Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Dir: Joe Chappelle

1995

**

Although I was glad that Donald Pleasence returned to thef ranchise once more, I was also pretty surprised after the awful Halloween: The Revenge of Michael Myers. He was the best thing about the last few films and without him the series would have been completely lost, so again, while I’m happy he appeared in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the sixth film of the series, I’m also saddened as this was to be his last ever film appearance. It’s not exactly the greatest film to end, especially not for such a great actor with an incredible body of work under his belt. Just when you thought the story of Michael Myers couldn’t get even more convoluted, producer Akkad did it again. However, you can’t blame a rushed script this time. After the less than enthusiastic response to Halloween 5 which came out only a year after Halloween 4, producer Moustapha Akkad put the series on hold to re-evaluate its potential. Akkad felt Halloween 5 had strayed too far from Halloween 4 and the box office response was much lower than expected. In 1990, screenwriter and long-time Halloween fan Daniel Farrands set out to write the sixth entry in the Halloween series. Farrands gave his horror movie scripts to the producer of Halloween 5, Ramsey Thomas, who was impressed by his writing. Akkad agreed to meet with Farrands who arrived at the studio  with a huge notebook filled with Halloween research – the entire series laid out in a timeline, a bio of every character and a "family tree" of the Myers and Strode clans. Although the producers at the time had already sought to make a sixth Halloween film, a series of complicated legal battles ensued which delayed plans for a sequel; eventually Miramax Films (via its Dimension Films division) bought the rights to the Halloween series. In June 1994, after several screenplays from different writers had been deemed insufficient by Akkad (including one by Scott Spiegel), Farrands was hired to write a new screenplay, as the film had an impending shooting date scheduled for October in Salt Lake City, Utah. Farrands has said his initial intent for the film was to "bridge the later films (4-5) in the series to the earlier films (1-2) while at the same time taking the story into new territory so that the series could expand for future installments.” This in part meant expanding on the presence of the "Man in Black" as well as the appearance of the Thorn symbol, both of which appear without explanation at the end of Halloween 5. In beginning the script, Farrands contacted the writers of Halloween 4 and 5 for additional information, but they were unable to provide clear answers, leaving him to "pick up the pieces.” Farrands expanded the "Curse of Thorn" plot line, in which Jamie Lloyd is kidnapped by a covert cult who has cursed Michael Myers via the Runic symbol of Thorn, which compels him to kill and also affords him immortality. Farrands had in part based the idea on dialogue present in Halloween II about the night of Samhain, during which the "veil between the living and the dead is thinnest," the one time of the year during which Myers became "active, and seeks out his bloodline.” References to Druidism as well as Myers's grandfather "hearing voices" had also appeared in the 1978 novelization of Halloween by Curtis Richards. While the character of Jamie Lloyd dies early in the film, the initial versions of Farrands' script had her character surviving until the final act, at which point she was ultimately killed by Michael. Other elements of Farrands' working script that ultimately had to be trimmed down included an extension of the Curse of Thorn subplot, which had the entire town of Haddonfield in collusion with the cult, an idea Akkad wanted to use for the series' seventh installment. However, this idea was scrapped in favor of the Halloween H20 script in 1997. Personally I found the script to be beyond nauseating, he basically complicated a simple and effective idea taking away one of the original reasons why the series was so intriguing/scary – it’s mystery. That said, I do admire him for trying to tie all of the films together – even Halloween III – which everyone had pretty much written off. He also links John Carpenter’s The Fog to the film suggesting they take place in the same movie universe – a nice tribute to Carpenter and an acknowledgment to his original film. Donald Pleasence’s last film was to be Paul Rudd’s first. Although set in the present, the film goes back to the end of the last film and explains that both Michael Myers and his niece Jamie Lloyd were actually abducted from the Haddonfield Police Station after we last saw them. Six years later, on October 30, 1995, Jamie has had a baby and we find her just as her baby is being taken away by the "Man in Black", the leader of a Druid-like cult. Later, a midwife helps Jamie escape with her rescued baby and is soon killed by Michael by impaling the back of her skull into a protruding sharp metal spike high on the wall. Jamie and her baby flee in a stolen pick-up truck, with Michael in pursuit. Stopping briefly at a deserted bus station, Jamie makes a call to a Haddonfield radio station to warn them that Michael is about to return home, only to be ignored by the radio D.J. Barry Simms. Meanwhile, the retired Dr. Sam Loomis is visited by his friend Dr. Terence Wynn, the chief administrator of Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael had been incarcerated as a boy; Wynn asks Loomis to return to Smith's Grove. They overhear Jamie's plea for help on a local radio station. Michael finds Jamie, and she crashes the truck into an old barn. He kills Jamie by impaling her on a corn thresher and turning it on, disemboweling her, but finds that her baby is not in the truck. Back in Haddonfield, Tommy Doyle, who Laurie Strode babysat in 1978, now lives in a boarding house run by Mrs. Blankenship. The family living in the Myers house across the street are relatives of the dysfunctional Strode family: Kara Strode, her six-year-old son Danny, her teenage brother Tim, caring mother Debra, and abusive father John. Ever since seeing Michael as a child, Tommy has been obsessed with finding the truth behind his motives. He finds Jamie's baby at the bus station, takes him into his care, and names him Steven. Tommy runs into Loomis and tells him about the Strode family living in the Myers house. The two believe Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Michael enters his home and kills Debra. Later, Tommy, Kara, and Danny go to the boarding house, where Tommy reveals that he believes Michael has been inflicted with Thorn, an ancient Druid curse. Long ago, one child from each tribe, chosen to bear the curse of Thorn, must sacrifice its next of kin on the night of Samhain, or Halloween. Tommy believes that Steven will be Michael's final sacrifice. While Tommy goes out to look for Loomis, Mrs. Blankenship reveals to Kara that she was babysitting Michael the night he killed his sister, and that Danny is hearing a voice telling him to kill just like Michael did, indicating Danny also possesses the power of Thorn. Meanwhile, Michael kills John, Tim, Tim's girlfriend Beth, and Barry Simms. After Tommy returns home with Loomis, the Man in Black reveals himself to be Wynn. The cult take Kara, Danny, Steven, and Michael to Smith's Grove. There, Loomis confronts Wynn, who reveals he wants to control and study the power of Thorn. Wynn wants Loomis to join in on his conspiracy, and reveals that Jamie's baby represents a new cycle of Michael's evil that he kept secret from most of the cult who were focused on inflicting the curse onto a new child (Danny) to carry out a new trend of family sacrifices. Loomis calls Wynn out on his scheme and is knocked unconscious. Later, Michael butchers Wynn's team of staff surgeons and Wynn himself during a medical procedure with Danny and Steven sitting in a room next door. Tommy finds and frees Kara, Danny, and Steven; they flee from Michael and hide in a laboratory. Regaining consciousness, Loomis helps Kara and the children escape the hospital. When Michael breaks into the room, Tommy injects him with large quantities of tranquilizers containing a corrosive liquid and beats him unconscious with a lead pipe. As Tommy, Kara, Danny, and Steven leave, Loomis refuses to come with them as he has "a little business to attend to". Back inside the building, Michael's mask is seen lying on the floor of the lab room and Loomis is heard screaming in the background, leaving the fate of both characters unknown. While the plot is even more convoluted then the previous films’, I do admit that the follow up is a lot more fun. The problems with the film are glaringly obvious but Michael Myers feels more like his old self and Pleasence still gives it his all in his final performance. Pleasence died eight months before the film hit cinemas due to issues with the release date and poor test audience reactions. I can’t help but think this boosted sales somewhat. Paul Rudd was good but you wouldn’t have guessed his future success based on his performance. It was a shame Danielle Harris didn’t return. Harris, who was seventeen at the time, contacted producer Paul Freeman about reprising her role as Jamie Lloyd, and went so far as completing paperwork to become legally emancipated in order to shoot the film. She was officially cast in the role, but Dimension Films could not come to an agreement over her salary; Harris alleges that Dimension offered her a scaled $1,000 to shoot the part over the course of a week, which was less than the amount of money she had paid for her emancipation. Farrands and Freeman both had wanted Harris for the part, but at that point "had their hands tied." According to Harris, the head of the casting department refused to negotiate her salary, stating that she was a "scale character who dies in the first twenty minutes." This ultimately led to her dropping out of the project. "People automatically assume I wanted some crazy amount of money, or something," Harris commented in 2014, "but it's not like I was demanding or anything, really... When you've been asked to do something and then they insult you by saying, "You're a piece of shit, you die in the first act - I don't give a fuck that you were in two other Halloween movies, who cares?"... I was in shock." I do think Dimension dropped the ball with the film and maybe if Farrands was allowed complete creative control he could have saved the franchise. I both love and hate the cliff-hanging ending, while it is interesting that we don’t know what happened to either Loomis or Mayers, it would have been great to see Loomis win in his final scene.