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Excl. Interview & BTS Photos: Dan Roebuck Talks Halloween – Part 2

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From his debut turn as a teenaged murderer in Tim Hunter’s 1986 cult drama River’s Edge to his role of “Arnold Walker” in the television sci-fi series “The Man in the High Castle,” prolific actor Dan Roebuck has over the span of his thirty-five year career demonstrated an impressive diversity working within multiple genres. But with over two hundred roles under his belt, the often-maligned category of horror remains to this day his personal favorite.

Dan Roebuck in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II

A monster fan from an early age and a lifetime collector of genre ephemera (his assemblage of oddities range from life-sized Frankenstein props and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines to vintage 70s wax museum pennant banners and Don Post Studios masks, and most everything in between), Roebuck would also go on to further explore his love of horror through the arts via several genre roles, including but not limited to turns in Final Destination (2000), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) and Larry Blamire’s 2009 cult indie The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (among others), as well as his own creation of his horror persona “Dr. Shocker,” host of Dr. Shocker’s Vault of Horror.

It’s his appearance though as “Lou Martini” in both Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Halloween II which genre fans may most recognize him for, and of which we dug into recently while chatting with the affable actor and filmmaker in his Los Angeles home cum-museum.

“For (2007’s) Halloween, I auditioned,” recalled Roebuck, who at the time had already worked with filmmaker Zombie on The Devil’s Rejects in 2005 (in which he appears as “Morris Green,” a role he’d reprise some years later in 2019’s 3 From Hell). “I’m not precious when it comes to that. Even though I had worked for Rob before I had to prove myself again. This is what I do. I’m an actor, so I don’t mind.”

Of the audition Roebuck remembers, “I actually was coming from a read for something else, and I had glued on a moustache and a beard, because the character I was reading for (in Halloween) was Chester Chesterfield, this groundskeeper that Michael Myers kills at a cemetery.”

“That role ended up going to Sid Haig,” continued Roebuck, “so I didn’t get that part, but Rob said, ‘Do you want to play the part of the strip club owner instead?’ So, that’s how I was cast in Halloween. And I remember I acted opposite Gary Grossman, who was the nerdy guy in (the 1984 film) Bachelor Party, and I was so excited, because I love that film. Gary was the other guy at the bar, and we shot a day or two.”

(left-to-right) Dan Roebuck & Gary Grossman in a scene deleted from Rob Zombie’s Halloween

Reminiscing on principal photography of Halloween, Roebuck offered, “It was in Valencia, California, at The Rabbit in Red set which they had built there. And while there is a shot of me in the movie, one brief glimpse, I think it turned out to my benefit that I got cut out of the film. Because of that, there was no definitive end to my character, which allowed Lou to come back in Halloween II. And that was more of a meal certainly than the role as it was written in the first film. In the first one I had one or two scenes, one of which was a nice one with Sheri (Moon Zombie). But the second film, the role was a much larger one, and it had a great death scene for my character, which we ended up shooting twice, because the first time we shot it, when Michael killed me, he wasn’t wearing the mask.”

As for Roebuck’s return in Halloween II, the actor recalled, “Because I had been in Halloween, it was assumed I suppose that I would be in Halloween II if the character were to return. So, three or four weeks before they were to shoot Halloween II, Rob calls me up and says, ‘Dan, we were just thinking, this guy in the script who’s this Frankenstein guy, I thought maybe it should be Lou Martini. What are you doing this weekend?’ I said, ‘I’ll be wherever you need me to be, Mr. Zombie.’ So, I flew right to Atlanta (Georgia) to the film’s production offices.”

With over two decades having passed in narrative since the introduction of his character in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, the character of Martini was not only required to look older in Zombie’s follow-up, but also at times to sport the previously mentioned Frankenstein’s Monster getup as the script necessitated.

(left-to-right) Dan Roebuck & Wayne Toth (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

“So, it was (makeup department head) Douglas Noe who handled the age makeup and the sideburns, and (special effects makeup designer) Wayne Toth who created the second Frankenstein look,” remembered Roebuck. “So, I went down there, and I was like a kid in a candy store! Wayne is a great makeup man, and on top of that I had friends in the Atlanta area, fellow monster collectors, and they got to come to set and to meet Rob, while the makeup department established the looks.” (Writer’s note: additional never-before-seen photos at the end of this article).

“And I’ll tell you what my favorite part of it was,” expounded Roebuck. “I was in the wardrobe trailer waiting on something, the pants I was going to wear or whatever, and there were some Don Post masks in there. I said, ‘Oh, are you using these in the film?’ And they said, ‘No, we can’t get permission (from Don Post Studios) to use them.’ So, I called Don Post Jr., and he answered the phone, and I said to him, ‘Don, I’m on the set of this new Halloween movie that Rob Zombie’s doing, and do you know this mask? And this mask? Can they use them in the movie? And Don said, ‘Yeah.’ So, I said to production, ‘OK, you now have permission to use these masks in the film!’ So somewhere in the background of Halloween II are those Don Post masks! What are the odds?”

As for Roebuck’s death scene as originally shot in Halloween II, the actor stated, “The first time, you know, it wasn’t much of a death. Tyler kind of just threw me into a locker, and that was that. He had already stomped Jeff Daniel Phillips, and I don’t remember what he did to Sylvia Jefferies’ character. But the deaths were much quicker. And then, when we went to re-shoot with Tyler wearing the mask, we shot all that totally inappropriate stuff. You know, the, ‘You want to bang Frankenstein’s monster?’ stuff.”

(left-to-right) Sylvia Jefferies & Dan Roebuck in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II

Of that, Roebuck recalled, “So, my wife called during filming and asked, ‘How’s it going? What are you up to?’ And I said, ‘Oh, it’s a hard day, you know, I’m up here with this naked actress.’ My wife said, ‘What? She’s naked? How naked?’ And I said, ‘Well, naked.’ You know, you can’t for the life of you convince someone who you’re married to that spending a day with a gorgeous naked lady is work. So, don’t even try.”

Regarding his death scene redux, “I’m sure that I have brain damage from it, to this day,” he laughed. “When we were shooting the scene in the (strip club’s) hall, and I’m trying to think of how the shots are configured, but I think I was running away from (Michael Myers actor) Tyler Mane, and the camera was behind him and he yelled, ‘Dan!’ And I turned around to see that he was running at me in huge steps, and he probably covered thirty-five feet of hallway in just five of them, and I was like, ‘Ahhh!’ Because he was Michael Myers, and I hadn’t seen him in the mask up until that point. And that was quite simply total immersion: the immersion of your child self into your adult self, and from the kid to the artist. None of that was lost on me. From the boy who was inspired by movie monsters to act and to create to the adult who later was working with movie monsters, it was full circle. It was a gift.”

As for Roebuck’s personal relationship with the 6’ 8” Mane, “He’s just quite simply a really nice man. You know, my daughter has always called him ‘Buttercup,’ because as a little kid she gave all of my friends nicknames. So, she told him, ‘I’m going to call you Buttercup.’ And he just smiled and said, ‘OK.’”

For more, check out part 1 of our interview with Roebuck here, and for those interested in Roebuck’s latest endeavors, you can visit achannelofpeace.org for more.

(left-to-right) Gary Grossman, Dan Roebuck, Ken Foree & Rob Zombie (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

(left-to-right) Dan Roebuck, Tyler Mane & Sylvia Jefferies (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

(left-to-right) Douglas Noe & Dan Roebuck (Photo Credit: Dan Roebuck)

(left-to-right) Dan Roebuck & Rob Zombie (Photo Credit: Dan Roebuck)

Between takes on the set of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

 

 

Excl. Interview & BTS Photos: Dan Roebuck Talks Halloween, River’s Edge & More

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The Rabbit in Red. For horror audiences watching John Carpenter’s classic film Halloween in 1978, the crimson book of matches which bore that name served merely as a quasi MacGuffin: a piece of strategically placed production art intended to communicate antagonist Michael Myers journey from Smith’s Grove to a remote set of train tracks outside Haddonfield. For Halloween fans though, who often obsess over minutia, the lounge’s name itself would become a ‘deep cut’ as emblematic as the film’s iconic poster art, with the Rabbit logo finding its way first onto black market merchandise, and later licensed product.

The Rabbit in Red – Rob Zombie’s Halloween 

Rockstar turned writer and director Rob Zombie also took notice, and in penning his 2007 reimagining of the film he appropriated the Rabbit name, transforming it from a simple Midwestern lounge to a full-blown strip club in which young Michael Myer’s mother Deborah works. The Rabbit in Red would also go on to make an appearance in Zombie’s follow-up to his remake, 2009’s Halloween II. And as with most cinematic portrayals of strip clubs, it wouldn’t be complete without a colorful owner.

Enter prolific actor Dan Roebuck, who as The Rabbit in Red’s proprietor “Lou Martini” not only inhabited the role Zombie had written, but also imbued it with some of his own monster loving tendencies.

Sitting down recently with Roebuck in his Los Angeles home-cum-museum (the actor and filmmaker has over time amassed an entirely awe-inspiring collection of antiquities and artifacts, which combined work as a living history of the horror genre itself), we chatted of his involvement in Zombie’s divisive take on Halloween, as well as his early beginnings as an actor opposite Dennis Hopper in 1986’s infamous River’s Edge, and a whole lot more.

Dan Roebuck (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

“I first saw John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1979 at the Boyd Theatre in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” recalled Roebuck of his teenaged introduction to the film, “and I was obsessed. What Carpenter presented in that movie was something lacking in modern horror film, which was, he re-introduced suspense to the story, as opposed to the William Castle approach of it simply being, “Thrills and Chills!” So, it became a mixture of the two. And I remember being absolutely 100% interested in how that was different.”

Not content with simply being a passive viewer (Roebuck had already at an early age shown an interest in movie monsters and magic, as evidenced by his self-applied makeups using Imagineering products, in direct emulation of his film idol Lon Chaney), the actor decided to augment Michael Myers’ silver screen scares by terrifying captive theater-goers himself.

“I actually made myself up with a rubber white face, because I don’t think anyone knew then that Myers’ mask was actually a (modified) William Shatner mask,” said the now fifty-seven year-old, “and I came back later and ran through the theater while Halloween was playing, just like they used to hire people to do during screenings of The Tingler (in 1959). Bob Clausen, the theater’s manager, he knew I liked to do makeup, and as some friends and I had already started a Rocky Horror Picture Show revival there called the Lehigh Valley Rocky Horror Players, he’d asked me to do it. I guess it didn’t bother him that my fifteen year-old self was running around a screening of a R-rated horror film. But being killed on the screen by Michael Myers himself so many years later? I couldn’t have seen that coming.”

Roebuck’s pubescent interest in Halloween didn’t wane, and following Rick Rosenthal’s follow-up Halloween II in 1981, he like many was eager to see what next the series would bring, and for him the Myer’less third film, 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, didn’t disappoint.

“By Halloween III they had me,” remembers Roebuck, “because by then I was reading Fangoria magazine, and I was well aware that the masks in the film, the glow-in-the-dark skull, the lime-green witch and the jack-o’-lantern, were made by Don Post Studios, and I lusted after Don Post masks.”

From Dan Roebuck’s Collection. (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

While his love of horror and sci-fi continued to grow, so did his passion for performing, and a move to Hollywood, California, would soon follow. Roles came quickly, and  his second feature film (following his top-billed 1985 comedy Cavegirl), Tim Hunter’s previously mentioned River’s Edge, found Roebuck inhabiting the role of a teenaged murderer opposite the late Dennis Hopper.

Written by Neal Jimenez and co-starring a young Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Crispin Glover and Joshua Miller (who had made his own film debut in Halloween III), the suburban, post-punk flick is based on an actual 1981 crime, in which a sixteen-year-old Milpitas, California resident raped and murdered his fourteen-year-old girlfriend before boasting about the crime to his peers, who then took over two full days to report it.

In River’s Edge, Roebuck portrays a representation of that murderer, the unhinged and disassociated “Samson.”

“I went in as the character,” Roebuck recalled of the audition. “I greased my hair down and put on clothes that were very similar to the (eventual) costuming in the film, like a plaid shirt over some kind of t-shirt, and I walked into the room with a can of beer, cracked open the can and said, ‘Go ahead.’ As far as (director) Tim Hunter knew, I was just some dirty, crazy kid (casting director) Carrie Frazier had found. And the scene I was reading was the scene at the river with (Dennis Hopper’s character of) Feck. You know. ‘So, why’d you kill her? She tell you to eat shit?’ All of that stuff. It was crazy.”

(left-to-right) Actors Roxanna Zal, Josh Richmond, Daniel Roebuck and Ione Skye between takes on River’s Edge (Photo Copyright: Daniel Roebuck)

Already a legend having appeared in such iconic American films as Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, prolific actor Hopper (1936-2010) was however at the time working on a career revival following a recent stint in rehab. Of the trio of films which helped him attain it, one was David Lynch’s Academy Award nominated Blue Velvet, which he had wrapped just prior to principal photography of River’s Edge.

“I only remember the Blue Velvet thing because when we were shooting outside of Feck’s house,” remembered Roebuck. “River’s Edge cinematographer Fred Elms, who had also served as director of photography on Blue Velvet, gave Hopper a wax ear acupuncture model, and none of us knew why. But Dennis was very entertained by it, and I remember it so well.”

As for working with the seasoned actor (many of their scenes together found the two shooting nights on the banks of the American River outside Sacramento, California), “I probably wasn’t smart enough to be intimidated by him,” Roebuck said. “And that’s not a joke. I was such a fan of his. But it was so intimate, him and me. I mean, he’d work with the other kids, then they’d all leave, and I’d have night upon night upon night with just him, and only him. All to myself. And I was elated, actor to actor.”

Daniel Roebuck and Dennis Hopper share a laugh on the set of Rivers Edge (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

Of those scenes which they share in River’s Edge, inarguably the most disturbing revolve around the two characters’ admissions to one another of the unrelated murders of two women, an act Hopper’s character of Feck tearfully regrets onscreen.

“I remember him saying to me off camera while he was crying, that he was thinking of (actress) Natalie Wood,” recalled Roebuck. “She had just died, and she’d been his friend who he’d acted with in Rebel Without a Cause. It was very weird too. Rarely does an actor share the emotional place they go to in order to ‘get there.’ It’s such a personal thing, and I started to weep while watching him cry.”

(left-to-right) Roxanna Zal, Crispin Glover, Josh Richmond, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Phil Brock, Daniel Roebuck and Danyi Deats relax between set-ups on the Rivers Edge (Photo Copyright: Dan Roebuck)

Upon theatrical release in 1986 River’s Edge achieved critical acclaim and cult status, and as a result Roebuck’s career was in full swing. Over the next two decades he’d book well over one hundred film and television roles, including turns in 1987’s Dudes, 1993’s The Fugitive and 2000’s Final Destination, but it wouldn’t be until the late 2000s when his career came full circle. The Pennsylvania teen and monster enthusiast, who’d once frightened theater-goers in his self-applied faux Myers makeup, was about to be murdered on the silver screen by that very masked killer in Rob Zombie’s reimagining.

And that’s what we jump into in part two, which you can read here.

Danielle Harris, Wendy Kaplan & Tamara Glynn Wish Don Shanks a Happy 70th Birthday

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On Michael Myers actor Don Shanks’ 70th birthday, our absolute best wishes from HalloweenMovies and Trancas International Films and his Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers co-stars Danielle Harris, Wendy Kaplan and Tamara Glynn! Here’s to you, Don!

‘REWIND’ to ’78: Halloween Art From Around the World

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Back before the days of the Internet, people had to get their news and information from… dare I say it… a newspaper! *GASP* Yep, things sure were different back then. How did we ever survive? But despite the lack of technology it was an incredible time. There was something so very cool about opening a newspaper, flipping to the “Arts and Entertainment” section and devouring all of that delicious horror themed eye-candy: poster promises of scary films to come.

One of those posters was by artist and illustrator Robert Gleason, who’d been hired to deliver artwork at the guidance of producer Irwin Yablans for John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween, and it just pushed all of our genre lovin’ happy buttons! The instantly iconic image, which immediately goosed our collected imagination, and its attached tag-line of “The Night He Came Home” served to entice prospective viewers even more: who was “He” and what happened on “The Night He Came Home?” One thing we knew for sure: we had to find out, and so off to the theater we went!

In October of 1978, the world was poised to experience an all new kind of evil, and its ties to the spookiest day of the calendar year made it all the more exciting! Let’s take a look back at some Halloween posters from around the world.

Theatrical Posters

Newspaper Ads

But wait! There’s more! In 1981 Halloween premiered on television, and below you’ll find some scans of vintage TV ads, and even a commercial announcing the films NBC premiere! Ah, the good old days!

Writer’s note: my thanks to Dinosaur Dracula retro archives, which proved helpful in compiling this art gallery.

Exclusive Interview: Halloween 5’s Wendy Kaplan Speaks! – Part 2

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On the heels of the box office success of 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, series producer Moustapha Akkad was eager to expand the narrative of Haddonfield’s reinvigorated slasher (following the decidedly lackluster reception of its predecessor, the then maligned and now rather celebrated feature Halloween III: Season of the Witch). The result was Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, a feature film directed by Swiss-born director Dominique Othenin-Girard.

Co-written by Girard and screenwriters Michael Jacobs and Shem Bitterman (following the director’s literal trashing of the original Bitterman script titled Halloween: The Killer Inside Me, which was intended as the follow-up), Halloween 5 was rushed into production in order to make its announced release date of October 13th, 1989. The outcome? A picture which proved polarizing for fans, and one which was received with far less fervor, both critically and financially, than its forerunner. Additionally, the narrative, which introduced audiences to the Cult of Thorn mythos, and which additionally was the victim of both reshoots and a post-production process which left entire sections on the cutting room floor, created some confusion within the Halloween fan base.

In part two of our recent interview series with Halloween 5’s Wendy Kaplan (see part one here), the actress talks the film, the rather infamous party scene at the hotel used to house the cast and crew, her offer to potentially appear in Halloween 6, her surprise at the truncated Haddonfield police station massacre as it appeared theatrically, and her thoughts on the flick thirty-one years later.

Wendy Kaplan as ‘Tina Williams’

With principal photography on Halloween 5 kicking off in Salt Lake City, Utah a mere five months before the film’s scheduled release, and script changes occurring consistently throughout production (in fact the script itself wasn’t complete when cameras started to roll), Kaplan recalls that set life too played fast and loose.

“It was a festive group of people,” Kaplan, who portrayed Halloween 5’s (“I’m never sensible if I can help it!“) ‘Tina Williams’ recalled. “It was pretty fun. You can imagine yourself at twenty-three years old, which is how old I was when I made the movie. We were all young actors, excited and on location, and we were crazy.”

Touched on in the bonus feature Dead Man’s Party – The Making of Halloween 5 contained in Anchor Bay and Shout Factory’s 15-disc Halloween Blu-ray box set, Kaplan alluded of the after-hours festivities, which included makeup effects artists Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of K.N.B. EFX Group (a trio known then for not only their exemplary FX work, but also their penchant for the Sunset Strip’esque revelry of the late 80s), “It was like summer camp. We didn’t have phones or the internet to muck it up. And the party sort of followed the three of them. That sort of rock star thing. Everybody was just sort of trailing along.”

“We were doing night shooting,” she continued, “and then we would come home to the hotel at daybreak and have a party in somebody’s room. And I felt kind of terrible for the other guests, but I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is your typical Hollywood kind of scene.’ I don’t know that we trashed a room, but we would hang out a lot. Even at night we would come home and hang out in this little Salt Lake City hotel bar and ask the bartender to turn up the music, and we would dance. It was fun. I guess every set has that kind of feeling.”

Wendy Kaplan as ‘Tina Williams’

As for her character in the film, conversation turned then to her rather nebulous fate: while indeed stabbed by The Shape (actor Don Shanks) in the third act, she’s never shown definitively as having perished. Was this intended as a set up for Kaplan’s potential return for a Halloween 6?

“I think in the original screenplay it was never really clear what happened to my character,” Kaplan offered. “You know, Tina saved Jamie in the script, but there was no like, ‘Tina’s dead or Tina’s alive, or ‘Jamie goes and visits Tina in the hospital,’ sort of thing. I think it was very open ended, what happened to Tina. And I think that it may have been based on me signing a contractual clause that said I would do a part 6, but my agent didn’t want me to sign it. So, the producers I guess kind of left it open. It could have been that they wanted to hire a whole new crop of people, because I know we were probably a pain in the ass for Moustapha. We were a little crazy when we were shooting Halloween 5. But I do know I didn’t sign on for 6, because my agent was like, ‘Well, it’s really good for you to do Halloween 5, and it’s a significant role in a movie, but it is a horror movie, and we don’t want to make any more commitments.’ But I wound up going back to New York in 1990 and doing a bunch of theater, so it didn’t really have any bearing on anything anyway.”

With the narrative fluctuating as director Girard improvised aspects of the Halloween 5 story-line, and with whole sections missing from the theatrical cut, including the massacre of the Haddonfield police force at the hands of the mysterious Man in Black, Kaplan commented, “I felt that things had to be missing (from the film). They shot in that jail location for a long time, and in the film it’s just Michael sitting in a jail cell, with his mask still on. I was really surprised by that.”

Regarding the heavily edited first act scene featuring Tina and Rachel (as portrayed by actress Ellie Cornell) and an introduction to (as originally posited) a BMX bike-riding Billy Hill (actor Jeffrey Landman), Kaplan recalled, “I think that we had more to say to each other in that scene where we’re walking. There’s actually a lot more to it. I mean, I guess it just went on forever and they cut a lot of it. Which I don’t blame them, I guess. And the script, it kept changing.”

From the Trancas vault, Page 38 of the Halloween 5 Shooting Script, dated 5/2/1989.

Thirty-one years after the film’s release and six films later, and with an ever-growing international fan-base surrounding the franchise, Kaplan mused of her place in the genre, “It’s meaningful and it’s heart-warming. I really appreciate that people for whatever reason really gravitate towards the movies. And also towards Tina, for whatever weird and polarizing character that she is. I never expected that. I just was tagged in an Instagram post that said, ‘Tina’s the best character in the whole series!’ When people say things like that, it’s sweet. It’s a crazy character that came out of me years ago, and people are still kind of, you know, loving or hating her. I guess we all have the power to effect people.”

Fan-made doll of Halloween 5’s Tina Williams by Heath Newman

“With all of the stuff going on in the world right now,” the actress concluded, ”if people have a few moments where they can sit down and watch a horror movie, and they can release some of their fear, then that’s a great thing. I feel like a lot of people have come up to me at conventions and have said, ‘Tina made me feel that it’s okay to be who I am, and that it’s okay to be me.’ And I find that to be the best thing that anybody could ever say to me. Because I didn’t expect that this movie would impact the lives of people. The idea that people can feel like they can express themselves because they watched Tina in the movie is just great, because I feel that way about that character. People should be able to be themselves, and to actualize themselves, and to feel okay. Like, if these people are doing it, then I can do it too. I can be who I need to be.”

Exclusive Interview: Halloween 5’s Wendy Kaplan Speaks! – Part 1

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With director Dwight H. Little’s 1988 film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (the first appearance of the iconic slasher since 1981’s Halloween II) proving itself to be a critical and box office hit, excitement ran high and speculation rampant the following year for its sequel, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

But would the fifth film bring? With Little’s predecessor having introduced compelling new characters in the forms of both Jamie Lloyd (actress Danielle Harris, portraying Myer’s stalked niece) and Rachel Carruthers (the series’ new ‘final girl’) as well as delivering one hell of a cliff hanger of a finale, anticipation was palpable, and fans buzzed. Had little Jamie truly become evil? Had Mrs. Carruthers died? How had Myers survived that hail of bullets?

The film which moviegoers received however on October 13th of 1989 seemed to ask more questions than which it answered. From the introduction of the character of the Man in Black and the early beginnings of the Cult of Thorn mythos to a psychic connection between uncle and niece, Halloween 5 remains to this day one of the more polarizing entries in the entire franchise, as does the role inhabited by one of the film’s stars, actress Wendy Kaplan.

Wendy Kaplan as ‘Tina Williams’ in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Directed by Swiss director Dominique Othenin-Girard from an ever-changing and unfinished script by Michael Jacobs (with reshoots by series producer Moustapha Akkad), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers introduces Kaplan’s teenage character of “Tina Williams” to the fold. Friend to both Halloween 4 characters Rachel and Jamie (although never previously referenced), Kaplan’s Tina as written falls somewhere between that of stock slasher victim and noble final girl, with the added fashion sense and rebelliousness of an early 80’s Madonna thrown in for good measure.

And it’s perhaps this very deviation from the scripted norm of wall flower as ‘final girl’ why Halloween fans remain divided to this day.

On the 30th anniversary of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, we sat down with Kaplan (now Foxworth) to discuss in-depth her experience and thoughts on the production, and her outlook on the film three decades later.

“I didn’t know this at the time, like how different Tina was I guess from your typical Halloween ‘final girl,’” offered Kaplan of her role. “Like, I really knew nothing about any of that, or even of the term. It’s just been in the last few years that people have come and said, ‘You’re kinda’ like the final girl’ in the film.’ Which I don’t know if that’s even correct, because the movie’s so strangely structured. But I know that there was all that controversy, because the character’s not particularly a good girl. Like, that was a big thing, and it was a certain aspect of my personality and my performance, too.”

With commercial and soap work and a couple of television credits to her name in 1987 (an episode of “My Two Dads” and the TV movie “Police Story: Monster Manor”), the then 23 year old Kaplan, who had transplanted from New York to Los Angeles in order to pursue acting, found herself offered an audition for Halloween 5, of which she remembers at the time her management being rather underwhelmed.

Recalls the actress of the 80’s mainstream stigma attached to the horror genre, “My management had a certain attitude about it, and I think then too that horror was not as celebrated as it is today. Now there are amazing directors and actors doing all these films, but you know, back in 1989 it was still, ‘Oh, it’s a slasher film.’ So, I think that there was a little bit of that conversation, but I went in for the audition anyway, and the role was so much fun to read for. Tina as a character was written so differently, and I don’t think at that point really that there was any reason why I wouldn’t do it. It was a really good opportunity, and it (eventually) came down to me and one other actor.”

According to Kaplan, that other actor was none other than Lori Petty, who later that year would land a reoccurring role on the “21 Jump Street” spin-off television series “Booker,” before securing the titular lead in Rachel Talalay’s cult-classic Tank Girl four years later.

“She was a very different kind of actress. You know, very different,” recalled Kaplan, “and I think that we were each bringing very different things to it.”

As for the audition process itself, “They brought me back couple of times, and (Halloween series executive producer) Moustapha (Akkad) was there for at least the last audition or two, and so was Dominique,” she offered. “The last audition was in this big office where we had to run around and scream and do things from the script, but it was pretty fun. You just put yourself into it. And I remember I was surprised by Dominique, because I just didn’t expect this arty European man to be the director. He had a very different approach.”

With principal photography of Halloween 5 kicking off in Salt Lake City, Utah in May of 1989, a mere five months before the film’s scheduled release, and script changes occurring consistently throughout production, we asked Kaplan of her memories of the shoot.

Wendy Kaplan in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

“You know, I was so young. I was in my early 20s and was like, ‘I’m in a movie!’” she said. “So, I was not paying a lot of attention to some of the things that now would probably perk my ears up, like, ‘Oh, something’s happening here, the director and the producer aren’t getting along!’ But back then? I mean, there’s aspects of Tina, especially at that time of the life, that were representative of me (as a person), so much so.”

“And I think that the happy part of me that just wanted to enjoy making this movie and be able to play this incredibly vibrant and fun, daring and snappy character, that was what I was focused on the most,” she continued. “Tina took me over a little, and I took her over a little, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to some of the other things. I wish I had. But in retrospect, I can see how fast that Halloween 5 was put into production, and I can see why there was so much disappointment about how different Halloween 5 was from Halloween 4. Like with the death of Ellie Cornell’s character of Rachel. That’s an intense thing for her as an actress, leading in Halloween 4, and then all of a sudden her character is killed off (in Halloween 5)? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and it’s kind of disappointing for the fans. I know that she was really loved.”

Don Shanks & Ellie Cornell in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

With the character of Rachel meeting her unceremonious demise in the first act of Halloween 5 (and the character of Jamie losing her surrogate mother figure and protector in the process), the ‘final girl’ baton was passed in narrative to Kaplan’s freewheeling Tina, which causes for her character not only a moral crisis, but also leads to one of the more selfless acts demonstrated in the series.

“Well, I was sort of oblivious to the slasher genre in general at the time,” offered Kaplan of the trope, and of her approach to her performance. “So, I really was just approaching it from the perspective of a person who clearly isn’t strong at parenting, and I think that Dominique had something to do with this too. I vaguely remember these conversations about Tina being hard on the outside, in the sense that she was a wild person, I guess, but also that she was vulnerable and had love to give, and that the one thing she did that was good and positive was to be there for Jamie.”

“You know, there’s that scene where I’m up in the clinic with Jamie, and I’m telling her, ‘I can’t stay with you, I have to go see my boyfriend,’ which makes Tina kind of look like a shit, but when I come downstairs and run into Loomis, I’m fully crying, and there was definitely direction from Dominique there to push Tina into more of a sympathetic realm.”

Kaplan expounded, “And I think that, if you look at that moment of sacrifice, when Tina shields Jamie with her own body and is stabbed, as some form of redemption for maybe some of the things she had done as a teen that were not so great, you can see it that way. I like to think of Tina as a whole person. I mean, most teenagers are everything. They’re troubled, they’re loving, they’re rebellious, they’re afraid. They’re such complex beings. And I think that Tina has all these qualities.”

Don Shanks & Wendy Kaplan in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

“I have had people come up to me since the film,” she continued, “sometimes at horror conventions, and they have told me that in ways that they relate to Tina, or that if they were having trouble in life, that she served as a little bit of inspiration for them, and that to me is amazing because they are finding something in this kind of wild, conflicted character. I mean, I don’t think that sacrificing her life was Tina’s plan, but she did it instinctually, and it was a noble act.”

As for her interaction with series star Donald Pleasance, in which Kaplan shares the screen briefly in Halloween 5, Kaplan recalls of working with the English actor, “He was really professional, and he was really kind. It never felt like he was behaving like the sort of icon that he was. He was very present with us, in the sense that it didn’t feel like he put himself above us, but I didn’t have a lot of direct interaction with him outside of when we were shooting. I think I was a little intimidated by him, frankly. Like I didn’t feel particularly comfortable going, ‘Hey! Whatcha’ been doing here in Salt Lake City for the last few days in your down time?’ It’s not to say that he was unapproachable. It’s just that I was young and new and he was this big deal. He was this icon of film and theatre.”

Donald Pleasence as ‘Sam Loomis’ in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

In our upcoming Part 2, Kaplan talks her near attachment to an already gestating Halloween 6, the rather infamous party scene at the production’s hotel during principal photography of Halloween 5, her confusion over the introduction and identity of the Man in Black, her surprise at the truncated Haddonfield police station massacre as it was released theatrically, and her thoughts on the film thirty years later.

Jamie Lee Curtis Wishes You ‘Happy Halloween’ with First Footage!

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Halloween series star and scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis took to Twitter this morning to offer up the first footage from director David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills, which is currently shooting in North Carolina. Check it out below!

Set for release by Universal Pictures on October 16th, 2020, Halloween Kills is produced by Trancas International Films, Miramax and Blumhouse Productions, with director Green directing from a script he co-wrote with returning collaborator Danny McBride and series newcomer Scott Teems.

In addition to Curtis, series cast members returning for Halloween Kills include Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Judy Greer and Andi Matichak, who are joined by newcomers Robert Longstreet and Anthony Michael Hall.

Based on characters created by series originator John Carpenter and Debra Hill, Halloween Kills and its 2021 follow-up Halloween Ends will be produced by Malek Akkad, Jason Blum and Bill Block. Green, McBride, John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeanette Volturno, Couper Samuelson and Ryan Freimann will serve as executive producers.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Spoilers: A Message from the Editor

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Film spoilers: many hate them, while others actively seek them out. Being lifelong film fans ourselves here at Trancas International Films, we can relate. Some of us here can even recall the days before the internet, in which Halloween fans experienced the latest entry with little knowledge of the film’s narrative, other than what had possibly been gleaned from the flick’s trailer, television and radio ad spots, or set visit within the pages of Fangoria magazine.

So with Halloween Kills in production, and the start of Halloween Ends right around the corner, how do we balance both, in order to deliver an exciting and unspoiled cinematic experience for the fans who’d like it, but also satisfy the fans hungry for information? It’s a bit of a conundrum, and while Trancas won’t oversee in entirety either films’ marketing rollouts (amazing distributor Universal Pictures will be handling that, along with input from producing partners Blumhouse and Miramax, as they did with last year’s Halloween), we do also feel that we have some responsibility to you, the fans, many of who have been with us since the very beginning, when Michael first came home in 1978 (and thank you sincerely for continuing on this bloody journey with us).

So what’s our approach? Here at HalloweenMovies.com, we’ll stay as spoiler free as possible, and while we’ll certainly be providing you behind-the-scenes peeks and more from both films (and exclusive info as it comes in), those peeks will hopefully be enough just to whet your appetite, but not to sate it.

Because after all, in our estimation, there’s nothing like the feeling of sitting down in a theater, a bag of popcorn in one hand and a Coke in the other as the house lights go down and the screen begins to flicker a story unknown. Stories of shock, fear and fright, and stories we would never dream of spoiling.

‘REWIND’ to ’83: Michael Myers First Foray into Video Games

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Five years after Michael Myers exploded onto the silver screen in John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher Halloween, the character found himself exploring for the first time an entirely different medium: home video games. But how did he fair in 1983, a year in which the home video game space was dominated by such child friendly releases as Crystal Castles and Dig Dug?

Decades before the online multi-player Dead by Daylight allowed PS4 players to walk in the digital shoes of Haddonfield residents beset by The Boogeyman, Wizard Video Games employee Tim Martin took a stab at the intellectual property by programming the first Halloween game, a cartridge for the early home gaming console Atari 2600. Developed by Martin and Robert Barber, the game was released in October of 1983, and like Wizard’s other genre inspired cart release The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the title unfortunately received a rather tepid response from parents concerned over the title’s violent content.

While by today’s standards considered rather tame, the game’s central conceit (players attempt to rescue children while also attempting to avoid Myers’ slicing blade) didn’t sit quite well with retailers worried over potential parental backlash. This is perhaps rather unsurprising given that the 2600’s most popular games at the time were the fairly pedestrian shooters Combat and Space Invaders, neither of which featured a headless, blood-gushing babysitter as (the result of a Myers attack) or Halloween’s iconic central theme music and poster, all of which weren’t necessarily considered “acceptable” entertainment for children of the early 80’s, regardless of how primitive the gaming technology.

The result? Wizard Video’s Halloween game, which was manufactured in smaller quantities due to such, has become somewhat of a Holy Grail item for collectors, as carts now fetch prices in the in the hundreds of dollars depending on their condition.

Check out some Halloween gameplay from ’83 below, and let us know in the comments below, “What do you want out of a Halloween game release?”

John Carpenter Talks Surviving Hollywood

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Filmmaker and master of horror John Carpenter sat down with Variety’s Jenelle Riley for an interview recently to discuss his career, and touched on such topics as the films which frightened him as a boy (1958’s The Fly and 1951’s The Thing from Another World, among them), growing up in a segregated South, his early years at USC, his approach to scoring film, and Jason Blum’s challenge to him of, “Why don’t you get off your lazy butt and make it good instead of sitting around and complaining?” as it pertained to the Halloween film series, which prompted his return as executive producer and composer in last year’s David Gordon Green-directed box office hit.

It’s a great watch (and if you pay close attention, you’ll even spy in the b-roll a Rick Baker-designed maquette of a Creature from the Black Lagoon suit mock-up, which was intended for a never-made remake of the eponymous 1954 film which Carpenter was once attached to direct for Universal).

Interesting stuff. Check it out below.