For the 400th time, welcome to B-Movie Enema, and, most importantly, allow me to extend to my Enemaniacs a very happy Halloween!

What better way to spend the greatest of all holidays, and this milestone review, than with that murderous monster Michael Myers? Well, you might want to table some of that excitement. That’s because it’s time to take a look at one of the most blasted entries in the entirety of the Halloween franchise. Yeah, we’re cursed, my dear readers. Let’s discuss 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Alright, check it out… Let’s go back to September 29, 1995, the day the sixth Michael Myers epic hit theater screens. I was 18 years old and a high school graduate. Sure, you might think I should have been a freshman in college, but, well… You don’t realize how absolutely listless and lazy I was (and still am). I didn’t go to college right after high school, pffft. Hell, when I did go to college the following year, I only stuck around for, like, two years.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah Halloween 6. I didn’t have that interesting story about that September night way back in my youthful days of 1995. But I was excited to see the new movie. I like Mikey Myers. I expected this sixth entry long before 1995. Six years had passed since the previous film’s release and that one ended on a cliffhanger. I had lots of questions about whether or not that would actually be picked up and continued with the Man in Black and Michael Myers being part of some sort of organized thing, hence the tattoo of the Thorn rune symbols on those two characters’ wrists.

Unfortunately, it was continued.

I guess we need to back up a bit to 1989. Halloween 5 underperformed. Halloween 4 was nothing short of a success. It was made on a $5 million budget and made nearly $18 million in return. However, Halloween 5 was made on an only slightly higher $5.6 million budget, but the box office returns were way down to almost $12 million. The quality was on display. The fourth movie worked mostly due to an early form of a soft reboot. Sure, it was kind of only grabbing the lowest common denominator type Michael Myers shenanigans, but it was good enough for most. Hell, we needed to re-establish the character after he was gone for so long. That’s fine. The fifth killed off a likable character, left us with mostly unlikable characters, and didn’t really give us exactly what we wanted which was Donald Pleasance and Danielle Harris dealing with Michael Myers until the final 35 minutes or so.

On top of all that, there was this whole new element of the Man in Black, the thorn tattoo, and the mystery of what that is, who that mysterious guy was, and how did it all connect? I salute a slightly different idea after a more rehashed concept the fourth movie was. Also, after four Michael Myers appearances to date, the idea of a silent, unstoppable killing machine can only go so far. So, I guess trying that mystery is not a terrible idea, but it comes out of nowhere and it obviously didn’t land for everyone.

I still love the shit out of the movie though. Somehow. In some way. I dunno. I just love the shit out of the movie, okay?

So, when Halloween 5 underperformed, producer Moustapha Akkad decided to pump the brakes a bit. He decided to do a full-on re-evaluation. Akkad didn’t so much like how Revenge deviated from Return. Now, there’s a joke waiting right there for me about how Curse just decided to turn the deviation up to, like, 15, but I’ll refrain. Despite the re-evaluation going on, 1990 still saw the expectation that Danielle Harris to return as Jamie Lloyd with Don Shanks under the mask as Michael. While it’s hard to imagine a Halloween film to not have Donald Pleasance, his return was only a possibility and not a certainty. Surprisingly, Wendy Kaplan was also a possibility to return as Tina. In addition, writer Daniel Farrands was working his way into the graces of the series’ producers and higher-ups.

Farrands gave his previous horror scripts to Revenge producer, Ramsey Thomas. Thomas was impressed and set Farrands up to meet with Akkad. Farrands was a MASSIVE Halloween fan. He knew the films inside and out and even had an encyclopedic knowledge of the previous films’ novelizations. He had ideas about where to take the film next and even came up with a series bible for the whole production team. Halloween 1990 and 1991 passed without a movie made. For 1992, Akkad was pushing hard for Italian filmmaker Michele Soavi, but that fell through – mostly thanks to some legal battles the producers fell into.

After an attempt by New Line Cinema to obtain rights to the series, and even bringing in John Carpenter to develop an idea that would find Michael Myers in space (because of course), eventually Miramax won out and Bob Weinstein sought the right person to helm the new entry. This included Quentin Tarantino of all people (because of course). The project picked up the title of Halloween 666: The Origin, but the original script for that version was flat-out hated by Akkad. To say the sixth Halloween film was in development hell would be an understatement.

Finally… after years of trying to figure out what direction this movie will take, Daniel Farrands would come back as writer and Joe Chappelle would be tapped to direct. The story would carry on some of the stuff from the fifth film with the Thorn cult and why Michael Myers does what he does and, sigh, explain the entire mystique of the Michael Myers character. More on that last bit later, but we will see the return of the character of Tommy Doyle, the character Laurie was charged with babysitting that fateful night in 1978, and Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasance for the final time. The character of Jamie Lloyd would return, but not played by Danielle Harris who was basically not negotiated a fair salary. Instead, J.C. Brandy took over the Jamie role. We’d also see new characters that include new Strodes – what would have been, like, Laurie Strode’s adoptive uncle’s family, I guess. Kara Strode, played by Marianne Hagan, would be our leading lady.

We’ll get into the actual plot as normal, but this movie was wildly unliked by fans. I think this movie was botched behind the scenes, but not really by the writer or director. The story goes that the movie was screened ahead of its release and final edits, as per the usual. However, it was screened to underaged audiences, at least according to Marianne Hagan. So, Miramax and subsidiary Dimension Films took the word of a lot of 14-year-old boys who found the ending to be quite bad, and called for a lot of reshoots to correct the conclusion that doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but, again, we’ll talk about that later. Generally, the theatrical version of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers just felt weird. Lots of little edits and changes were made for a textbook example of how important editing and structure are in film. Not only that, but there are changes made to the characters’ fates and actions that massively impact the film.

I’ll say that I remember seeing the movie on opening night with friends. I think we knew that the movie was pretty bad. It felt more like a direct-to-video sequel. It didn’t seem to be shot particularly well. It was missing some of the charm of the 80s Halloween films. Overall, I think we all wondered if what we watched was supposed to be taken seriously.

Later, the rumor of a different version of this movie started floating around. Workprints of the movie started leaking out as bootlegs. I’d always heard of Director’s Cut, especially after 1992’s new version of Blade Runner became popular, but I had never heard of a Producer’s Cut, and that’s what this was dubbed. The changes were significant. Maybe someday we’ll cover that here on the blog. Aside from discussing some of the major story changes, let’s just leave it alone for now with us all knowing that the Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Producer’s Cut has its own cult following much like the Thorn Cult has.

Unfortunately, I’m watching the inferior theatrical cut. The movie begins with a woman saying, “Michael, please don’t hurt me.” Then a woman is being wheeled down a hallway in what can best be described as a factory? Or… or… a warehouse? I dunno. It looks like a place where people who aren’t up to any good do things. What I do know for sure is that this is in the wrong aspect ratio. It’s like it was shot with scope, 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but shown in flat, 1.85:1 ratio. So it looks like J.C. Brandy’s Jamie has spent time on a medieval torture device.

Oh, yeah, that’s Jamie Lloyd on that gurney. She is being led by a guy in a dark pope outfit and surrounded by doctors. That’s because she’s pregnant and having a child. The Man in Black is there to take the child away for whatever reasons he has.

Paul Rudd, playing Tommy Doyle, is here to give us the background of Michael Myers. You know, he was a loving brother, a well-adjusted kid, and loved Halloween… What’s that? No? Oh… THAT Michael Myers. Yeah, he’s a monster. Six years ago, Michael and his niece Jamie Lloyd went missing, but he knows better. Tommy thinks they were actually hidden away. As we’ve seen, that’s also true. Thankfully, there is one doctor (or possibly nurse) who is sympathetic to Jamie’s plight. She grabs her baby and helps her escape.

That nurse, though? Oh, she’s Deadsville. Uncle Michael catches up to that lady and kills her kind of horribly by picking her up by the throat and smashing her head into a conveniently placed wall spike. I’m not kidding. There’s just a sharp corner sticking out of a wall for Michael to use to kill a lady.

Jamie gets outside in a storm and finds a truck that happens to be running because a guy decided to pull over and do a little storm drinking (for real, he’s just drinking booze outside in a rain storm). As he drunkenly yells and asks what she’s doing with his truck, Michael sneaks up behind and turns his head around… all the way around.

We then move to Haddonfield where we meet Kara and Danny Strode. Danny is a little dude and has a dream about a man in black with a big ol’ butcher’s knife who bids Danny to kill for him. Kara doesn’t really buy into this scary man who tells her son to do bad things. But she can’t help but notice that Danny keeps scribbling a particular symbol on his art. That of the Thorn runic symbol that we saw in Halloween 5.

But fuck that! Kara’s gotta get in the shower and do a slow striptease for us in front of a mirror!

Paul Rudd is a fan too.

The specter of Michael Myers still hangs over Haddonfield. It’s a weird thing about these movies. Michael Myers is always talked about and the horrors of the various attacks he perpetrated and so on. However, Halloween still continues on like it does in any small midwestern town. This movie simultaneously celebrates it and tries to outlaw the holiday, but it never seems to land on exactly what angle it should take.

This is also the age of the talk radio call-in show. There’s a guy who is fielding calls and it’s a lot of cranks calling and talking about Michael Myers. One girl wants to find out what he looks like underneath his mask. Tommy talks about how Michael is kind of a forever threat and an unstoppable force, but he’s cut off after being called a nutter. Conspiracy theorists are talking about how he was recruited by the CIA and is an assassin, but when they couldn’t control him, they shot him off into space. That’s actually a leftover element from that previous story idea by John Carpenter.

One person asks about Loomis and says he heard the old quack up and died. That’s when we see Loomis, apparently also a fan of this call-in show. He answers to the radio that he’s not dead, but very much retired. This is the final film role for Donald Pleasance. The original ending of this movie would have been far more interesting for his final go, but we’ll get around to that later. This film was shot in the fall of 1994, just months from his passing. It’s actually kind of shocking how much he seemed to age between the fifth and sixth movies. You can tell he’s not in great health with his voice seemingly weaker than it was in previous entries and his body kind of frail. He passed away in February 1995 and was not available for the reshoots that were rushed into production that summer to complete the film – which was released before the end of September. Gosh. That… that explains a lot with this movie.

Anyway, Loomis gets a visit from an old colleague, Dr. Terence Wynn, played by Mitch Ryan. Wynn was seen very briefly in the original Halloween as the administrative director of Smiths Grove Sanitarium. We only see him in that one scene in which Loomis, the day after Michael made his daring escape in the driving rainstorm on October 30, 1978, expresses his displeasure at the situation. He comes to visit Loomis as Jamie pulls off the road and goes into a bus station. She tries calling Haddonfield emergency services but decides to call the talk radio show that is also playing at the station. There, she gets on the air and says Michael Myers is coming and she needs help from Dr. Loomis.

Both Loomis and Tommy hear the call.

Jamie decides to hide the baby in the bus station bathroom when Michael gets there and cuts the power. Jamie escapes through a window but is followed by Michael. He runs her truck off the road where she tries to hide at a nearby farm. Unfortunately, Michael kills her by pushing her onto the blades of some sort of machine.

Tommy happened to record Jamie’s call into the talk show and realizes, upon hearing the background ambient noises in the call, that she was calling from a bus stop. He finds the baby there. He actually does a smart thing and takes the baby to the hospital where he runs into Dr. Loomis and Dr. Wynn. So… Here’s the thing about this scene – in the theatrical version, it makes no sense whatsoever. This whole plot point starting with Jamie being chased by Michael is different than the original producer’s cut of the movie. She is stabbed in the barn but survives. When Loomis and Wynn learn that she’s been found, in both versions of the movie, they go to the scene of the attack where they see she’s taken to the hospital. In the producer’s cut, she’s in a coma. Not only do we learn more about her baby in the coma at the midway point, but it’s why Loomis and Wynn are at the hospital when Tommy brings the child there.

Without Jamie surviving, there is literally no reason on Earth why Loomis and Wynn would be at the hospital when Tommy Doyle arrives. Yes, they went to where “Jamie’s body was found” in the theatrical version. However, her body is put on a stretcher but not covered like a dead body, giving heavy credence to her survival. They would have reason to follow her to the hospital, but if she’s dead, why would they go to the hospital and not the morgue if they actually need to see her body for some reason? Either way, Jamie’s death was part of the thematic changes made after the failed test screening. But you couldn’t cut out the part in which Loomis finds Tommy at the hospital and redo how these two sides of the heroic team-up meet because Pleasance was dead. So they had to just kind of say “fuck it” and leave that there. Aside from a plot hole that was left in because of the change, Jamie Lloyd, a character who we followed in two films as a child (a very likable child character at that), is dispatched in a relatively cold and dispassionate way 18 minutes into the movie.

Outside of the Man in Black, who is still part of this movie, this pretty much closes all loose ends from the last two movies and I just kind of wish they didn’t even bother trying to close those at all.

The morning of Halloween, we meet Kara’s family. Her dad is a massive assfuck. He says she’s a loser for having a kid. Her mom tries to be an actual human being and help her, but he only gets mad at her. He says everything was going great until Kara showed up with her little bastard. Kara calls him a bastard and he slaps her. When he keeps up with his father-of-the-year act, Danny pulls a knife on the old fucker to defend his mother.

Things are going great at the Strode house! Oh yeah… It’s not just the Strode house. It’s the Myers house. I should go ahead and get that right out of the way. It’s why Tommy continuously watches the house, even if that means he will come off as a creep by peeping on Kara changing clothes.

Speaking of Tommy, Kara asks her friend Beth, who apparently also lives in the same boardinghouse Tommy lives in, about the weird guy who is always staring out his window. Beth, Kara’s brother Tim’s girlfriend, says that he’s mostly harmless. He had some pretty scary stuff happen to him as a kid so he’s a little messed up but probably wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Beth and Tim are part of a group of people putting together something of a Halloween rally at the college. This is what I was saying earlier. The movie is a little wishy-washy on whether or not Haddonfield is cool with Halloween. There are plenty who treat this like any other Halloween. Then there are others who are arguing against continuing Halloween traditions and celebrations. It’s never really focused on in these later sequels what people really think of what’s happened. It’s a kind of big deal in the David Gordon Green movies, especially Halloween Kills (you know, “Evil Dies Tonight!”) and, to some extent, Halloween Ends (at least surrounding Laurie). There’s more I could really go into that, but I do often find it weird that by the time you get to the Halloween: Resurrection you don’t have any view of how the average Haddonfield resident feels about Halloween as a holiday. Yet, sometimes it’s touched upon like it is in this movie, but in a peculiar, half-assed way.

Anyway, let’s get back on track here. So, Tommy let Loomis know that the Strodes are living in the Myers house. Kara’s mother Debra, played by Kim Darby of True Grit fame, is home alone doing laundry. She’s startled by Loomis coming in and telling her he’s there to help her and her family because, uh oh spaghettios, they are in the one place that Michael will be dead set on visiting on this most special of special days. Meanwhile, Tommy, having failed to get help for the baby, brings it to the boardinghouse where he lives, and names the kid Steven.

Debra calls her husband, John, and tells her about her visit with Dr. Loomis. John doesn’t give two craps about her concerns about Michael Myers, the body of Jamie Lloyd, and all this spooky shit. John knew the history of the house but didn’t tell the family. His brother could never sell the house because of what happened there and it was basically left to John to deal with. So… what did he decide to do? Shit! Let’s move in!

Debra packs up and plans to leave with the kids, but John won’t go with her. She realizes the axe John used earlier to chop down a Michael Myers prank in the front yard is missing. She stops only to answer the ringing phone which happens to be the Man in Black saying they want the child. She sees Michael and runs outside where he quickly traps her in the hanging laundry and axes the shit out of her.

That’s some good broad daylight terror if I do say so myself.

Kara comes home from school but isn’t able to get inside. It seems as though the door is chained but she can’t get her mom’s attention. She goes around to the backyard, but can’t find anyone there either. Also, I guess it’s a good thing that either Michael or the Man in Black thought it was a good idea to take the sheet that is now covered with Kim Darby’s blood and brains and stuff and hide it somewhere. In one way, that’s kind of considerate. You know, it’s just good manners to clean up your mess, right? In another way, it’s considerate for us as an audience to be kept in high suspense to not ruin the reveal to another character that their mom is dead.

Instead of finding her mom, Kara finds Danny hanging out with Tommy. You know what they say about what kinds of people often attract, right? Yup, crazies. Anyway, she’s none-too-pleased that peeper Tommy is with her son alone in the house, but Tommy does say that Debra wasn’t anywhere to be found so he is doing the little dude a bit of a solid by hanging with him. Plus… He’s Paul Frickin’ Rudd! Look at that only-slightly-younger-looking-than-he-is-today Paul Rudd. Kara should be fawning over him as much as I am! Anyway, Tommy asks Kara if she knows whose room that one used to be. He then takes her and Danny over to his room at the boardinghouse so as to not at all come off as a crazy obsessive nut about Michael Myers and the Thorn cult.

We are now at the exact halfway point of this movie. Tommy has met with Dr. Loomis. He’s now connected fully to Kara and Danny. Kara still basically thinks Tommy is completely nuts, but he tells her that he should watch her house from his window because Michael will be coming home. Kara is a little more than put off by the literal murder wall of clippings about Michael’s professional career as a murderer. That distracts her when Danny looks out the window and sees Michael standing in the front yard of their house in one of the better shots of the whole movie.

I like to think that other people are seeing this too and are like, “That’s a pretty bitchin’ stuffed Michael Myers you got out there, Strode dudes!” Michael Myers somehow manages to be both the stealthiest of all the slashers while also not being very stealthy at all. He has no problem just being out in public. It’s hard to think that, even with the lightning and storm that’s apparently rolling in, that there aren’t people out doing Halloween things in Haddonfield. He is gonna be seen.

Still, it’s a cool shot.

Danny Strode has a little bit of a Jamie Lloyd thing going on. We saw Michael Myers in her nightmare the same night he escaped from the hospital at the start of the fourth movie. Of course, she could see and feel his movements in the fifth. Danny is having nightmares about the Man in Black. He’s being called to kill. He’s seeing Michael Myers, but after closing his eyes real hard, Michael is gone. There’s a little bit of that Jamie psychic thing, but it also plays well with the old concept from the first film that basically made Michael into the boogeyman.

Tommy explains how there’s an alphabet of Celtic symbols made up of runes and other symbols. The Thorn, he explains, was derived from a constellation that appears on some Halloween nights, or, more accurately, Samhain nights. The tradition that Michael is basically following is the ritualistic sacrifice of an entire family line for prosperity. That’s why he’s drawn to killing the Myers. Anyone who gets in the way will also be killed because, well, it’s a sacrifice for prosperity. You can’t not kill the person you are trying to kill. Tommy also says that whenever the Thorn constellation appears, Michael appears.

Loomis and Wynn are still at the hospital. They learn that Jamie had a baby maybe no more than 24 hours before she died as the autopsy revealed placenta juice in her body. Wynn wonders if she had a baby, where could it be? Loomis already knows because Tommy had a baby when he saw him earlier in the day.

Tommy has gone to the campus rally for Halloween. He was planning to meet Dr. Loomis there. Tommy looks on at the people preparing for the rally and carrying signs about Michael Myers and so forth. He’s being watched by the Man in Black. Meanwhile, back at the boardinghouse, the old lady who runs the joint, Mrs. Blankenship, tells Danny about the reason for the season. Halloween is celebrated to ward off evil spirits and, especially, the boogeyman. It’s maybe one of the best scenes of this run of sequels that started with the fourth film. It’s atmospheric. It’s all about Halloween, and it ties Michael back to the concept of the boogeyman. It’s also a little more of a natural halfway point for the plot itself despite it now being several minutes beyond the halfway point of the runtime.

However, Mrs. Blankenship tips her hand a little bit too far. She tells Kara that Danny hears the voice that the little boy who lived in their house did all those years ago. Mrs. Blankenship was lil’ Mikey Myers’ babysitter that fateful Halloween night. She said that night, the voices came for Michael and told him to kill his family.

At the rally, the guy who seemed to be dressed as the Man in Black is just the shock jock who came to Haddonfield to do his show live at the college. While Tim and Beth are about to participate in the show, John Strode comes home somewhat drunk, and expecting to see some dinner from his wife, but, well, his wife doesn’t live there anymore. The lights shut off and John goes to check the fuses thinking someone is messing with him. When he gets to the basement, he’s surprised to see the washing machine still operating. He turns it off and opens it to find blood-soaked stuff inside and Michael Myers behind him ready to run him through and pin him against the fuse box to electrocute him and blow him up.

Now that Debra and John Strode are both dead in this movie, I should point out that they were obviously named for Debra Hill and John Carpenter, the two masterminds behind the original Halloween film. I guess Debra Hill was a shrinking violet and John Carpenter was a massive asshole and abusive husband and father.

Meanwhile, at the campus rally for Halloween(?), Beth and the shock jock are having a discourse about the holiday. As she put it, the town’s been basically held hostage by the image of Halloween for a long time, but Michael Myers is clearly gone. He’s not been seen for six years. It’s time to move on, reclaim Halloween, and be a normal place again. She also reveals that Tim and her family live in the Myers house. Tim did not know that. The shock jock decides to move the show to the Myers house to finish the show.

Bad news for the radio host, though. After he called his producer, Michael was waiting for him in the back of his van. He kills the shock jock which basically means that Beth and Tim are alone in the Myers house instead of the radio team being there and all the extra people. Tim and Beth decide to go upstairs for a fuck, because there’s nothing more sexy than a pretty girl dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein (seriously, that’s good shit). At the rally, Tommy finds the shock jock’s body in a tree.

When did Michael put the body in the tree? How did Michael put that body in the tree? No one saw him do that? There were a considerable amount of people at that rally. Do you think people just thought it was a guy in a costume hanging a dummy up in the tree? Didn’t they realize it was a famous radio show host who was literally JUST on stage? It’s not like this rally/fair/whatever it is that was going on wasn’t crowded. There were all sorts of people around. I get there are logic jumps in a lot of slashers, but this one is maybe a jump too far.

Back at home, after getting that good sex on, Tim takes a shower but is killed shortly after when Michael sneaks up behind him and slits his throat. Kara calls home to find out what the light is in her room and Beth answers. She tells Beth to get Tim and get the fuck out of the house, but before she can explain why, Michael comes into the bedroom and repeatedly stabs Beth, killing her while Kara is forced to watch.

This scene is actually really good, but it sucks that it was botched in editing. The idea that Kara can use the camera pointed at her room, which was set up early on with Tommy watching her from that same window, to see Beth, who she and Tim were just joking about how they used Kara’s room to fuck in, and then have Kara witness Michael coming in and killing her, is, in no stretch of imagination, a good moment in a movie that is lacking in good moments and ideas. It’s chilling in a lot of ways and it finally brings everything home for Kara who was doubting what was happening up to this point. However, the forced slow-motion and the flashes of negative color just feel… off. It’s not well constructed. I almost wonder if fewer cuts back and forth and just leaving it with Beth for a few hacks of Michael’s knife and then leaving the entirety of the rest of the scene on Kara would have been, maybe, more artistic.

However, this is the sixth installment of the Halloween franchise so maybe art isn’t really in the cards.

Alright, so we have a Michael Myers in the Myers house and dead family and friends there too. Uh oh, where’s Danny? Well, just as Michael was about to get down with the put down of Tim and Beth, Danny heard the voice calling to him and he’s gone across the street where our bad guy is. Kara follows to retrieve him and first finds Beth and Tim’s bodies in her room. She does find Danny, but Michael has found her too.

Kara tells Danny to run while she tries to barricade herself from Michael and defend herself with a poker. You can probably imagine this does not work all that well. Kara manages to make Michael tumble down the stairs but he does that whole “pretending to be dead/incapacitated thing” which backfires on her when Danny approaches Michael’s body. This forces her to have to go near Michael’s hand which he then grabs her leg. Kara and Danny are able to get out of the house and back over to the boardinghouse where Tommy and Loomis have just returned to discover the baby is missing.

Kara and Danny get in before Michael gets to them. Tommy knows someone else had to know about the baby because how else could it be missing now. Just as Loomis does figure out that there was one other person besides him, Tommy, Kara, and Danny who knew about the baby, a voice calls to Danny to sit on his lap. It’s then we learn who the identity of the Man in Black actually is… And it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

So, yeah. Wynn is the mastermind of the Thorn cult. I mean, in a way, it kind of makes sense. He was running the show at Smiths Grove when Michael was there. He would have had some intimate knowledge of Michael’s case, and, if this is some sort of cult thing, it would make sense why he would, more or less, allow Michael to escape that night back in 1978. However, in the grand scheme of the whole franchise and Michael as this boogeyman-type killer character, it makes no sense why there would be any kind of cult or have Wynn be the one running it.

One of my least favorite things in a horror movie franchise is when they decide to go back to explain the origins or some sort of secret past that the monster or killer or character or whatever had to some larger thing that really only means anything to the audience. I never, in a million years, want to know that Jason Voorhees had a dad that dabbled in occult shit, or that Freddy Krueger made a deal with nightmare sperm demons, or that Michael Myers was part of a cult and that’s why, from the time he was six, apparently, was the reason why he killed. This is not interesting. It sours a lot of the randomness of that first film’s tension and terror. Sometimes bad things happen to good people who did nothing on their own to cause the bad things. It’s raw and, dare I say, realistic that it goes that way instead of getting the full reasons why the killer kills.

I don’t mind if characters in a series or movie have their own ways of coping with things. Maybe they have to come up with conspiracies to help explain something to cope. That’s fine. When this sort of leftfield stuff becomes “official” canon, it creates issues for me. It sours that unique specialness that Michael Myers had. I love that, of all the franchises that exist out there from the 80s, Hellraiser never tried to explain the origins of the Cenobites. We didn’t ask for it. We don’t need it. I certainly didn’t ask for this take when it comes to Michael Myers.

Alright, so there’s a bit of a time jump here. After Wynn is revealed to be the mastermind and the Man in Black, it’s also revealed that Mrs. Blankenship is also part of the cult as she’s now got the baby which apparently is a major part of the entire plan. I think the baby is meant to be Michael’s final sacrifice and the cult is now interested in Danny picking up the mantle of their mass killer. When cornered, Kara yeets herself out the window. It seems as though Wynn drugged Tommy and Loomis and then took Kara.

I like that even Tommy’s like, “Why didn’t he just kill us?” Come on, Paul Rudd. If they killed you, the rest of the movie wouldn’t be able to happen. There’s still like 30 minutes left here. Besides, Loomis is hip to the plan. He knows the spooky place from the opening credits was the Smiths Grove Sanitarium.

Loomis confronts Wynn while Tommy follows screams that he thinks will lead him to Kara. Wynn says that Loomis was the first to recognize the evil in Michael, but Jamie’s baby will be the start of a new age. Loomis is about to shoot Wynn but another cultist blackjacks Loomis and knocks him out. Guys… The man is very, very old. I’m not sure the drugging and the knocking out are doing him any good.

Tommy finds Kara’s cell/room/whatever, room 237. Clever. He grabs a fire extinguisher and bashes it on the door handle to open the door. This brings Michael out of another room as if to say, “Dude. I’m trying to get some fucking sleep. It’s been a really busy 48 hours. Can you knock it off, man?”

Realizing Michael is no fun when he’s been woken prematurely from his nap, Tommy shits his pants a little bit and then gets Kara’s door open just in time to mostly get away from Michael. He grabs Kara’s hair through the bars and Tommy uses a gas grenade gun to shoot Michael in the chest to get her free.

Now, of course, we know Michael isn’t dead. What’s more, Kara and Tommy are only going deeper into Smiths Grove. This gives them the opportunity to look into what might be an operating room or something. Wynn is clearly the main man in this procedure because he’s wearing red scrubs to perform whatever thing he’s going to do with either Danny or Jamie’s baby or both. Michael is also near and making things difficult for our heroes…

And everyone else because Michael goes fucking ape on everyone in the operating room. He’s killing nurses and surgeons and just about anyone and anything he can grab and run through with the very, very, comedically large scalpel/knife thing. He also uses a guy’s face to knock down a cell door. He’d be pretty useful if you want to escape prison… as long as it’s not your head he’s using to smash open your jail cell.

The chase eventually leads our cast through a room of dead fetuses. It seems as though maybe Wynn and his cult of weirdos have been doing experiments to create, what I can only assume, is the perfect evil killing machine or something. I mean… Michael’s pretty tough. He’s been shot many times. He’s been exploded. He gets stabbed a lot. He gets beaten up often. He’s, like, already the perfect killing machine? He’s even fairly indestructible in the David Gordon Green movies and those are supposed to bring it back to the series’ basics.

While Kara, Danny, and the baby hide, Tommy tries to trick Michael with a decoy of the baby. However, the baby coos and gives up the ruse. So, Tommy uses a handful of syringes full of biohazard stuff to stun him. You know it’s biohazard stuff because it’s electric green. It does disorientate him a little but not enough for him to not give Kara a near-death experience when he throttles her.

Kara, Danny, and the baby escape with Loomis while Tommy beats the hell out of Michael with a lead pipe. I think we’re supposed to believe that he caved Michael’s head in. Smash cut to Tommy, Kara, Danny, and Steven in a car asking Dr. Loomis to come with them. Loomis declines saying he has some business to attend to here. What that business is, I could not say. But they leave and Loomis re-enters the building where we soon hear him screaming in terror and we’re left with Michael’s mask and a syringe lying ominously on the floor of that weird dead baby room.

And… That’s it.

The theatrical version of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers ends on this sort of cliffhanger that you must assume means the death of Dr. Loomis. However, the end of the Producer’s Cut is a different story. Not only is Jamie Lloyd’s end different, but so is Michael’s, Dr. Wynn’s, and Dr. Loomis’. In that cut, Tommy doesn’t bust up Michael with the syringes of goo and a lead pipe. He actually knows how to immobilize the killer using runes. You know, the things that was the origin of the Thorn symbol which the entire cult is based on? Tommy basically turns Michael into an inert statue. Meanwhile, Loomis tries to confront Wynn one last time, but discovers Michael has disguised himself as the Man in Black and put Wynn in the mask and Michael Myers suit. Wynn transfers guardianship of Michael over to Loomis. The scream heard at the end of the theatrical cut is taken from Loomis discovering he is now marked with the Thorn symbol and Michael escapes. It definitely left for a continuation involving Thorn, but 14-year-old dudes didn’t like it. I’m of a mixed opinion myself. The Producer’s Cut is better but only nominally. It is a better-made product than the theatrical cut but that is mostly due to the changes forced by the reshoots and poor test screenings.

I thought for sure there would never be another Halloween film. Pleasence was dead. Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t seem interested in coming back. John Carpenter certainly wasn’t coming back. I would have never expected that Halloween: H20 would be released three short years later with Jamie Lee back as Laurie Strode. I definitely would not expect SIX more Halloween films to be released after that.

However, this is the one that sticks in a lot of fans’ craws. It’s kind of funny because there are a lot of loud vitriol spit toward the Rob Zombie duology, but I think a majority of Halloween fans would say the same thing – “At least it’s not Halloween 6.” I have a lot of questions about why they went in the directions they did with this entry, but, and I almost hate to say this, there is something to kind of like about this movie.

Oh god, here we go… Maybe nostalgia is now catching up to me now that I’m closer to 50 than I am to 40. So, maybe there’s a part of me that misses going to the theater as an 18-year-old guy with my friends with the weather cooling and the Halloween season fast approaching that I miss. I can’t say Curse falls right in line with the exact same regurgitated stuff that Return and Revenge did in the late 80s. So that gives this movie a unique feel that sets it apart. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but maybe it isn’t so much so.

When you add to it the mystique of the behind-the-scenes troubles and how long it took to get from the fifth to the sixth film, and then the whole other cut that significantly changes Jamie’s story and the end of the movie in two very different ways, it makes this a unique movie even outside the Halloween franchise.

While I’ve already taken time to write about the five most infamous films in the franchise, I don’t think I’m necessarily done with Halloween. It’s safe to say that the 1978 Halloween and the 2018 Halloween are safe from ever being featured. What more can I say about the 1978 movie that wasn’t already discussed or dissected? The 2018 movie is, to me, a legitimately good movie so it doesn’t need to be featured. The rest? Open season. I wouldn’t necessarily count on me going right back to the well next year, but, one day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back.

This Friday, we return to the regularly scheduled articles as we enter the month of November! And, speaking of coming back, I have some unfinished business that connects to a movie I reviewed earlier this year. This Friday, I look at the 2004 Frank Oz remake of The Stepford Wives. You can’t see my face, but I’m not smiling about this.

That said, if you’ve been around for most of these 400 B-Movie Enema articles, I thank you for your support and your attention. It’s a great feeling to know people read my ramblings. I sure hope I have 400 more to share with you over the next several years.

Until Friday, have a great and safe Halloween, and watch the fuck out of some horror movies, won’t ya?