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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.

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.

Series Producer Malek Akkad Talks the Past, Present & Future of Halloween

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Back on February 1st of this year while on the Charleston, South Carolina set of director David Gordon Green’s forthcoming feature film Halloween, HalloweenMovies.com had a chance to sit down with one of the film’s producers, Malek Akkad, in order to discuss the much anticipated series relaunch, as well as the future of the franchise itself.

The first film in the series in nine years, the simply titled Halloween was written by Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley and David Gordon Green (the latter who also directs), and is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and returning series star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Having joined us between takes in the small living room of a house being used for principal photography, we dove right in, asking Akkad (whose life from a young age has been intertwined with the franchise), ‘How did the partnership come about with Blumhouse on this eleventh film in the series?’

“Well, that’s a complicated question,” replied the forty-nine year old filmmaker. “We had done the previous five films with the Weinsteins (who we had) parted ways (with) about two years ago,” and acknowledging Harvey Weinstein’s legal woes added, “(which) some might say was very fortunate timing, and we were then with the original Miramax again. So we started looking at who would be a good partner for this, not only from Miramax’s point of view (in order) to help finance and distribute the film, but also to bring some new life into it. Blumhouse just seemed like a natural fit, and they’ve been great.”

John Carpenter and Malek Akkad

As for what direction Akkad – who has served as producer on six of the Halloween films – had intended the series to take, “Over the seven years since the last installment, I think there’s been dozens of different takes and pitches and starts and stops,” he recalled. “At one point after Halloween II, we were right back in development on Halloween 3D,” an iteration which was slated to be tackled by Drive Angry’s Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier, “and a couple (of other) different incarnations.”

“The last go around was Halloween Returns,” he continued, which was to be a feature ‘recalibration’ scripted by Feast and The Collector’s series Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan and slated to be helmed by the latter, but which failed to materialize due to the expiration of rights then held by The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films, “so there’s probably about four movies that could have been done in that time, but I think it was all for a good reason and the result, as you guys will see, is really great.”

As for series originator John Carpenter’s return to the fold here as an executive producer and composer, “As soon as we did part ways with The Weinstein Company, the first call I made was to John, and I just said, ‘You know, there’s no way we’re going to do one without you,’” said Akkad.

“It’s huge, to be here working with John, and Jamie (Lee Curtis) and all of those guys that who did the first film,” he continued. “I was an eight year old kid at the time (the original was made). It’s been a huge part of my life, and I can honestly say (that) no one would be happier than my father to see what we’re doing with it. He was the biggest champion of the franchise there was, (and) he kept it alive through many periods where it could have easily gone another way.”

Moustapha Akkad and Jamie Lee Curtis

Of Akkad’s late father Moustapha, who served as an executive producer on the first eight Halloween films, the elder Akkad was also a celebrated director in his own right, having directed 1980’s Lion of the Desert and 1976’s controversial Anthony Quinn starrer The Message. The latter, a historical epic banned in Arab territories for the past forty-two years, recently received a 4K restoration spearheaded by Malek and a subsequent world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival. Now playing in wide release across the region, the championing of his father’s work can be seen not only in this film (and in the documentary he’s making about the process of restoring and releasing it), but in the care Akkad is taking as well in this latest entry in the Halloween franchise.

“You’re always wondering what the fans reaction to that is going to be,” Akkad mused regarding Green’s now well-established relaunch in narrative, one which picks up directly where Carpenter’s 1978 classic leaves off.

To a large extent, it’s a clean slate, and from a director not known for their work within the genre.

“When you hear it from filmmakers like Green and McBride, that’s what makes you feel comfortable in doing it,” continued Akkad. “For me, from the get go, what was really important was (that) this franchise should be able to attract an A-list director. That was kind of the mandate, and Jason Blum really agreed and championed that idea as well, and I give him credit for bringing in a filmmaker like David.”

Does Akkad miss any of the series’ previously established narrative threads, ala Halloween 5 & 6’s “The Curse of Thorn,” which have now subsequently been abandoned?

“You know, there’s been so many left turns,” he answered. “One of the films I did not work on was Halloween 5, and that ending for example is so out of left field and to be honest, they didn’t even know how they were going to answer that: the man in black thing.”

“At one point,” Akkad continued, “We were working on Halloween 9, and there were so many loose ends after Resurrection. (It was) a huge puzzle to solve and my father, God bless him, was working with us on that. After he passed away we were going to start fresh (and) that was Rob Zombie’s (2007 film). He got to take his crack at that apple. (But) there are so many arcs in (the series) that you can never satisfy them all, and I think what David and Danny and Jeff have done has really cracked it, in a way that the fans are going to love. All the homages they’ve put in this film: there are just so many little Easter Eggs and touches to the original. Ultimately, we want to do something that the fans will love, and we also want it to be fresh.”

Regarding the always fervent Halloween fan-base and its response, “You’re always going to have people who are supportive (and) people who are not,” he said. “For example, when we did the (2007) remake I knew that was going to cause quite a stir, and it did. The only thing you can say is, ‘Well, if you want the original you’ve got the original,’ but I think this film is doing it in a way that will satisfy and really engage viewers, and hopefully be a really satisfying movie for the fans. Having done so many of these (films) at this point in time, I’ve never been more excited and more confident in that what we’re doing here.”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Much like the varied narrative threads which run throughout the series, the iconic killer’s mask has also differed from entry to entry, sometimes to the chagrin of fans. The original and regarded stemmed from a mold taken of William Shatner’s face for the 1975 Robert Fuest-directed horror film The Devil’s Rain in which he starred, which then served as the impetus for the Captain Kirk masks produced by Don Post Studios. In 1978, it was this Captain Kirk mask which the Halloween production picked up for a $1.98 at Burt Wheeler’s now defunct magic shop on Hollywood Blvd., and then modified. The result became the ghostly visage which has haunted theaters-goers for the past four decades.

Akkad was asked if Shatner has ever commented on this.

“Not to me directly,” stated the filmmaker, “and from what I hear he doesn’t really acknowledge it. I think he makes light of it. We actually have one of the original impressions of Shatner in our office in L.A., so obviously we’re really grateful to him, and in certain ways we’ve tried to reach out to him (to) maybe do an appearance? Lord know he’s busy enough with Star Trek stuff…but you never know.”

As for the production’s approach to creating the mask on display in this latest Halloween film (see our in-depth interview with Academy award winning FX artist Christopher Nelson here), Akkad stated, “Chris is an amazing artist. We’re super lucky to have him. There’s this love for this franchise that fortunately attracts great talent like that, and it’s also gone on to launch a lot of great talent, but Chris, David and I, we collectively conceptually wanted this mask to be special. Where would it be in the timeline of these events? And how would it look? It’s always been a difficult thing to get the mask right. As you know, there’s been hits and big misses. But what Chris has done is fantastic.”

In this continuity and with the character of Michael Myers turning sixty-one years old this year in it, the subject of not only the character’s age came up, but of the longevity of the franchise itself.

“It’s definitely something we talked about and thought about, and I think absolutely it’s a terrifying prospect,” Akkad coyly offered of Myers advancing years. “I mean, you can look at someone like Mickey Rourke, not that he’s terrifying, (but) someone who’s fit and that age, and I think it’s exciting because it gives us more options and things that we can do later, and hopefully this won’t be the last one.”

As for the longevity of the series, “My father used to always quote Donald Pleasance,” he continued. “He had asked Donald on the set of Halloween 6, ‘How many of these are you going to keep doing?’ and Donald said, ‘I’m not going to keep doing them, I’m going to stop at twenty two,’ and that was my father’s favorite quote. So as long as we’re doing something that the fans like, and there’s respect for the franchise, hopefully we’ll keep doing them.”

Green, McBride and Fradley’s new take on the material may indeed assist in that, given that in addition to showcasing an entirely new showdown between final girl Laurie and The Shape, it introduces two new generations of Strode women, Laurie’s daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson (portrayed by actresses Judy Greer and Andi Matichak, respectively).

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

“Jamie Lee is the greatest,” effused Akkad of the return of the series’ heroine. “She’s the best thing about this franchise, other than Michael, and we’re so honored to have her back, and I think what David’s done with the three generations of women has really kind of opened this up, where it’s not just the typical teenage victim (as it is in most slasher films). It’s broadened it. It’s a more mature (form of) storytelling, and again I think that just comes down to a filmmaker like David Gordon Green.”

Of that form of storytelling, Akkad was asked whether or not Green’s take on the subject matter will attempt a balance between the rather bloodless suspense of Carpenter’s original and the cinematic brutality as evidenced in Zombie’s remake – the latter something modern audiences perhaps expect.

“My personal taste is definitely for the former,” he replied. “More elegant. It’s what you don’t see and it’s the moments leading up to the kill that are more terrifying for me. It’s interesting because we had some sort of battles with Rob Zombie’s (films), especially the second one which became a very violent and bloody film. It’s a taste thing I guess, and that’s more of Rob’s style, and that certainly found an audience and people who liked that. Personally I like the more bloodless elegance, and I will say I don’t think anybody who’s into that, or the gore and special effects (for that matter) are going to be disappointed in this one, (because) David is taking both to a higher level.”

As for working with often horror hit factory Blumhouse (post Get Out and the accolades they’ve received for it) on Halloween, “Jason’s really cracked that Rubik’s Cube on how to do big, theatrical horror and we’ve never seen that on this scale,” Akkad offered. “So it’s a really exciting time for horror, and a really exciting time to be working with them, honestly. What I’ve noticed is that they’re an artist driven company, and that’s a very admirable thing.”

“It all goes back of course to what John did in the original,” he mused when queried on his thoughts pertaining to  the film’s legacy. “I think he disrupted the space so completely with this low budget film. It was so terrifying, and (he) created this iconic character in Michael Myers which has become part of the American lexicon. Now we’ve got an audience that spans generations. It’s crazy how long I’ve been a part of it (and) that’s exciting.”

Akkad concluded of Green’s Halloween, “I think this film will also broaden our audience even more, and there’s probably the younger generation who probably hasn’t even seen the original, or any in the franchise, and I think the beauty of this film is it will be a stand-alone piece of work by David that you can take on its own.”

Regarding the potential of an expanded Halloween universe, Akkad hinted at the property’s continuing spin-off into other forms of media (ala the asymmetrical horror survival video game Dead by Daylight which in 2016 added Myers as an antagonist), “This year there are going to be some big announcements to that effect, in looking at new forms of media. Attractions, videogames, VR, it’s all sort of being discussed so stay tuned, this year is going to be a big year for Halloween.”

And given the H40: 40 Years of Terror – The 40th Anniversary Halloween Event was recently announced, we believe him.

Halloween is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19, 2018.

Writer’s note: this interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Actresses Judy Greer & Andi Matichak Talk Halloween from the Set

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Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

“One of the things I responded to immediately when I read the script was the character of Laurie Strode being the star of the movie,” said actress Judy Greer this past February 1, 2018 while on the set of director David Gordon Green’s then-shooting 2018 reimagining of Halloween. “I was just really happy because sometimes with a situation like this it’s like a cameo, and what I thought was so badass about what the screenwriters did was making it a multi-generational, female empowered movie, and Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is again the star.”

The first film in the slasher franchise in nine years, the simply titled Halloween is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19, 2018. Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and director Green (see our interview with the latter two here), the entry is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Green’s Halloween as reported boldly picks up directly forty years after the original (subsequently ignoring all previous sequels), with a slight twist to the narrative: series’ boogeyman Michael Myers (reprised here by originator Nick Castle and joined by stuntman James Jude Courtney), as opposed to having disappeared into the suburban night as he so famously did in Carpenter’s classic, was apprehended by the authorities, and has been incarcerated ever since.

Incarcerated, and waiting, although if the film’s first trailer (below) is any indication, Myers isn’t the only one. Now a recluse by design, protagonist Laurie has spent the past four decades preparing for The Shape’s inevitable return.

Seated across from us in a house on a tree-lined street in Charleston, South Carolina, Greer was joined by actress Andi Matichak, the duo who in this iteration of the Halloween mythology portray two-thirds of the now multi-generational Strode clan: Laurie’s daughter Karen, and her granddaughter Allyson, respectively.

“My relationship with my mom is very estranged,” offered Greer, whose prolific career includes several notable television series and feature films ranging from Jurassic World to the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp, of her scripted relationship with series final girl and now matriarch Laurie, “and we would be estranged completely if she didn’t constantly try to reach out, and by reaching out I mean, check up on us to make sure that we’re always safe. (In this film) she feels like a real watchdog over me and my daughter, so I try then to protect my daughter from (who) I think is this crazy woman who raised me.”

Greer’s knack for comedy, even in discussing these heavier narrative elements of Halloween, shone through. Naturally funny, as was relative newcomer Matichak, the duo riffed with the ease of familiarity. A good sign, given the ‘mother/daughter’ relationship required of both by the script.

“In rehearsal we came up with a ton of backstory,” said Greer of the effects of Michael Myers on the Strode clan. “Even though this stuff might not come up in what you see on the screen, it’s really helpful for us to try and figure out where this all came from, and we decided that Laurie was really tough on me. She just has never been able to let go of that horrifying night (in 1978) and brought it into all of her relationships (afterwards), and because I’m pretty much the only relationship that she really has, it just all got focused on me towards the end, as people started to drop out of her life and she retreated from society. So it was a really rough childhood for me, and eventually at a young age I was removed from the house so I could have a better and more normal life. Again, this is stuff that we’ve mostly come up with in our own backstory (for the characters).”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Of the holiday of Halloween, “I think it’s safe to say that it’s always been a weird time of the year (for the Strode women) and it’s always been a time of reverence,” said Matichak, who as an actress was at the time giving her first interview ever. “Specifically (for) our family. If you can imagine Haddonfield forty years later, Michael Myers has become a myth and a legend. I mean it happened, but (the town has become) so desensitized. I’m sure that there are Michael Myers masks that kids wear on Halloween – probably not in Haddonfield – but in towns over, so I feel like we’ve been the butt of a lot of conversation. Friends at school come up (to my character) and are like, ‘Yeah, your grandma was murdered,’ and I’m like, ‘No, she survived,’ and they say, ‘All her friends were killed (though), right?’ It’s horrible, but it’s definitely not lost on our family, and it definitely dictates the way we live our lives.”

Questioned as to whether her character serves as a mediator between Laurie and Karen, “I would say so,” replied Matichak. “(My character’s) been kind of caught in between (them) since I’ve been a kid and like any kid, you do want a relationship with everyone in your family, and if Laurie’s making an effort, which she has been since (my character was) born, then yeah. I’ve always wanted to have some sort of peace.”

“What’s nice about her,” added Greer of Matichak’s character as written, “is that seeing Allyson at this age, she’s her own woman, and she can reach out to her grandma whenever she wants. If we were finding her at eleven or twelve that’s something (else), but now she has access to phones and can say, ‘Screw you, mom. I want to talk to my grandma. I want to have her at this event. I want to have a relationship with her.’ So I like that.”

Matichak was asked, ‘What does Allyson want to do with her life?’

“Allyson wants to get through her senior year of high school, alive,” laughed the actress.

As for Laurie’s evolution from the innocent yet resourceful teenager we met in Carpenter’s classic to the 2018 version, “She is a very intense character as we find her forty years later,” allowed Greer.

Image Courtesy of Compass International Pictures

“That event really shaped her life and drove her to be the woman she is now,” Matichak added, “and I think it’s pretty in line if you imagine a tragedy like this happening. I could take a lot away from (Jamie’s performance) in the first one, and I feel like Allyson is kind of a spawn of Laurie at seventeen as well. I think she sees a lot of herself in me, and that’s part of the reason why she and I are trying to have a relationship.”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Asked her thoughts in regards to becoming part of the Halloween film series, Greer said, “Well, it’s very flattering, with a legacy like this and all of these strong female characters. I think we can all agree that now is the time for strong women to come out and fight, and Laurie being a badass has only grown in our telling of the story.”

When queried as to their reaction at seeing Nick Castle as Michael Myers up close and personal, Matichak stated, “(It was) terrifying, but he’s the kindest, nicest man.”

Regardless, Castle’s performance in the original film still for Matichak packs a wallop.

“We actually went and saw it in theaters here with the entire cast and crew,” said the actress. “I just got chills thinking about it. It was insane. I had my knees in my chest the whole time. Watching it on TV or my laptop is one thing, but it’s different on the big screen.”

“It’s really dark and it’s really scary, except you can sometimes see a palm tree here and there,” teased Greer of the original’s use of Pasadena, CA (and its flora) as a stand-in for the fictional Illinois town.

“In the original you can see palm trees?” asked Matichak. “I missed that.”

“That’s good, that means you’re really into the story,” Greer responded, playfully riffing. “One day I stopped by this set before I actually started shooting, and I heard David saying, ‘We have to move the cameras because I can see a palm tree,’ so in that way it won’t be like the original.”

All joking aside, when queried in regards to her character’s outlook on Michael Myers himself, Greer stated, “(My character) in this film is a therapist, so she’s educated in what a sociopath is, and I think for her, coming from that background and that education she’s like, ‘Well, he’s this or that disorder, (and) in that facility he’s not getting out (and) he’s being treated.’ I think my mom’s idea of Michael Myers and the actual Michael Myers in my (character’s) mind (are different).”

As for the physical demands of her role, Matichak revealed, “It’s been tough. They make me jog a lot. I think this is production’s passive progressive way to tell me to lose a little bit of weight. (In all seriousness it’s) definitely been a challenge, but it’s been incredible. I’m so excited to be here.”

Assuming the cinematic surname of ‘Strode’ additionally requires mastery of another hallmark of the series: a healthy scream.

“In the audition process there were some really intense scenes,” offered Matichak, “but I guess I wasn’t really screaming my head off in those. Since we’ve been on set here there have been nights with a lot of screaming. It’s definitely been a marathon so far, but so much fun.”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

The pair is asked whether or not the script in anyway speaks to America’s fascination with real life serial killers (as evidenced by the current popularity of true crime programming such as “Making a Murderer,” “Mindhunters”,” etc.), and if so, how does Myers fit into it?

“For me, Myers is like the epitome,” answered Greer. “It’s interesting because in a movie like this, in a horror film, you really get to see it all happening.”

As for how the residents of Haddonfield (in a world forty years removed and one which now brims with a constant barrage of tragic world events served up 24/7 via the world wide web) view Myers’ crimes, Matichak said, “All of these tragedies happen, and because we’re so desensitized to it, we kind of forget about it. A few days later, a few weeks later, you’re not thinking of the victims (or) what they’re going through (or) what the families are going through, and this kind of puts you in those shoes. Forty years later, this is where we stand. This is who we are, for better or for worse, and I think that that’s done really nicely in this movie.”

Greer added, “Because so much time has gone by (in this narrative) and this person or ‘Shape’ or whatever you decide to call him has been locked up for so long, we feel pretty safe and pretty good about ourselves. We took care of that problem a long time ago, so we are much desensitized to this one horrific night. As far as how it speaks to the greater desensitization that’s happening (in our world), my hope is that this movie kicks so much ass that it will scare the shit out of everyone, even the most hardened (of) souls.”

Given that Myers is as much an element to series as the pagan holiday itself, Matichak was asked, ‘In real life, are you a fan?’

“Yes!” she replied. “I was so terrified of (the film) Halloween, solely because my mom beat it into my skull that this was the scariest movie of all time, so for years I grew up terrified of the movie, but I definitely celebrated the holiday. We’d do a big event on Halloween night. My mom would make a ton of chili and a lot of margaritas for the adults while the kids got candy.”

As to whether there were any potential Myers memories associated, Matichak concluded, “There were a couple of years in a row that this happened, and I think that it had to be one of sister’s asshole friends, but somebody put on the Myers mask and would stand in the corner of our front yard for hours. My mom lost her shit. She called the cops, and he ran into the woods! So yes, we were definitely fans of the holiday, (and) I was raised to really embrace it.”

Myers Showdown! Nick Castle and James Jude Courtney Talk Halloween from the Set

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The Shape returns to Haddonfield on October 19, 2018, and we sat down on set earlier this year to chat with the two men who’ve donned the iconic mask for this entry, which serves as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s classic 1978 film Halloween: originator Nick Castle and actor James Jude Courtney.

Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green (see our interview with the latter two here), 2018’s Halloween is produced by Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Green’s Halloween as reported boldly picks up directly forty years after the original (that’s right, subsequently ignoring all previous sequels), with a slight twist to the narrative: series’ boogeyman Michael Myers, as opposed to having disappeared into the suburban night as he so famously did in Carpenter’s classic, was apprehended by the authorities, and has been institutionalized ever since.

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Institutionalized and waiting, in this case for traumatized survivor Laurie Strode (Curtis), who herself has spent the last four decades preparing for what she believes will be Myers’ inevitable return. Actresses Judy Greer and Andi Matichak join the fray as Laurie’s daughter and granddaughter, Karen and Allyson, respectively, as do actors Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, Miles Robbins and Dylan Arnold, among others.

‘What have you got all over you?, we asked  Castle and Courtney upon their entrance, as each were attired in a pair of cinema’s most infamous dark blue, and decidedly unkempt, coveralls.

“Dirt and blood,” replied Courtney.

“Yeah, we’ve been at it,” added Castle of the demands of the role, of which out of his five acting credits, two reside in the Halloween series. (Outside of acting, Castle is primarily known as a screenwriter – he penned the script for Carpenter’s nihilist 1981 classic Escape from New York – and as a director, for the 1984 cult favorite The Last Starfighter, in addition to other films).

“It’s a little bit of a mystery,” offered Castle, now seventy-years old, when asked of how his return to the role of cinema’s arguably most famous slasher came about. “I know that somebody suggested it from my end, which is, I have an agent doing horror conferences, Sean Clark, (who’s) a great guy in that business and he knows the world. He said, ‘Why aren’t you doing this thing coming up?’ And I said, ‘No one asked,’ and he said, ‘I’m just going to ask around.’ A few weeks later and Sean said, ‘Nick, you’re going to get a call and they’re going to ask you if you want to play The Shape.’”

As for Courtney, whose previous suit work includes a turn as the Der Kindestod creature in the 1998 “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episode “Killed by Death,” “He has a stunt background, so he’s doing a lot of the physical work on the show,” said Castle. “I’m coming down to bless the set, and to do a couple of shots here and there.”

With forty years and a $9,700,000 budget difference in films, Castle was asked, ‘Has there been any directorial difference in instruction as to how to play the character?’

“It’s funny, because at both times there was very little communication in terms of that,” Castle allowed. “First of all, Myers is expressionless so really it’s about how are you going to move. I was just telling some other friends here of when I was going to do the first shot (in the original film), (which was) a night time scene, (where) Myers was crossing the street going after Laurie, that it was a determined walk…not in a rush or anything like that, and I went out in the street and stopped and went back to John and said, ‘So John, this is my first shot.’ Basically, I was asking, ‘What is my motivation?’ Something stupid, just like an actor, and John said, ‘Just go over there and (then) walk here.’ That was it. John’s embellished since then. I don’t know how true this is, but he’s said (since), ‘I always liked the way Nick walked,’ and I just kind of thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know what that means: I walk like a killer?’”

As for Courtney’s approach to the role, and in particular to the more violent aspects, he offered, “I learned how to kill from a mafia hitman who lived with me when he got out of prison. I was writing his life story, so he went to see the movie I did: it was called The Hit List. It wasn’t a big movie or anything, and when we walked out he was like, ‘Jimmy, it was a really nice movie but that’s not how you kill people.’ I’ve been complimented many times here on set on how efficiently I kill, and all I did was take what he taught me.”

“Why Malek and David brought me in,” he continued, “is because it’s just the way I move. It’s a place that exists (and) my job was to find that place. It’s a living, breathing place so when I go into that place everything is natural. I just do what that space dictates, which was created by Nick and John and Debra (Hill), and (which) has lived and breathed all (of) these years.”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Given that passage of time, the duo was queried as to whether or not they felt if age had changed that space in any way.’

“Michael Myers is carrying the space for the shadow that most human beings are afraid to look at,” observed Courtney. “Most human beings are afraid to look at the fact that there’s a killer inside them, (and) that there is someone capable of heinous acts. For me, when we were (shooting) in the mental institution before Myers broke out, all I focused on was his energy that’s been building and festering and expanding, and I just held that space from again what Nick had created, and I just let it grow and grow because Myers has become more powerful. He’s defying death. He’s defying any type of restrictive condition so to me, from my perspective, what Nick created has just gotten stronger.”

Stronger, but also older. In this continuity, Michael Audrey Myers will turn sixty-one years old this year, and will celebrate his birthday on the very date of Green’s Halloween release. Given the character’s advancing age, can he still take a beating?

“He’s a bad motherfucker, man,” stated Courtney. “He’s a bad dude. I’ve got to tell you, even old fighters don’t lose their punches. I got in the ring with Joe Brown on the set of Far and Away, who was Rocky Marciano’s sparring partner for seven of his eight title fights, and he said, ‘C’mon Jim, you can throw better than that,’ and I threw hard at him, man. And that old man’s (punches) kicked like a mule, and that’s when he sat me down and said, ‘A fighter never loses his punch.’ I think it’s the same with Myers. He’s not going to lose his strength, his virility, his power and his focus. He’s taking the hits.”

With a strict attention to continuity, as evidenced by the prosthetic FX appliance Courtney was wearing over his left eye (a result of the Myer’s character being stabbed with a coat hanger in the ’78 film – see our interview with FX artist Chris Nelson here for more on that), we asked Courtney, whose skills include decades of martial arts and pugilist training, if the resultant loss in depth perception was making his job difficult.

“Well, day by day it got better and by the third or fourth day, when I was fighting a gentleman with a crowbar, I started adjusting,” answered the actor. “Normally I track movement from my left eye, but (because of the appliance) I couldn’t see anything until it came into my right eye’s field of vision. But I think it’s really gifted me too, because it takes me into a space where I’m seeing the world from a different perspective.”

Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

We had to know, ‘In this latest iteration, is Myers supernatural?’

“In that he can take a lot of punishment,” said Castle, “they keep it pretty real. I have seen some of the sequels where they suggested other worldly reasons for his power, but this one does not have that.”

With the films previous sequels obliterated within this narrative thread, so too are Laurie and Michael’s familial ties, which had been set up in director Rick Rosenthal’s 1981 sequel, Halloween II. The pair was asked, ‘Is Laurie then just another victim Myers missed?’

“I can safely say without giving too much away that he knows her,” answered Castle.

Courtney expounded, “I think it goes back to human nature. We all have obsessions, compulsions, fixations…why doesn’t Michael get to have one? It’s interesting (because) in the original film Laurie notices him when nobody else does. She’s always the one who sees him, (from) the classroom (to) around the hedge, and everyone else is kind of distracted, so is there kind of like a reciprocal thing there, where she’s kind of the only one who notices him?”

“I think like I said that she’s on his list, and some of that is like the first one, which I think is the right way to play (it),” said Castle. “A lot of things are vague, in terms of his evil and stuff like that, (and) his motivations for things (and) why he does things, but I think in the process of reading the script a number of times I get the sense that yeah, that’s in his mind, too.”

“It’s really important to note that (real-life dictators) Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin didn’t consider themselves evil,” Courtney offered of Myers’ own perception. “There’s a judgement where people are saying, ‘Well, this is evil,’ but Michael Myers is just being who he is. He’s being true to who he is, and that’s an awesome space to occupy, man. I can’t tell you how incredible it feels.”

Of wearing the mask forty years later (the original was little more than a modified William Shatner ‘Captain Kirk’ mask purchased for a buck ninety eight at Burt Wheeler’s now defunct magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, whereas the 2018 version was sculpted as an aged-down recreation of it by an Academy Award winner), Castle told us of the masks, “They have the exact same dimensions, (and) I think they did a great job.”

“I can tell you,” added Courtney, “when Christopher (Nelson) brought it to the set and when I got to put it on (for) the first time it was, ‘Wow! This is really perfect for killing.’ There’s so much in that, do you know what I mean? It just closes you off from the world and then, something big happens man. It’s powerful.”

“From my perspective, Michael Myers operates so instinctively and he has such an incredible intuition about him,” Courtney concluded. “I mean, my mafia friend, he could walk into a place and tell you everything about the people in it, because his life depended on him reaching out that way. I think Michael Myers is the epitome of someone who can reach out and feel everything around him, and then hiding behind that mask makes it all the more private and personal.”

Exclusive Photos & Interview: Director David Gordon Green & Co-writer Danny McBride Talk Halloween from the Set

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On February 1st of this year, HalloweenMovies sat down with writer and director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride (two creatives and ex-college buddies whose past work lays primarily outside of the horror genre) on the set of Halloween in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to discuss their approach (along with co-writer Jeff Fradley) in bringing not only Michael Myers back to the screen, but in delivering a Halloween film which posseses direct ties in narrative and style to Carpenter’s 1978 classic.

Jamie Lee Curtis & David Gordon Green

“All of the films from the seventies: it’s truly a decade that I geek out about,” effused forty-three year old Green, whose most known for helming the comedic drama series “Eastbound & Down” starring Halloween co-writer McBride. “Suspiria and Halloween were the two films that really hit me in my youth. I always look at my age between eleven and seventeen, when I was just absorbing things and digging through things. Music to me was The Doors and movies to me were horror films like Suspiria, Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a time where I was so effected by the things I was seeing, and I’ve really retained them, even when I was in my twenties and even in film school, those early teen years meant so much to me.”

Meant so much that at one point, prior to director Luca Guadagnino’s helming of the upcoming 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, that Green was enthusiastically attached to write and direct his own retelling of the giallo horror classic, of which he’d intended to be a faithful adaptation, complete with portions of the original score by Goblin which he’d prememptively licensed.

“Creatively, Suspiria was a big one,” Green said, “and that was very exciting. I actually I wrote it with our (Halloween) production sound mixer Chris Hubert, but our version was very expensive and never ended up getting made. But Luca has now taken it on and has made a nice name for himself as a director. I wrote him the other day and asked him when I get to see it, because I need a peek.”

The eleventh film in the long-running franchise, 2018’s Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers. They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter.

As for the trio’s scripted approach to the latest Halloween film, the first installment in nine years and the second time in the franchise, not counting Rob Zombie’s films, in which the narrative discounts the existence of previous sequels, McBride stated, “I think it’s kind of cool to see what different filmmakers will do with a property that is so well known. I would rather have that approach to Michael Myers than everyone just continuing some storyline and just trying to regurgitate these things. I think it’s more interesting to have someone like David or Rob Zombie to just come and put their own stamp on it, for better or for worse. I think that’s a more interesting way for a franchise to stay alive than to just continue to beat the same drum over and over again.”

With Marvel having successfully done the same quite recently with the Spider-Man franchise, and fans of it happy to accept the various director’s unique interpretations of that universe, will Halloween aficionados do the same? Green’s hopeful.

“We have so much respect for the entire franchise, and that went into what we’re trying to engineer; literally a love of horror movies and a love of every Halloween movie across the board,” said the director. “We were trying to come up with what our take would be and really just found an original path that more or less takes the first one as our reality, (and) how we meet our characters in a different phase of their life under the reality of this traumatic event, and (how they) have to come to terms with some of these issues. Horrifically, in many circumstances, and that’s kind of the fun of how we launch off. There’s a lot of things that we haven’t revealed. Obviously a lot of the fun is (in) those reveals, and seeing how these things unfold, how these characters interact with one another and who they have become, and hopefully to honor the franchise in what we’ve painted in our very unique portrait.”

Does this portrait address the fate of Dr. Loomis?

“It does, yes,” succinctly allowed Green.

Given the trio’s similar background in lighter fare (the previously mentioned series “Eastbound & Down,” McBride’s well known turns in the feature films Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, and Fradley with the series “Vice Principals”), the conversation turned towards the similarity of scripted timing in both comedy and horror.

“We have talked about that a lot,” said McBride, “(and) that transition wasn’t that hard to make because I think with comedy you have to be very aware of where the audience is so you can decide what’s going to work next for them and what’s not going to work for them. I think when it came to pacing scares or even just the suspense or tension of a sequence, I think it’s very much engineered the same way. (You have to) have your finger on the pulse of exactly where you’re expecting the audience to be, so you can play with their expectations of where they think it is going to go next.”

With the latest Halloween revolving around three generations of Strode women (matriarch Laurie, daughter Karen and with focus high-school granddaughter Allyson), McBride offered, “I think that came up organically the very first time David and I talked. With the first Halloween, no one had been in a situation with Michael Myers before, so there’s this innocence, so I think by having multiple generations, we were able to cast a teenager who can give us that. (She’s) never seen violence like this so she has been able to have a normal life (and) have friends and not be constantly afraid, so I think it was a way to keep what was cool from the first Halloween, that sort of innocent ‘in’ to the story.”

While freeing themselves from any responsibility to the loose continuity of the previous sequels’ story-lines (from Halloween 4, 5 & 6’s The Curse of Thorn concept to Keri Tate’s dispatch of Myers…er, an EMT in H20/Halloween: Resurrection to Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot and 2009 sequel), the trio do plan to pay homage to the series as whole.

“Anyone who’s a fan of any of these films will find nice little Easter eggs acknowledging our salute to the filmmakers that have preceded us,” stated Green. “For us (though), it was a ‘clean slate’ type of opportunity, where if there was a little inspiration or mirror image of something, it’s very subtle in the movie because we want to start fresh for a new generation, but with (still a) great appreciation for the previous.”

(Writer’s note: check out mark 2:06 in the film’s trailer for such an example, and you’ll spot trick or treaters sporting Silver Shamrock masks from 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch).

The subject of onscreen violence is broached, in that while Green’s Halloween is intended to serve as a direct sequel in tone and style to Carpenter’s nearly bloodless classic, the slasher subgenre as a whole has historically ramped up the savagery, often is its hallmark, as the years have progressed.

“It’s something we’re really monitoring and playing with in production until we get into post,” communicated Green. “We’ve got Chris Nelson (see our interview with him here), who’s an incredible makeup and effects artist, so right now as were filming we’re keeping in mind first and foremost tension and anxiety, which I think are the greatest elements this film can offer. Even the scene we’re working on today, we’ll do takes where it’s less blood and more blood just to see how it unfolds in the editing process. For me, the original Halloween was my first horror film, and it means a lot to me, just in terms of my enthusiasm for the genre. From a splatter-slasher film to a psychological thriller, I love all those elements, so I’m learning every day and exploring every day, and I’ll know a lot more in a couple of months when I start to put the footage together to see the degree of gore, but we are in certainly very capable artistic hands.”

As for executive producer Carpenter’s guidance, “His advice was brilliant: ‘Make it relentless,’” said Green. “He had notes, which is something I was extremely nervous about. We worked very hard on the script, and we were all very excited. It’s one thing for three movie nerds, me, Danny and Jeff (Fradley), to geek out over the opportunity of maneuvering within this property, (and) another to basically go kiss the ring of the godfather and see how that goes. I was sweating bullets.”

“It’s very similar to how we do the TV show,” opened up Green of their scripting process. “We sit in a room, and luckily we’ve all known each other since college so we don’t get tired when the other person speaks, and we will just outline and discuss and talk about it, and get an outline we like. Then we just divide the outline up. Everybody takes chunks and so by the time the script is finished you have no idea what you wrote (or) what somebody else wrote. It’s all just one cohesive thing.”

Pertaining to their script, and in particular to the character of Myers, “I’d like to know as little about him or his history and abilities as possible,” the director offered. “I think there was a reason he was called The Shape (in the original) because in some ways he’s more of an essence than he is a traditional character. (It’s in) finding that line between natural and supernatural worlds, and (in a) mysterious and un-verbalized (way) as we can. In some ways it’s like a film like Jaws. There’s not a lot of personality in the shark. Technically he’s very elusive, and we’re trying to keep that as our framework and not get too much into who he is (or) why he is (or) what he’s been doing.”

McBride chimed in, “I was pushing for the removal (of the familial mythology set up in Halloween II) right off the bat. I just felt like that was an area where he wasn’t quite as scary anymore. It seemed too personalized. I wasn’t as afraid of Michael Myers anymore, because I’m not his fucking brother so he’s not coming after me. So it just seemed like new territory to bite off. Maybe we’ll look back and say, ‘Oh, it was such a mistake not to make them siblings,’ but I don’t know, it seemed as opposed to just duplicating it, would be cool to see if it gives us something else.”

Michael’s sister or not, within the new narrative Laurie’s been training for a showdown with Myers for some time, and Green was asked, ‘How are you going to refrain from turning her into Sarah Connor?’

Michael Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Halloween: Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

“Did we?” laughed Green. “Jamie just started (shooting) this week, and we’ve been sculpting the character for months and months with her, and coming up with something that we thought would be fun. We’ll find that physicality as we go. We haven’t filmed the climax yet so we’ll see how badass she gets.”

As for the level of scrutiny by the fan community the project has been under since its initial announcement, Green stated, “You know, I think the most pressure I have is wanting John (Carpenter) to be involved and enthusiastic and (to) see what we’re doing and appreciate what we’re doing, and to support in those collaborative elements. At this point, creatively, for my own protection, I have to acknowledge my collaborators. Everyone on this set is working out of passion for this movie, and that’s interesting, because you don’t often see a passion project as a low-budget horror film. But this particular one is, and we’re really lucky to have the people that we have: intelligent, technical and creative minds all around us. So I’m looking at that as my shell, my place to hide and to create, and the support of these dozens of voices is incredibly gratifying, but also a bit overwhelming. If I was to, at this point in the creative process, to assume the worldwide enthusiasm for this franchise, I’d probably be very uncomfortable with that.”

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.

Exclusive Photos & Interview: Jamie Lee Curtis Talks Halloween from the Set

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On Thursday, February 1st in a quaint house situated on a tree-lined residential street in Charleston, South Carolina (one which strongly resembled Pasadena, CA’s 1978 stand-in for a certain fictional town in Illinois), I found myself, along with and a handful of other journalists clustered about a dining table, our voice recorders whirring. The occasion?

Principal photography on the eleventh entry in the ever-popular Halloween film franchise had begun, and with eighteen days left on the shooting schedule, series notable and star Jamie Lee Curtis, in full ‘Laurie Strode’ regalia, had joined us in order to discuss the film, and her upcoming and final confrontation with iconic killer Michael Myers contained within.

The first film in the franchise in nine years, the simply titled Halloween is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19, 2018. Written by Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley and David Gordon Green (the latter who also directs), the entry is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Eschewing the dense and varied continuity of most of its predecessors (that’s right, you’ll find no mention of Silver Shamrock, Jamie Lloyd, The Curse of Thorn, Hillcrest Academy or Rob Zombie’s White Horse narratives within – that is unless the filmmakers indulge in filmic Easter eggs – check out our interview with them here for word), Green’s Halloween as reported boldly picks up directly forty years after the original.  What does that mean for the timeline? Series’ boogeyman Michael Myers (reprised here by originator Nick Castle), as opposed to having disappeared into the suburban night as he so famously did in the indigenous film following Dr. Loomis’ second floor pistol volley, was apprehended by the authorities, and has been incarcerated ever since.

Incarcerated, and waiting.

So apparently however has been Curtis’ character of Laurie Strode, at least in the latter, if the photo on her phone which she displayed to us upon her entry was any indication (the picture featured a record sleeve of the original Halloween score on vinyl, which the actress had put a round through with a lever-action rifle during a ballistic training course in preparation for her role. It seems the range master was himself a fan of the film, and brought her the LP slip with that exact request).

Wearing a long, gray wig and sporting a blue denim shirt, functional brown jacket, pants and boots, Curtis arrived to set in costume, taking a seat across from us with her back to the dining room window. The color palette and materials of her getup seemed not only stuck in time – the late1970s to be exact – but also perhaps those which a survivor of violent trauma might favor. Intuitive costuming for a character who in this latest iteration has never been able to move on emotionally or geographically from the events of that fateful Halloween night four decades prior, in which three of her friends were murdered by a silent, knife-wielding maniac. Rendered a recluse from the ordeal, and suffering strained relations with her daughter and granddaughter (actresses Judy Greer and Andi Matichak as ‘Karen’ and ‘Allyson’ respectively), Laurie in the latest Halloween film now lives alone in a perpetual state of paranoia.

“So here’s what you need to know,” answered Curtis regarding her four decade turn as cinema’s most famous scream queen. “The truth of the matter is I did (1981’s) Halloween II because it picked up exactly where (1978’s) Halloween left off, (and) in that version of the storytelling I felt I owed it to the people who loved the original movie, in that it picks up the second the (previous) one ends. Even though other people didn’t join in (on the production), I felt that as the face of the movie that it was my responsibility, but I also recognized by then, (that) I had already done (the horror films) Prom Night, Terror Train, kind of a bad thriller called Road Games in Australia, and then Halloween II. I knew, if I knew anything, that it was time to say, ‘No more.’ It had nothing to do with the genre and it had nothing to do with the pejorative attached. It literally had to do with (the fact that) if I wanted to do anything else (in the film industry that) I wouldn’t get the opportunity, because the pigeon hole would be cemented closed, and I felt that Halloween II was the way to end that.”

What followed for Curtis was a string of successful mainstream projects, from several feature films (1983’s Trading Places, 1988’s A Fish Called Wanda and 1994’s True Lies, to name a few) to stints in television and comedy.

“So I kind of never went back to it,” Curtis, now fifty-nine, said or her work in the realm of horror, “And I never paid attention to it because it’s not a genre I’m a fan of. With all due respect, I scare easily. I’m emotional, so if something is super sad or violent I react (to it), so it’s not a genre I’m attracted to. I don’t look forward to it and I don’t understand the thrill of it, (but) I respect it. So I forgot about it for a long time until Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, and H20 came about purely because I was still in show business, and so was John (Carpenter) and (Halloween producer) Debra Hill, and I called them (in 1997) to have lunch and said, ‘Hey guys, next year will be twenty years later, and how crazy is that? How often does that happen?’”

“So H20 was conceived and there was a moment where John was going to direct it,” she continued, “but then he had other commitments and I ended up, kind of again, being the only representative (of the series in the film), but the idea of that movie was to kind of complete the story. But of course, with the Halloween movies there’s a completion and then there’s a ‘completion’. You know, the word ‘completion’ has many interpretations. I wanted a concrete ending. (During the finale of H20) when Laurie has that axe in her hand, she is saying (to Michael), ‘It’s you or me, because I’m not running anymore.’ For me, that was a very important moment and a very important completion. But of course what we (the audience) learned, which by the way was not the original intention, was that it was not Michael (who she vanquished), but an innocent man that she had killed.”

“So what I said to them was, ‘If this is in fact how we are going to conclude the movie, without the audience knowing, then I have to come back for one more movie, for a very short moment to conclude Laurie’s story. I’m not going to make H20 ambiguous.’ That was for me the reason I was in Halloween: Resurrection. I thought H20 was the correct thing to do at the time, I liked it, (and) then I had to be in that other thing just to conclude the story, and then I truly thought I would not return to this.”

In regards to that 2018 return, which has been met with fervor by the series’ fan-base since it was announced, Curtis offered, “But life is sweet. I’m doing many things, (the) kids are raised and I was on vacation in June when I got this phone call that David (Gordon Green) wanted to speak to me. They started to pitch me (a new Halloween film) and I said, ‘No, no, just send it to me,’ and I read it and I thought that it was a very clever, modern way of referencing Halloween. It’s not a reboot, it is a re-telling. It’s a very interesting take on the movie because it references (1978’s) Halloween in every way it can, stylistically, character-wise, visually, emotionally, (and) it follows very similar themes. But it’s its own movie, so it’s a very clever mash-up. When you see what they’ve come up with you’ll go, ‘Wow,’ because it’s a very modern and very true (take on the mythology).”

Given her connection to role, which coupled with her performance inarguably created the slasher genre’s ‘final girl’ prototype, as well as the closing of that character’s arc in H20 (which many fans consider a satisfying conclusion), Curtis was asked her thoughts on returning to a now altered world of Halloween: ‘Is it exciting or wistful?’

“It’s always a little wistful because we’re talking about the passage of time,” Curtis mused, “which we have all felt in our own lives. We look in the mirror and the passage of time is happening. We can’t stop it. So it’s wistful, simply because of that passage of time, but as a franchise it’s also this beautiful old growth, which can branch off into a new ways. It’s a new generation for this movie, so there will be many young people who will only know (1978’s) Halloween and this one. They may not have followed the whole franchise. So for me, it’s like a pallet cleanser.”

Of Laurie in Green’s re-telling, we queried Curtis if whether or not her character retained any of the traits on display in H20.

“The thing I really wanted to talk about in H20, that theme that we went for in that movie, is going to be at play here in a big way, is trauma,” the actress responded. “I have a friend of mine who is a doctor, a neuropsychologist, and they are studying stress and trauma now in children. Whatever the trauma, be it abuse, physical or emotional violence, whatever it is, the effect changes your brain chemistry, so for me what’s crucial is what level that trauma had on this character, who is now fifty-eight years old. And that trauma for her is this perseverating sense of eventuality that Michael will come back, and that every day of her life has been in preparation for that meeting.”

“She lives alone,” Curtis continued of Laurie in the new narrative. “She has tried to live in society but society has not been welcoming. There weren’t a lot of mental health professionals helping this young woman, so she banged her way into her life.  She slammed into people and institutions and law enforcement, and they hate her because she calls the police every day, saying, ‘Do you have somebody patrolling Smith’s Grove? (Because) I was out there. I actually sat in my car all day outside of it and I didn’t see one cop car. Why is that? Why aren’t you treating him with the respect that you should treat him?’ That’s the level of perseverating she has done. This is a woman who knows exactly where Michael is and she knows (what he’s capable of), even though they all are convinced that he’s somebody who they can maybe manage, work with through drugs, rehabilitate, and all of the rest of it. She is the only one who knows exactly who he is, and that’s who we find.”

Given this, Curtis was asked, “If Laurie has been living her life like this for the past forty years, how did she find a way in her own emotions to potentially fall in love, have a child and find someone who can deal with who she is as a person?”

“I make no assumptions about people’s sexual orientation or whatever, but have you ever had a sexual encounter that was brief, somewhat fast and furious and then you never saw that person again?” Curtis replied. “I can’t imagine that anyone of us in this room has not had one of those. Well, for you to assume that Laurie has a satisfying relationship with somebody is an assumption. Laurie Strode I believe, doesn’t even know who the father of her daughter is. Nobody could have a satisfying emotional relationship with a woman who is looking over their shoulder every moment they’re together, and it’s that assumption that Laurie’s had some sort of relationship is why we find her in this isolated place that she’s living, in this sort of militaristic mindset.”

But what of her relationship with her granddaughter Allyson (actress Matichak)?

“Yes, well, I mean she’s human,” stated Curtis. “She’s Laurie. Laurie loved kids. Laurie was fantastic with children, probably better with children than adults. You know, when trauma happens you freeze. We can look at it through history. When something really bad happens you calcify emotionally. The Laurie we’re going to meet is fifty-nine years old but also is in a weird way seventeen, so I think she actually responded much better to her granddaughter than to her own daughter. I think with her own daughter she was dysfunctional in the raising of her, because of this obsession of safety, but because her granddaughter wasn’t raised by her, she can connect to the granddaughter. I mean you know and I know, what did Laurie give to her own daughter when she found out she was going to have a child? A car seat. Laurie is going to buy the safety item.”

“(But) I think Laurie can relate to Allyson more than probably anybody else in her life,” expounded Curtis on her character’s familial ties. “Allyson’s very smart, she is much like Laurie (and while) I won’t give it away, she’s a smarty pants and that makes Laurie very, very proud, because she’s just like Laurie was, whereas I think Karen was a little more of a rebel. We don’t know exactly what age she was taken from Laurie, but she was taken, and so Laurie didn’t have a hand in raising her as much and I think it was contentious (with) visitation and the horrible restrictions that get put on families when people are pulled apart.”

Another important change given this new iteration, is that with the jettisoning of the sequels’ narrative post 1978, Laurie is now once again no longer Michael’s sister, which makes his obsession with her nebulous and to some, more terrifying.

“There is nothing more frightening to me than an unrelated attack you relate into, do you know what I mean?” offered Curtis. “I promise you, in 1978 in March (when we were filming the original), the oldest person on set was John (Carpenter) and he was thirty or thirty-one. Debra was thirty, Dean Cundey was twenty-nine, and every guy on the crew was twenty-four or twenty-five. We were a band of rebels (who were) guerilla filmmaking. We had three trucks, one for the art department, one for camera and a Winnebago that was for makeup, hair, wardrobe and special effects. Each actor had a cabinet (in it) with their name on it, and that’s where you put your purse. We all changed in the same area, and that’s what the movie was. It was made in seventeen days, (and) superfast. Not one of those people can claim today that they knew that this movie would be a wild success, and (that it) would spawn generations of sequels. So what happened in the telling of those stories, in forty years of storytelling, is like a tree. One of those (tree) branches started telling a story that was an invention by the filmmakers to tell that story, (but) I agree with you, I think it makes it much more terrifying, that what happened was random.”

With Laurie in this new narrative having spent forty years preparing for Myers’ eventual return, is her priority to dispatch him once and for all, or does it lay in the protection of her family, however strained those ties may be?

“That’s is the question: ‘What do you do?’” Curtis replied. “It’s a really tough question, (and) you will see in the movie (that) she does both. She will go after him but at the same time protect her family.”

Which brings us back to that lever-action rifle.

“You know, we have to approach it with realism,” responded Curtis. “Laurie isn’t going to pick up a semi-automatic weapon. We have to go with the (film’s) lore, and that lore is that you can’t kill Michael, and that you take advantage of the skill sets that you have. I’m not going to bring a tactical nuke in when I know he is somewhere in a field. We have to go with the reality of, ‘We are in Haddonfield, Illinois, (so) what can she do?’ What she can do is prepare herself everyday of her life for the eventual reconnection with him (of which) she is convinced, (and of which) she tries to convince everybody (of). And the reason that her daughter was taken from her is because she was so focused on this conclusion that he would come back. You can imagine, she’s a very paranoid woman. Like Laurie would never sit where I’m sitting, ever, with her back to the window and door.”

As for whose eyes the audience will see Green’s Halloween through, Curtis stated, “Allyson’s. Laurie comes in and out without question (ala) Paul Revere (proclaiming), ‘Michael Myers is coming, Michael Myers is coming!’ and she knows it, but she’s been saying that for a long time and people are just tired of her.”

“The part of this that’s tricky for me is you see, Laurie Strode is a survivor,” expounded Curtis. “She survived by her wits (in the original), even though she made stupid errors, like throwing the knife away twice, but Laurie wasn’t a badass, Laurie was a nerd. Laurie read sweet romances, and it was interesting because she fought back. That lore was then sucked out of that storytelling, that good and strong and smart girls survive, and that girls who are promiscuous don’t, and myriad horror movies then applied the same formula. (But) Laurie isn’t a badass, and I also don’t want her to be a badass, I want her to be prepared. I want her to still be who she is, (and) she’s not Linda Hamilton because I don’t have those arms. Laurie was strong because she was smart.”

“Education I think gives you strength, so I’ve tried not to become some badass bitch (in this), because I don’t think that’s correct. Laurie here is pedantic, she’s mono-focused, she’s annoying as hell and in her living she has become proficient with weapons. It’s tricky because (in cinema) we’ve turned strong women into superhero women, and that isn’t what makes a woman strong. We’re not talking about physical strength, we’re talking about intelligence and wile and all the beautiful things that make a smart woman so dynamic. So I’m hoping to fight against Laurie becoming too much (of a) badass, and to keep the integrity of her intelligence that I have brought into this piece.”

Curtis was asked whether or not she had contributed to the script, to which she replied, “The only thing I’ve done is a Laurie polish. Once they really sort of solidified it, you know, I came in as Laurie and said, ‘I don’t think Laurie would do this, I think this,’ and it was just in the collaboration of writing.”

On how the role has affected her personally, “You know, I’m a smart ass vulgarian,” she offered. “I was a cheerleader in high school, and I’m very energetic and I’m a total smart ass because I’m not that intelligent, and the quickest way around (having) some actual legitimate answers to something is to quip. Prior to meeting John (Carpenter, as an actor) I had done Operation Petticoat, a TV series where I was just a girl in a tight shirt (for) a few episodes. So when John cast me as Laurie, it may have been the only time in my life that someone had hired me to be an actor.”

“Now people hire me to be ‘me’. They (may) hire me to sell you yogurt that makes you poop, but they hire me to sell you yogurt that makes you poop as ‘me’, meaning, whatever my gig is, you believe ‘me’. That’s why people hire me to do commercials for them because people go, ‘Oh, I believe her,’ and that’s because I’ve established a ‘Jamie life’. But you see, this was in 1978, and John hired me to be Laurie. He didn’t hire me to play P.J. (Sole’s role of Lynda), and he didn’t hire me to play Nancy (Kye’s role of Annie). Either one of those roles he could easily have cast me in, (but) he cast me as Laurie, and the integrity of Laurie really gave me the confidence to continue being an actor, because it really made me understand that I was an actor, and that I wasn’t just a cute girl that was going to make you crack up.”

As to what trait drew Carpenter to her for the role, “He said ‘vulnerability,’” she recalled, “and I think that’s an intangible thing. True vulnerability is what you want in a horror film (and) what you want your lead character to have – so that you as an audience believe in her and want to protect her a little bit. That’s what true vulnerability does, and that’s again what I tried to achieve (even) in H20, was the depth of someone’s pain (and) of trauma, so in this movie we are returning a bit to that, so we will I hope have a beautiful conclusion to Laurie Strode’s story.”

Reflecting on her return to the world of Halloween, Curtis communicated, “The moment that completely slayed me was seeing (producer) Malek Akkad, because I knew his dad (Moustapha). It brought tears to my eyes that he was carrying on the tradition of his father. That got me, when I saw him standing there, because I remember Malek as a little kid (during the production of the first two films), and then the horrible story of what happened to his dad, and that did it.”

(Writer’s note: Most known for producing the original series of Halloween films and for directing the features The Message (1976) and Lion of the Desert (1980), Moustapha Akkad was a Syrian American filmmaker, who was killed along with his daughter Rima Al Akkad Monla in a 2005 bombing in Amman, Jordan).

“So seeing Malek carrying on this great tradition from a movie that was conceived by his dad in 1977,” continued Curtis, “was very moving to me. He is the keeper of that flame and he was working really hard to protect his father’s legacy and the way that Moustapha did business, and you know it’s a modern world, a different world forty years later, a whole different business, and I just communicated to him that no matter what, that’s the thing he has to hold onto because that’s the only thing that matters. Money…all the fun we might have together making this movie…none of it matters. The only thing that matters is his keeping the integrity of his father’s vision and that he has done, but he had to fight for it.”

“But the reason I bring this up is that Malek, many years ago, had started something called the Scare Foundation, which was a charitable arm taking advantage of the genre,” concluded Curtus. “This was prior to the resurgence of the genre, and he had created this foundation to honor his (slain) father and sister, and he asked me to be the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Scare Foundation dinner. I went, and it was like walking into a room with you guys. It was insane, it was fantastic, it was pure, (and) people loved it.

I had spent twenty-five years away from (the genre), and I just hadn’t really connected to it, and at one point Malek said, ‘You know, you could do one of those (horror) conventions,’ and then I realized I could probably do it for charity. So I made my one and only appearance at a convention for horror fans; HorrorHound in Indianapolis (in 2012). I went for two days, my sister and her husband filmed it and made a documentary about it, and I went back home to the horror fans. I have to tell you, it was one of the most satisfying weekends, not because I got this wack amount of attention (because) it was too much attention for me, but it was (because of) the love of the genre, the love of this movie, this character, Michael Myers, (and) all the rest of it.”

Exclusive Photos & Interview: Actors Jefferson Hall & Rhian Rees Talk Halloween from the Set

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By now you’ve probably witnessed the first trailer for director David Gordon Green’s hotly-anticipated feature film Halloween (and if you haven’t, we’ve included it below), which showcases series icon Michael Myers renewing his killing spree after being awoken from four decades of catatonia by two misguided British documentarians. This past February during principal photography of the film in Charleston, South Carolina, HalloweenMovies sat down with the two actors, Jefferson Hall and Rhian Rees, in order to discuss their characters, what they felt makes Myers tick, and what fans can expect from Laurie Strode’s final showdown with The Shape.

“We are probably the closest thing to the audience, as far as characters are concerned, because we are coming in as two people who have followed the case of Michael Myers almost since childhood,” said British actor Hall of his character of Martin in the film, who along with fellow Brit actress Rees (as Dana Hanes) prove responsible for the killer’s return to Haddonfield.

The eleventh film in the franchise and co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name, and disregards all of the series subsequent entries. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers. They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter. The cast additionally includes Virginia “Ginny” Gardener, Dylan Arnold, Drew Scheid and Miles Robbins.

Perhaps wisely riffing on audiences’ recent trending interest in true crime programming (“Mindhunters,” “Making a Murderer,” etc.), Hall and Rees’ characters, two investigative journalists who’ve arrived from overseas to Haddonfield, Illinois in order to dig into the case of the Halloween Killer, serve as an entry point into this retelling of the universe.

“As we are pretty close to the audience, we have exposition for those who have never seen the (original) film,” offered Hall, whose previous roles include turns on the series “Game of Thrones” and “Vikings.” “So we are the guys that are saying, ‘He did this. This happened. We are looking for him.’ So we provide the background for the audience. As an actor, you never want to do any exposition, but here I think it’s written quite gracefully and well done.”  

Pertaining to their character’s journalistic angle, “We are looking at the whole idea of the incarceration of mentally ill people, and juxtaposing that to real life serial killers,” he continued. “It’s difficult to mention all of that stuff in the film, but in doing our own (preparatory) research we looked at Ed Kemper, who is this huge guy who walked around breaking people’s necks and decapitating people, and Herb Mullin who went from door to door just stabbing people because of the voices in his head. There are so many serial killers from that time, the 1970s and 1980s, when it was post-Vietnam and pre-FBI analysis. Jeffery Dahmer started killing in 1978 as well, the same year Carpenter’s Halloween came out, so it’s quite interesting.”

We asked, “In that this film ignores any sequels to the original, it also lowers Myers’ onscreen body count considerably. Given that, do your characters view Myers as being lower on the serial killer totem pole than the ones you’ve referenced?”

“Definitely,” stated Rees. “I think we find Michael to be a little more empathetic, and we’re obsessed with the idea of getting him and Laurie Strode into the same room together, so that they may face their fears. So that’s a whole angle, in that our characters are approaching it a bit sensationally and exploitatively, and also we don’t think he’s the world’s worst serial killer, as we are coming at it from a different perspective.”

Hall expounds, “Peter Woodcock, the Canadian serial killer, raped and murdered three little boys when he was fifteen, and he was sentenced to forty years in prison. The first time he gets a day release, he goes to a hardware store, buys an axe, a carving knife and a piece of rope and places them in the woods. Then he immediately lures a guy into the very same woods where he stabs him like fifty times and then fucks him. Peter then goes straight back to the facility covered in blood and says, ‘You shouldn’t have let me out.’ The crimes are very Myers’esque (in that) there’s a dormant period.”

Speaking to the scripted triggering of Myers’ homicidal tendencies as witnessed in the film’s trailer, “There are also some other influences, but I think that (displaying) the mask (to him) is a huge provocation,” offered Hall. “He wants his face back, as you would. Speaking psychologically, he can’t kill without it. He has to hide his face. Ed Kemper (for one) had these weird glasses that he wore, and he couldn’t kill anyone without wearing them.”

As for the filming location in which that scene takes place, “It was a military institution, and it had this huge courtyard surrounded by buildings, with barbed wire around the top and dudes with machine guns,” said Hall. “The courtyard was a huge checkerboard, red and white. In the middle, we got your man (Michael) and around him were a whole bunch of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest nutcases chained to bits of concrete, and they all start losing their shit, while Myers just sits there, still. And we start asking him rote questions while his back is to us, and he starts to rise, and everyone starts to scream.”

“What’s interesting,” he continued, “is that you have the established world of Haddonfield that everyone knows about, and then you have these two characters who are fucking fiddling with the bars on the lion’s cage, and people go, ‘But lions kill people,’ but these characters don’t just want to see a lion sitting in the zoo. They want to see it bite. They want to see it eat meat. And that’s essentially what we are doing is rattling Michael’s cage.”

“And horribly naively as well,” added Rees. “Our idea is that Michael can be rehabilitated as they do in Scandinavia, and given a job.”

And what of Laurie Strode?

“For our characters, Laurie is as interesting as Michael, and we think Laurie and Michael complete each other in a way,” Hall stated. “Like Jaws and Quint.”

Rees extrapolated, “Laurie isn’t overly receptive to us, but our characters are very interested in her, because we’ve been researching the victim mentality for years leading up to this, and it’s so entertaining, because we are potentially going to get an interview with the victim, and with Michael Myers coming together, and this could be the first conversation they’ve ever had. I mean, he doesn’t talk to anyone, and she could be the key.”

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.