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‘REWIND’ to ’81: Halloween II For Fright Fans

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A fire lit in 1960 by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, the flames of the slasher film subgenre were fanned in 1974 by Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, and then most assuredly whipped into a firestorm in 1978 by John Carpenter’s seminal and immensely profitable Halloween. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, director Carpenter and his leading lady Jamie Lee Curtis may have indeed been gratified to witness the deluge of films released upon its heels which hoped to achieve similar success.

1979’s When a Stranger Calls, Tourist Trap, Driller Killer and the unrelated ‘confusion’ marketed The Day After Halloween (among others) were the first to take a stab at the box office, all with middling success, while 1980 saw the release of the first (and well received) Friday the 13th film, as well as a few dozen others, including Maniac, Christmas Evil, Terror Train and Prom Night, the latter two featuring Curtis herself. But it wasn’t until 1981 when the actress, who by that time had been crowned the ‘Scream Queen’ of the genre, would return to the role of Laurie Strode which she’d originated in Carpenter’s classic.

Released on October 30th, 1981, director Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II picked up from where its predecessor left off, and documented more of ‘The Night He Came Home,’ as the film’s antagonist Michael Myers continued to stalk heroine Strode from the streets of Haddonfield into the town’s hospital, and audiences reacted with wild enthusiasm. The flick’s domestic box office take was $25.5 million from a $2.5 million budget.

And while film critics Gene Siskell and Roger Ebert may have heralded the original Halloween as a film of “artistry and craftsmanship,” while later vilifying the slasher genre as a whole with a seemingly incessant smear campaign, calling them “Movies that hate women” (see a portion of the pair’s September 1980 episode of their weekly PBS show Sneak Previews for more below), other critics’ responses to Rosenthal’s follow-up were overwhelmingly positive.

In fact, The New York Times film reviewer Janet Maslin called Halloween II a, “Class act.”

Read on.

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HALLOWEEN II FOR FRIGHT FANS

ALL those long, dark corridors. And all those empty – or are they empty? – rooms. Not to mention all those wicked-looking medical instruments. Halloween II is set in a hospital at night, on the precise night when the original Halloween left off. The bodies are being counted. The killer is still at large. And the heroine, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), has been whisked off for medical treatment at the local hospital, where she is given a sedative and put to bed. And left in her room. All alone.

Will the killer follow Laurie to the emergency ward and pick off nurse after nurse until he gets to her? Will the nurses wander off one at a time and play right into his hands? Will the killer think of new and ingenious ways to dispense with them? The answer to these questions is probably also the answer to ”Will there be a Halloween III?”

Actually, Halloween II is good enough to deserve a sequel of its own. By the standards of most recent horror films, this – like its predecessor – is a class act. There’s some variety to the crimes, as there is to the characters, and an audience is likely to do more screaming at suspenseful moments than at scary ones. The gore, while very explicit and gruesome, won’t make you feel as if you’re watching major surgery. The direction and camera work are quite competent, and the actors don’t look like amateurs. That may not sound like much to ask of a horror film, but it’s more than many of them offer. And Halloween II, in addition to all this, has a quick pace and something like a sense of style.

John Carpenter, who directed the first film, is co-writer and co-producer (with Debra Hill) this time, and composed the repetitive, nerve-jangling music with Alan Howarth. He has assigned the directing chores to Rick Rosenthal, who follows ably in Mr. Carpenter’s footsteps. Mr. Rosenthal’s methods are sometimes familiar but almost always reliable. When a yellow light summoning nurses goes off at the hospital, Mr. Rosenthal makes the accompanying sound so loud and startling you’ll think there’s a Canada goose honking in your ear – a cheap trick, but an effective one. On the debit side, Mr. Rosenthal is capable of showing not one but three closeups of a hypodermic needle entering flesh when one of his characters is due for some harmless injections.

The timing of the killer’s surprise appearances has a dependable regularity. Halloween II is suspenseful enough, incidentally, not to rely too heavily on the killer’s sneaking up on his victims out of nowhere. Sometimes he just appears in the corner of the frame and stays there for a while, toying with the audience before moving in upon his prey.

Halloween II, which opens today at the Cinerama II and other theaters, is something of an audience participation movie, if the shrieks and giggles of one preview audience are any indication. In addition to the shouts of ”Get outta there!” that accompany each nurse’s efforts to find out what was making that funny noise in that spare room, the movie prompts Laurie Strode’s well-wishers to scream in excitement once Laurie wakes up and starts running. By this time the killer has developed some supernatural powers, which suggest that a Halloween III may be a lot more far fetched than its predecessors.

But don’t worry about Laurie: if there’s a next film, she’ll probably be around to see it through. The same may not be true of Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis, who is caught up in this film’s fiery crescendo, which is by no means the worst thing that happens to him. The worst thing is his being forced to say ”We’re all afraid of the dark inside of ourselves,” in one of the film’s mercifully brief efforts to explain the killer, his horrid habits and his troubled mind.

Siskell and Ebert’s Sneak Previews, September 1980

Halloween II Trailer

Exclusive Interview: Halloween 5’s Don Shanks Speaks! – Part 2

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In 1989, director Dominique Othenin-Girard’s Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers polarized Halloween fans. 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, this fifth film in the franchise (and the fourth which followed the iconic character of the babysitter-slashing Myers, who first found fame in originator John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 horror classic Halloween) was indeed a departure from its predecessors.

But what of the man who donned the infamous coveralls and mask for this fifth entry? Thirty years since its release, we caught up with stuntman and actor Don Shanks to discuss his experience working on the film, and touched on topics ranging from the film’s alternate ‘Dr. Death’ opening and deleted scenes to working with young lead Danielle Harris, as well as his prolific career in the film and stunt industry, navigating Hollywood as a Native American, and a whole lot more.

Commencing with his role of Nakoma in the 1974 film The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and kicking into high gear in 1977 in the hit television series of the same name (you can dig deep into Shanks’ beginnings in Part 1 of our interview series here), Shanks told us that prior to Halloween 5 he’d cut his teeth on an entirely different slasher film, the 1984 flick Silent Night, Deadly Night.

“I was in that film quite a bit,” Shanks offered of the movie, which went on to generate four sequels and the 2012 loose remake Silent Night. “A friend of mine was the stunt coordinator on it and he brought me on to double the Santa.”

Directed by Charles E. Sellier, Jr. (who Shanks had worked with on the Adams films and television series years prior), Silent Night, Deadly Night was written by Paul Caimi, and revolves around the character of Billy, who after seeing his parents murdered as a child at the hands of a Santa Claus suit-wearing criminal, goes on a Yuletide spree-killing of his own some years later.

Cashing in on the holiday-themed slasher craze of the time (its predecessors included Bob Clark’s underrated 1974 film Black Christmas and of course 1978’s immensely successful Halloween, as well as their imitators My Bloody Valentine, Friday the 13th Part 2, The Burning and dozens of others), the production too decided to give their killer a narratively related look. Thusly, Silent Night, Deadly Night’s Billy was presented as a none-too-family-friendly axe-wielding Saint Nick, much to the outrage of parents everywhere.

“Everything with the axe was me, and I did all of the stunts required of Santa Claus,” recalled Shanks of his work in the film, which also required him to double many of Santa’s victims as well, “and (often) we were using real axes.”

Of one of those moments when Shanks was asked to use an actual edged weapon, “We were doing one scene with Linnea (Quigley) where she runs to the telephone and (the character of) Billy throws his axe at her, and they wanted me to cut the telephone cord next to her with the axe,” Shanks offered. “I said, ‘That’s a little too close to her for me. There’s a snowman (decoration) right next to her. Let me throw it at that.’ So I first did it with a rubber axe, which didn’t stick and just knocked the fake wall down. So they fixed the wall, and I did it again, and the second time the axe splitt the snowman and it stuck (in the wall).”

 “After the take Linnea said, ‘That was really amazing!’” recalled the actor. “And I said, ‘Well, you know I throw knives and tomahawks.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, but how do you get a rubber one to stick in the wall?’ And I said, ‘The second one wasn’t rubber! They didn’t tell you that I was going to be throwing a real axe at you?’ And she said, ‘No, they didn’t.’”

Linnea Quigley in Silent Night, Deadly Night.

As it turns out, scantily-clad women weren’t the only ones on Santa’s “naughty list” in Silent Night, Deadly Night.

“In another scene, this kid steals a toboggan and is sledding down a hill,” continued Shanks. “So we had a stunt guy wearing a prosthetic head double the kid, and we put a ghost neck on the top of his own head and built his shoulders up, and I took the real axe and cut his (prosthetic) head off with it. So like I said, we were using real axes.”

 Such holiday mayhem was the cause of much controversy on November 9th, 1984, when the film was released to theaters. Lambasted by critics and picketed by parental groups for its content (and television trailers, which aired during hours of family-friendly programming), the TriStar film was pulled from theaters six days into its release. (Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was incidentally released the same day – to less vitriol and far more fanfare).

In the years following Silent Night, Deadly Night, Shanks found work in the television films Louis L’Amour’s Down the Long Hills and Stranger on My Land, as well as the television series Werewolf, before landing the role he’s most known to genre fans for: that of The Shape in 1989’s Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

Of that casting, Shanks recalled, “What it was, was that I had worked with stunt coordinator Don Pike. We had done a CHiPS episode together and had become kind of friends, and then later I was here in Salt Lake City, and he called me and said, ‘We’re doing this movie and I wanted to know if you were available to do stunts.’ I go, ‘Yep, sure.’ And so he calls me back ten minutes later and says, ‘The director would like to talk to you.’ I asked, ‘About doing stunts?’ He says, ‘Well, we’re doing Halloween 5 and we’re considering you to play Michael Myers.’ I go, ‘That’s cool.’ So I went in and talked to (the director) Dominique, and after a little bit he says, ‘I want you to walk for me like wood through water.’ I thought about it for a minute, and then I did it, and he said, ‘OK, perfect.’”

 “And that’s how I got the role.”

Don Shanks Unmasked in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

 With its predecessor Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers having released to box office success in October of 1988, the series’ producers were eager to duplicate that with an October 1989 follow-up, and thusly, Halloween 5 was moved quickly into production. Ideas pertaining to the continuation of the storyline varied wildly. A first draft by Shem Bitterman followed Alan B. McElroy’s established conceit and found the character of Jamie Lloyd to have become pure evil, following the stabbing of her stepmother in the finale of Halloween 4. That concept was however rejected by producer Moustapha Akkad, who felt that fans’ interest lay in the story of Myers (given the box office disaster that was the Myers-less Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, his concerns were warranted). Ultimately, writers Bitterman, Michael Jacobs and director Othenin-Girard all found writing credits on the shooting script, in a story which picked up directly where the previous film had left off: with Myers falling into a mine shaft beneath a hail of gun fire.

“We started filming a week and a half after I got the script,” recalled Shanks of Halloween 5, which commenced principal photography in May of 1989 in Salt Lake City and its surrounding environs.

As originally scripted and shot, Myers, in true First Blood fashion, escapes via a fiery opening in the side of a mountain, and riddled with bullets floats down the river to the cabin of Dr. Death, portrayed by local Salt Lake City resident Theron “Uncle Thud” Read, in what has become one of the more discussed ‘lost’ scenes of the film franchise.

Writer’s note: It may not be lost.

“He was a punk comedian here in town,” recalled Shanks of the actor, comic and fixture on the 1980’s SLC punk scene, who is most remembered for his role of Mark Bojeekus in the 1987 comedy Three O’Clock High, and who passed away on July 20th, 2009. “He had a Mohawk haircut, and was very, very emaciated looking.”

Of the scene, which finds The Shape being discovered by Dr. Death and subsequently brought into the cabin in which a resurrection ritual is conducted, Shanks recalled, “(I was) placed on this stone alter, and all around (the set) were things that the production had gotten from witches, and people that sell you the occult. And there were scrolls and different chants and this and that. And (suspended from) the altar, right above me, was this rock that looked like a stalactite – it was on a string and it would circle. And Dr. Death was doing an incantation on me, and then he tattoos on me the Thorn rune, which is the sign of eternal life. And so he does all these incantations, and on Halloween Eve (one year later) I come back to life.”

“So I put the mask on,” continued Shanks of the results of Myers’ not-quite-grateful response to his resurrection, “and I grab Dr. Death by the throat and pick him up over my head and break his back, and then put him on the altar, and take the stalactite and I go through his chest with it. I thought it was one of my better kills. But (later) Moustapha thought it was too much of the occult type thing. So they decided to shoot it differently.”

Gone was Dr. Death, now replaced by actor Harper Roisman who would in the theatrical release portray an elderly mountain man living in the same cabin (in a direct homage to 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein), as were any signs of the occult, with a talking parrot taking their place.

Of Reads’ performance as Dr. Death, “It was eccentric,” offered Shanks, “and if you saw it you would just go, ‘Wow, that guy looks really weird.’ But it kind of gave the film a little more of an artistic and avant-garde (touch). I mean, it worked perfectly. For what we were doing and the way the (occult) set looked, you want something that isn’t the norm. And the old guy, when we re-shot the opening, Othenin-Girard wasn’t even there. We shot that the last day (of production). I think it was (line producer) Rick Nathanson that directed it. Or it might have been (first AD) Kelly Schroeder. But I’m pretty sure Dominique was not there.”

Fangoria Magazine. November 1989. Issue #88.

 Other interesting changes to Myers included those that were visual, as evidenced by The Shape’s mask itself. As designed and provided by Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of K.N.B EFX Group (who also served as the film’s special makeup supervisors), Myers’ visage took on an arguably more malevolent look than the ones which had preceded it.

“There were some changes to it after I’d been cast,” said Shanks of the mask. “I believe it had been sculpted off of a mold of Nicotero, and my head’s a little bigger than his. And then Moustapha thought that the nose needed work, so they changed that. And then we put makeup sponges underneath the neck so it would flare out more, because it form-fitted (without them), and it looked more like a face than it did a mask.”

 “And then of course we had to change it again later after Donald Pleasence had broken my nose.”

 In our upcoming Part 3, Shanks talks working with Danielle Harris and Pleasence (and his hearty swing) in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, those infamous ‘lost’ SWAT massacre scenes, a near fatal Camaro mishap, his introduction to the Halloween fan base, and much, much more.


 

Halloween Has Premiered in Texas at Fantastic Fest and here’s what the Critics are Saying

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Ahead of its October release via Universal Pictures, director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s Halloween held its Texas premiere to a packed house this past Thursday, September 20th at Fantastic Fest in Austin (which runs through September 27th), and the critical response continues to be overwhelmingly positive.

Photo credit: Austin 360 (l to r: Jason Blum, Bill Block, Andi Matichak, Jamie Lee Curtis, Malek Akkad, Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride)

Says ComingSoon.net’s Alan Cerny, “Green and McBride are not reinventing Carpenter’s wheel.  Instead, they’re adding some torque and drive to it, and the result is one of the best horror sequels in many years,” while Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle proclaims, “When David Gordon Green announced he was taking on the Halloween franchise, there was general befuddlement. But seeing what he has achieved with a sequel that is both loving and insightful, it makes all the sense in the world.”

That’s not all. Joe Gross of Austin 360 states, “This is Curtis’ show; her third-act confrontation with the man who destroyed Strode’s life plays out with tension and chills,” and Bad Feeling Magazine’s Gabriel Sigler effuses, “Green nails the film’s tone down perfectly, capturing Michael Myers in a way we haven’t seen since John Carpenter’s original.”

Halloween next plays on October 6th at Beyond Fest in Hollywood, CA at the Egyptian Theater as part of ‘Halloween Day’ (along with 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, with Halloween series producer Malek Akkad in person, and more) before opening wide in theaters on October 19th, 2018.

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 Carpenter’s ‘78 film, and thusly 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.

Check out the trailer below.

Beyond Fest to Host the West Coast Premiere of Halloween

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Can’t wait for the October 19th, 2018 theatrical release of David Gordon Green’s Halloween? If you’re in Los Angeles during Beyond Fest, running September 26th to October 9th, you may not have to.

Taking place on Saturday, October 6th at the Egyptian Theater (6712 Hollywood Boulevard), David Gordon Green’s Halloween, with special guest and series producer Malek Akkad in attendance, is set to headline ‘Halloween Day:’ a triple-bill celebration of The Shape that will also feature John Carpenter’s 1978 classic of the same name and Bob Clark’s 1974 slasher film Black Christmas, both personally selected by Green and co-writer Danny McBride as key inspiration for their film. In addition to the triple bill, ‘Halloween Day’ festivities are set to include a Halloween flash tattoo parlor, a Mondo/Death Waltz pop-up featuring exclusive products, and a live, in-theater recording of the Shock Waves podcast featuring the original Shape, Nick Castle.

Tickets are on sale via Brown Paper Tickets on Friday, September 14th at 12PM PST. (Editor’s addendum: they are now SOLD OUT).

For more information on Beyond Fest and for their full line-up, visit them a www.beyondfest.com