He terrified a generation as the original Michael Myers in John Carpenter's Halloween. Eight years later, the same man wrote and directed one of the tenderest films of the decade.

THE BOY WHO COULD FLY (1986) is Nick Castle's gentle fantasy about Milly, a fourteen-year-old who moves to a new town after her father's death and befriends the boy next door. Eric is a mute autistic teenager who stands on the roof with his arms out, certain he can fly, and whether he really can is a question the film withholds until its final moments.

Beneath the fairy tale are two children carrying griefs too heavy to speak. Milly's father, terminally ill, hid his sickness from his family and took his own life. Eric went silent the day his parents fell out of the sky. The flying is fantasy laid over a story about surviving loss, which is why the sweetness mostly earns itself, and critics praised how Castle handled suicide, grief, and disability without ever turning maudlin.

"Milly" is short for Amelia, as in Earhart. It was also the name of Castle's own mother.

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The Boy Who Could Fly was financed with a budget of $9 million provided by the independent production company Lorimar Motion Pictures. It was distributed in theaters by 20th Century Fox.