Michael Myers.
The name "Sam Loomis" is an allusion to John Gavin's Sam Loomis character in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
Biography
Tenure at Smith's Grove, 1963 - 1978
In November 1963, Loomis receives the six-year-old Michael Audrey Myers under his care. For an initial six-month-period, Loomis is charged with spending four hours each day in therapy sessions with his patient. The mute and motionless boy had murdered his seventeen-year-old sister Judith Myers on Halloween night. Loomis is determined to find out what would cause a boy his age to commit murder.
On May 1, 1964, Dr. Loomis meets with two superior doctors in the sanitarium's forum chamber. Loomis suggests that his patient be confined in a maximum-security ward located at Litchfield, Illinois. The two doctors brush off Loomis' request declaring that Michael was merely "a catatonic" exhibiting "comatose behavior" who does not react to any of his surroundings. Loomis insists he be taken seriously because he is convinced that his patient's blank behavior is an ingenious cover for his true nature. He also feels that the level of security at Smith's Grove is insufficient. He pleads that Michael be moved immediately to a facility where any possible escape or legalized freedom is impossible. The Smith's Grove superiors decline the doctor's requests and issue an ultimatum that Loomis keep Michael as his patient or he will be looked after by someone else. Loomis knows to his core that no one else can be trusted or even safe around Michael, so he agrees to stay with him.
For the first eight years of Michael's psychiatric care and treatment, Loomis tries to get any form of response out of him. He finally convinces himself that Michael is truly evil. So, for the following seven years, he tries to keep him in total incarceration.
Halloween 1978
Michael turns twenty-one on October 19. By law, he is to be presented to 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.
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 will be used before Michael is presented to the judge.
When the pair reach 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.
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 (241 km) 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.
When the psychiatrist finally arrives in Michael's hometown, he seeks the help of Haddonfield Memorial Cemetery's grave keeper, a man in his sixties named Taylor. The pair discover, that the headstone of Judith Myers had been dug up 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 travel 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 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 in horror to see that Michael is gone.
Laurie is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, while Sheriff Brackett accompanies Loomis in his search for Michael. Myers then heads to the hospital to kill Laurie, leaving several bodies in his wake. Dr. Loomis is ordered to leave Haddonfield by the state governor 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 horrifying fact: Michael Myers is the brother of Laurie Strode. After hearing 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 races to Laurie's aid and, once again, fires multiple gun shots to Michael which, naturally, does not stop him. Loomis and Laurie run to a nearby operating room where Loomis attempts to destroy Michael with a gun shot 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 Strode runs away, Loomis stays behind. He tells Michael that "it's time" and proceeds to blow himself up with Michael. Surprisingly, Loomis survives, but is horribly burned, walking with a pronounced limp (possibly due to either the burns in his leg or his stab wound to the stomach) and wearing gloves to hide the burn scars on his hands.
Halloween 1988
In 1980, Laurie and Jimmy Lloyd had a daughter named Jamie Lloyd. Shortly afterwards, it was thought the couple died in a car crash. In actuality, Sam and Marion actually knew that Laurie faked her death and was hiding in the witness protection program with her son John as a way of starting a new life without the burden of Michael trying to track them down. On October 30, 1988, 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 Myers is now free. He 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 to Michael 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 goes to the Haddonfield police, who believe him. While Michael slaughters many officers in the police station, a group emerges from a local bar, and they quickly form a lynch mob when Loomis, seeing no other defense for the town, tells them that Myers has returned. Loomis works with the new town Sheriff Meeker and the few remaining police officers to help protect Jamie from her uncle. After Loomis is attacked by Michael while helping Jamie to hide after he had found her, he is later seen to have recovered as he witnesses the sheriff, a few of the mob, and state police shoot 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 after having just 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, and Loomis seems to go mad by the thought that the evil that drove her uncle has now possessed his niece.
Halloween 1989
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 telepathically linked with him, Loomis constantly pressures her to inform him of Michael's whereabouts, but Jamie is too traumatized to tell him. When Michael returns, the police and Loomis set a trap for Myers at his house, involving the young niece to sit at the dressing table in Judith Myers's old bedroom. After the police receive calls linking Myers to be somewhere else, they all leave, leaving Loomis to say another famous line, "Now you'll come, won't you, Michael?" Michael arrives, 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 turn on Jamie, grabbing her and shouting for Michael to take her, only to lure Michael into a trap; Loomis drops a metal link net over Michael, shoots him with a tranquilizer gun, and then violently beats him unconscious with a wooden plank.
Dr. Loomis suffered a stroke immediately after attacking Myers. After that, 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.
Halloween 1995
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 about that, 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 has left her son in the bus stop bathroom. There he is found by Tommy Doyle, the boy whom Laurie Strode was baby-sitting in 1978 who has become a deranged 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 Doyle who tells him about his discovery of the baby, Loomis knows he has to fight his nemesis one last time in order to save the infant.
In all of this, it is revealed that Michael is under control of a cult known as The Cult of the Thorn, in which he has had a curse placed upon him since he was a young boy, to destroy all of his family.
During the following day it is revealed that Dr. Terence Wynn, Sam's old colleague is actually the "Man in Black". Wynn, along with an old neighbor of the Myers family, placed The Thorn Curse on Michael years ago on the night he killed Judith. After this discovery Loomis goes after Wynn, while Tommy Doyle joins forces with Kara Strode, Laurie's cousin whose family has taken residence in the Myers home, in order to protect baby Steven from Michael. They apparently succeed, after a bloody battle in the Smith's Grove sanitarium.
After "stopping" Michael and Wynn at the end of the movie, Tommy and Kara start their car and as they are about to leave, Loomis informs them that he has to stay behind, because "he has some business to attend to", back in the sanitarium. And as they leave, Loomis watches them happily and walks back into the sanitarium. Once he is back in there Michael's mask is shown on the floor and Dr. Loomis screams, either because he realizes Michael is still alive, or Michael attacked him from behind.
Death
Sam Loomis passed away shortly after the events of Curse of Michael Myers from natural causes. His good friend Marion Chambers was by his side when he passed away. His dying wish to Marion was to cover up any traces of Jamie's existence and Stephen, fearing that Michael would use the opportunity of Jamie's death and Laurie's grief over her daughter's passing to find out where Laurie is hiding and restart the cycle of terror with her son John. Marion obliges by his request and contacts Laurie Strode to tell her that Sam has passed away. The both of them agree that covering up all traces of Michael's return to Haddonfield from 1988-1995 would be considered an urban myth that nobody really talks about and enter false records that Michael's body was never found.
Personality
Sam Loomis was a driven and goal minded man. He was the only one who thought, that Micheal should be in maxium security and in the harshest place where he will never get out of watch. He knew what micheal was capable of and he didn't let anyone stand in his way. He tried to warn everyone, but no one listened and they payed for it. He was a strict and no nonsense man. He demanded answers when he wanted them. At the same time, he had a softer side wheb dealing with those he can relate to and those who understood what he wanted. You don't want to tick him off. He got more demanding and intense as the movies and years went on.
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