Born and raised in Lansing, Michigan, William Malone was inspired with film making during weekly trips to the Lucian Theater to see the latest releases of horror films. By age 14, Malone was making home movies with an 8mm camera and designing monster masks for himself and friends to wear for Halloween.Malone moves to Los Angeles, California at age 19 to become a rock and roll star, but a friend's request drew him back into mask making which led him to work for Don Post Studios in makeup and costume, as well as mask making. It was Malone whom designed and sculpted the mask used for the character of Michael Myers for Halloween (1978) which he used from the mold of a previous design used by William Shatner.Malone also worked as a make up artist for Dan Curits' NBC TV movie, The Norliss Tapes (1973) and even acted in a few credited and uncredited parts in movies most notable playing Beatle George Harrison in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) which recreated the Fab Four's 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Malone also developed a reputation as a collector of old movie props left over from various science fiction films.After attending classes at UCLA to study directing under the tutelage of Gilbert Gates, a former DGA president, Malone decided to make a gamble with his first movie. Scraping together around $74,000, he wrote and directed the sci-fi horror shocker Scared to Death (1980), which was clearly inspired by the 1979 Ridley Scott movie, Alien, which was a spun terror tale of a genetic creature haunting the sewers of Los Angeles. Despite being a mile box-office his, Malone was not recognized by major film studios. In 1984, with a million-plus dollar grant, Malone went back to the director's chair with directing the film Creature (aka: Titan Find) (1985) which starred Klaus Kinski, and was yet again inspired by Alien. Creature (1985) was nominated for a Saturn Award at the 1985 Academy of Science Fiction and Horror films.Malone spent the next 14 years as a director for episodic TV series beginning with such projects as directing the anthology series "Freddy's Nightmares," and a few episodes of the HBO series "Tales From the Crypt". Malone directed a short-lived TV series called "Sleepwalkers" as well as the TV movie W.I.E.R.D. World. In 1999, Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis hired Malone to directed the special-effects studied remake of House on Haunted Hill, which Malone clearly remembered from repeated viewings from his childhood and was happy to come on board as director.In 2002, Malone pressed ahead with his own feature Feardotcom, about a police detective's investigation of a web site that kills it's viewers. Malone's work on gave him the opportunity to join the Director's Guild society, where in 2005 he was invited by "Masters of Horror" creature Mick Garris to direct and episode for the horror anthology series titled "The Fair Haired Child" adopted from a screen play my Matt Greenberg. He is currently working on his next feature film and continues to try to make his place in cinema history as a struggling director-for-hire.
