Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1999)

“I was only 8 years old when I saw him... but I was one of the lucky ones. I survived.” – Tommy Doyle

If Halloween 5 was clumsy and ineffective, then the film that followed made it look as precise and graceful as a ballerina in comparison. Welcome to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

This sixth film carries on from the ending of the fifth, where Myers seemingly was sprung from prison by a mysterious man in black following an offscreen massacre of Haddonfield’s finest. But again, there’s a little bit of a tweak that changes things quite a bit. Unlike the ending we saw, this reprise establishes that Jamie Lloyd was also taken by the man in black.

Time has moved on, and six years have passed. A girl on a hospital gurney is being rushed through the narrow passages of a basement and gives birth to a baby boy in some kind of cult ritual. The runic symbol we saw tattooed on Myers’s arm is seen – so it kind of starts to tie in with what we’ve previously seen. The baby is taken from the mother, but moments later, is returned to her by a sympathetic nurse who helps the mother and baby escape, but is killed by Myers for her troubles.

The girl is a more grown-up Jamie – but she can’t be more than 15 or 16 – and she’s played by J.C. Brandy – an actress with no discernible resemblance to Danielle Harris. Jamie decides to make a bee-line for Haddonfield, with Myers in pursuit. Meanwhile Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is still around, now retired but living as a recluse outside Haddonfield. His burn scars have been removed by plastic surgery – in truth, Pleasance was in very poor health and this would be one of his last films. Dr Wynn, an old colleague from his Smith’s Grove days tries to convince him to come back, oddly enough on the night before Halloween, as a rainstorm rages outside and as Jamie calls a radio talk show to plead for Loomis’s help. A radio show which, coincidentally, Loomis is listening to.

Myers catches up with Jamie and kills her, but doesn’t get the baby. This baby who’s only a couple of hours old and is only wrapped in a blanket, is found at a bus station by Tommy Doyle – the now grown-up kid who was babysat by Laurie Strode in the first film and is played here by Marvel’s future Ant-Man, Paul Rudd in one of his first screen appearances. Tommy is trying to retrace Jamie’s steps having also heard the radio show and since that Halloween in 1978, has become a Myers obsessive.

Now, he lives across the road from the Strodes. The Strode family patriarch is the brother of Laurie Strode’s father, and they’re living in the original Myers house – the one where Michael murdered his sister on Halloween night 1963. The daughter Kara (Marianne Hagan) has just recently returned home with an illegitimate son Danny (Devin Gardner).

The teenagers of Haddonfield are determined to celebrate Halloween this year, Myers is in town, Loomis is in town, Myers visits his old house and hacks away at the Strodes, but Kara is across the road at Tommy’s. Tommy’s elderly and eccentric landlady Mrs Blenkinshapp tells Kara that Danny hears voices. She was babysitting Little Mikey Myers that Halloween in ’63 and he heard voices too, telling him to kill his family. (Uh oh)

It's revealed that Michael has the power of Thorn. Thorn is represented by that runic symbol we’ve seen in the last film and this one, and is a configuration of stars that happens every so often on Halloween. (If this convoluted crap doesn’t make you despair right now, I guess nothing ever will.)

The cult abducts Kara and Danny and the baby (who must be suffering hypothermia and starving to death by now, because NOBODY’s looking after him, feeding him, changing or clothing him) and take them to their home base – Smith’s Grove, the maximum security Sanitorium where Myers has been institutionalised most of his life. The mysterious man in black is revealed to be Dr Wynn (Mitch Ryan) who is the head of the cult. The baby (who is implied to have been fathered by Myers, which doesn’t bear thinking about) is an experiment in (I think) carrying on Myers’s pure evil.

The cult is going to operate on both the baby and Danny, but Loomis and Tommy turn up to make the save. For some reason, Myers picks up a machete (what kind of a hospital uses a machete?) and goes on a killing rampage, slaughtering most of the cult, Tommy beats the hell out of Myers with a pipe and injects him with some kind of corrosives which knocks him out just long enough for him to escape with Kara, Danny and (I think) the baby. (It’d be nice to think they actually remembered the little mite. But isn’t that also kidnapping? And Kara doesn’t bother to check in with her parents, so she still doesn’t know they’re dead.)

They ask Loomis to go with them, but he has unfinished business.

In the final scene, we see Myers’s mask discarded on the floor, and we hear Loomis scream and that’s it. Film’s over.

I normally don’t use bad language in my reviews but I feel fully justified in asking WTF just happened?

Well, many years ago, back in the day as we old timers say, I wrote an in-depth article about the Halloween films for GoreZone magazine. My friend and publisher Bryn Hammond let me see an uncut producer’s version of the film as part of my research and that had a different ending. So, here’s the relevant excerpt from that article, which I wrote way, way back in 2007 and was published in GoreZone issue 37;

“By all accounts, the film tested badly when first screened and there were issues between actor Donald Pleasance and director Joe Chappelle and the cut described above was deemed the releasable "improved" print. The uncut version fared little better creatively but at least plugged a few plot holes.

In addition to the preceding, we learn that the baby was taken by the black clad figure, there’s a flashback to part 5 showing both Jamie AND Myers being taken from the prison that’s all new. The absence of scars on Loomis’s face is explained by plastic surgery, the absence of an American accent is explained by a stroke (?). There’s a lot more family footage of the Strodes, and a lot less graphic killing by Myers, but the main differences are towards the film’s end where it’s explained that the Thorn cult consider him a cleansing weapon and that he must kill every member of his family which explains his unrelenting pursuit of Laurie in the first couple of outings. An unpleasant aside has a heavy implication that Jamie’s baby has been fathered by Myers which really doesn’t bear thinking about. They are, after all, uncle and niece. Michael doesn’t get beaten and drugged in the uncut version - Tommy stops him in his tracks with some ancient Runes after the rescue, and when Loomis goes to attend to his previously unseen business, he finds Dr Wynn under the Shatner mask - Michael has changed places and is free to kill again. Certainly, that ending is better than no ending - as previously seen.”

Frankly, it amazes me that a film as simple and as effective as Halloween could degenerate into the convoluted mess that 4,5 and this became. This film marked the end of the original Halloween franchise. Nothing from these last three films (or Season of the Witch) would be mentioned again.

As 1998 approached, so did the 20th Anniversary. And a familiar face would return with a new continuity that would wash away the bitter taste of this one.