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Moustapha Akkad

EXCL: On Its 25th Anniversary, Writer Daniel Farrands Looks Back at Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers – Part 2

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In pursuit of a career in film and upon his arrival to Los Angeles, California in 1987, screenwriter Daniel Farrands’ journey to the Halloween franchise, and to being attached to write 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, would have many a twist and turn. But the long-time horror fan was doggedly determined (you can read about his early years in part one of our interview series here), no more so than when in 1989, following an  opening night screening of Halloween: The Revenge of Michael Myers in Studio City, California, he stepped out of the darkened theatre to proclaim to his friends, “I’m going to write Halloween 6!”

Daniel Farrands

“It was a declaration,” Farrands recalled, “and there was no other option. For me writing Halloween 6 was going to happen. At least I hoped!”

Having made the move from the northern California enclave of Santa Rosa to LA two years prior, Farrands had spent a semester and change attending CSUN college in Northridge, before he decided that he no longer wanted to be in school.

“So, I got a day job as an assistant at the Motion Pictures Association of America, the place which hates horror movies more than anyone,” said Farrands of  the ratings board where he worked, the one famously responsible for many a requested cut to horror films (and otherwise) ever since its creation in 1922 (as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America).

“In those days, it was John Carpenter and Wes Craven and David Cronenberg versus the MPAA, because the MPAA was the enemy, the infamous censor of the time,” Farrands recalled. “And there I was, this wannabe horror writer and filmmaker working for them. But here’s the funny thing, I became friends with all of those people on the board, who remain anonymous to the public. And it got to the point that when they had a horror film they were to review, they’d call my extension, because they knew that I was a horror fan. Like, ‘Dan, we’ve got Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Come down to the screening room.’ So. I’d get to sit in the projection booth at the MPAA, watching all of these uncut, gore-laden 1980s slasher films in 35mm, versions which sadly would never be seen again.”

THE ROAD TO HALLOWEEN

“So after having seen Halloween 5,” recalled Farrands of his introduction to a rights holders of the Halloween franchise, which took place in early 1990, “I embarked on my journey to meet (Halloween series producer) Moustapha Akkad, who I didn’t know at all. But this was before the internet. In those days, there was this thing called the Hollywood Creative Directory. It was like a little guide you could buy at a news stand for five bucks, and it would list all of the active production companies, and in it was a listing for Galaxy International, which was a distribution company then owned by Mr. Akkad. So, I found the listing, and I contacted Ramsey Thomas, (producer of Halloween 5)  saying, ‘Listen, I have a horror script that I would love to send you.’ Mind you, it wasn’t a Halloween script. It was an unrelated slasher script, which I don’t even remember the name of. But in a matter of days, Ramsay called me on the phone and said, ‘Send your script over right away and we’ll review it, because we’re making Halloween 6, and we’re looking at (potential) writers.’ And I was like, ‘Wow! So, my plan is coming true! This could really happen!’”

“So,” continued Farrands, “I sent him the script, and Ramsey called me back a couple of days later, and said, ‘This script is great, and you have I think what we’re looking for, so I want you to come in and pitch an idea for Halloween 6 to Moustapha. Do you know who that is?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I know who that is. Are you serious? You want me to come meet this man?’ And he said, ‘Yes. Here’s our address on Sunset Boulevard at Doheny above the Hamburger Hamlet.’ I think I had a week in order to prep the pitch.”

Santa Rosa’s The Press Democrat Article, October 1, 1995

“The Bodhi Tree was this occult bookstore in West Hollywood, which I visited in an attempt to figure out what the fuck that tattoo (seen on the wrist of Halloween 5’s duster-and-cowboy-boot wearing Mysterious Stranger) was, and also who this character really was,” recalled Farrands of his attempt at making some narrative sense of Halloween 5 director Dominique Othenin-Girard’s confounding additions to the franchise. “And since Halloween 5 wasn’t yet on video, I had to draw the tattoo on a piece of paper from memory, and brought it to the clerk at The Bodie Tree, and asked her what the symbol meant. She told me that it was a rune. And she pointed me to a book called Rune Magic. In it, it had the Thorn (Thurisaz) symbol from the film, and the book explained that it represented an evil giant, and that if the symbol was applied to someone, then they would be visited by the devil. So, I bought a copy of the book, and decided that I needed to solve this.”

Bodhi Tree, Los Angeles

Having never really pitched a movie before, Farrands recalled, “I thought, ‘Let me go in with the largest amount of stuff I can come up with.’ I already knew so much about all of the Halloween movies and their timelines, which I kind of wrote out like a gigantic family tree. And I made graphics and I took pages from all the research  I’d done on Halloween lore, and anything that had to do with the holiday and the mysticism surrounding it. I thought, ‘I’ll inundate them with that, and also kind of give them a direction which I think the series might go.’ Also, I think I wrote out four or five ideas, paragraphs with suggestions of things that we could focus on, while still keeping other options open. So, I wrote that up and put it all in a binder, and my friend created this graphic for the cover that read ‘Halloween 666,’ but I came up with another idea. I said, ‘We’ve got to make the ‘A’ in Halloween the Thorn symbol.’ So, we did, and when it came time for the meeting I arrived with the binder, and Ramsey marched me into Moustapha’s office. And there he was.”

Moustapha Akkad (1930-2005)

“I can see Moustapha in my memory just like he’s there now, and I wish he was,” recalled Farrand of Akkad, whose life was taken tragically in a bombing in Jordan on November 11, 2005. “Sitting behind that big desk with his pipe in his mouth, and kind of leaning back in his big chair talking around his pipe. It for me literally felt like I was stepping into the principal’s office. My heart was racing. But, I kind of just started laying out my take on Halloween 6. I don’t even know what I said in that meeting. I’m not kidding. It lasted maybe  five minutes. I was in and out. And I left the binder with him, saying something like, ‘Well, this is my take on everything that’s come before and what I think you could do going forward.’ I also remember that I said something to him that made him laugh, because it came off as naïve and stupid. I honestly don’t remember exactly what it was I said, but it was one of those moments which you play over and over in your head, knowing how stupid you must have sounded. Open mouth, insert foot time! And I thought, ‘Well, that’s the end of that. That’s never going to happen.’”

Active development on a sixth film in the Halloween franchise was soon paused, as legal battles pertaining to the ownership of the  sequel rights  took place during the early 1990s, and it was during this time that Farrands sold a couple of original scripts, which happily allowed him to reduce his working hours at the MPAA. It was also during this time that the Northridge earthquake struck southern California, which forced the MPAA to move their offices to the Columbia building in Burbank (as their previous space in Encino had collapsed during the tremblor).

Farrands recalled of his windowless office, “It was horrible, feeling chained to that desk. And then one day, my brother, who lived with at the time, calls me at the office and says, ‘I just got a message for you, from Moustapha Akkad. He called the house looking for you.’ And I was like, ‘C’mon! Are you sure?’ And my brother said, ‘I’m one hundred percent certain that it was him. He left his number and he wants you to call him.’”

“This was also around the time that Halloween 6 had already been in the trades. Headlines screaming, ‘Miramax Buys Rights to Halloween.’ ‘Miramax Hires Writer.’ Etc., etc. So, I thought at the time that it was over for me. But I called the number anyway, and I was transferred to Moustapha who said, “Daniel, it’s Moustapha Akkad, and I want to talk to you about Halloween 6. I need you to come to my office.”

“So, I did,” said Farrands. “At that time Trancas had their offices in Century City, and when I arrived , Moustapha was again behind his giant desk with his pipe in his mouth, and producer Paul Freeman (producer of Halloween 4) was on one side of him, and Moustapha’s son Malek, who I’d kept in contact with since my initial meeting with Moustapha, on the other. And there was a chair for me. And they then proceeded to tell me that they’d been through many iterations of the script for Halloween 6, and that they had a crew, a mask, and a looming start date to shoot the film in Salt Lake City, Utah. And they basically said, ‘Give us something good, and you’ll be hired (to write it).’”

“One of the directives Moustapha had given me though was, ‘Do not tell me about Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s a big star, and she will never make another Halloween movie again.’  Oh, how I wish he was around now for me to hold that over him, because of course at the time I would have loved to pitch a film idea with Laurie Strode at the center of it!”

“Anyway, I started pitching them vague ideas I had for Halloween 6. And one of the first things that came out of my mouth was, ‘Jamie Lloyd.’ And they said, ‘No,’ we can’t have her in this movie, we need to move on from that.’ And I said, ‘But what if she is the bridge that brings us into the new story, and she’ll pass the torch?’ So, I started pitching this idea, and the first thing that came spontaneously out of my mouth was, “What if it’s like Rosemary’s Baby meets Halloween?’ And Moustapha’s eyes bugged out.”

“He understood the marriage of the supernatural to the slasher, but his big question was, ‘But who is in the man in black? Dominique saddled us with this thing  from Halloween 5, and not one who made 5 had any idea who this mystery man was supposed to be , or what to do with it. So, go! Tell us who he is.’ And it’s funny because Malek was in the room and kind of helped me along, kind of rooting for me, and leading me, and he said, ‘What if it’s somebody at Smith’s Grove?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it could be Dr. Wynn,’ the hospital administrator seen walking with Loomis in a short scene in the original film. and they liked that, and it gained momentum, and Moustapha said, “You’ve got a week to write a treatment, and if we like it, we’ll engage you to write the script.’ And that was the first meeting.”

“Let me tell you, I didn’t sleep at all that week,” Farrands remembered. “So, I started writing pages. Interestingly enough, Ramsey Thomas, who had introduced me to Moustapha, was no longer  with the company, but as I felt indebted to Ramsey, so I’d share pages with him via fax, and he coached me a bit. And the first thing he said was, ‘The character of the radio guy you created is great, and how he connects all of these characters to different parts of the town and the story. Do that!’ So, that was the beginning of it all, and maybe ten days later I had a dense, twenty-page treatment, which I sent to Moustapha, and while he said that he really liked it, he felt that it was too big in scope for one film. But what he did say was, ‘What I love about this, is that (in narrative) we now have the next movie ready to go.’”

So, what was in that original treatment for Halloween 6?

“There was kind of a big reveal at the end,” offered Farrands, “in that all of the people of Haddonfield, in sort of a The Wicker Man/Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery sort of way, were all part of this secret society, and that their Halloween tradition was that of offering up a sacrifice for the community’s safety. It all played out in a kind of epic third act, where Laurie Strode showed in order to save her daughter, Jamie. I just kind of threw Laurie in there at the end, because I thought, “maybe we could get Jamie Lee on screen for five minutes!” After that idea quickly melted away, it was off to races , and the reset went really, really fast.”

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Writer’s note: this interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Casting Breakdown
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers Casting Breakdown
Behind the Scenes of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

EXCL: On Its 25th Anniversary, Writer Daniel Farrands Looks Back at Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers – Part 1

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“It’s shocking, as it doesn’t seem that much time has passed!” Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers writer Daniel Farrands told us when he recently sat down with HalloweenMovies to discuss the film, his attachment to it, and its legacy on its 25th anniversary.

Daniel Farrands

Released on September 29, 1995, the Trancas International Films, Miramax and Nightfall Productions-produced Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers continues to engender conversation to this day. A direct follow-up to 1989’s rather rushed-into-production Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (an entry which presented more questions than it answered), the sixth film in the Halloween franchise, released by the newly-launched Dimension Films, inarguably polarizes fans to this day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the production of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers proved a bit of a challenge for all involved, from conception and development through its production and post, which included shifting budgets and narrative disagreements, to clandestine reshoots and  studio meddling.

But how did Farrands, a horror fan with an undying love of the Halloween film series, who heralded in part from Santa Rosa, California (a then bucolic town notable to slasher fans for its school system’s famous rebuff of Wes Craven’s Scream production), get involved?

As we found, it’s a bit of a “small town kid makes good” story, and one which should prove both inspirational and educational to horror filmmakers eager to follow their dreams, and fascinating to Halloween fans alike.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

EARLY BEGINNINGS

“I was raised in a strict, Catholic household,” Farrands told us of his early childhood in the ‘80s in the northern California enclave of Santa Rosa, California, “and because of that, horror movies were simply taboo, even pre-VHS. But of course, I found a way to see them. The first R-rated horror film I saw was in 1981, and it was Friday the 13th Part 2, which a neighbor of ours named Kathy Dunn, who was in 12th grade and who was babysitting me, took me, after much cajoling and maybe blackmailing, to a Saturday matinee to see. I was in sixth grade at the time, and to say the least I was terrified!”

“And it all stemmed from the fact that her older brother had these magazines that I’d never seen before: Fangoria,” he continued. “Kathy would sneak them out of his room for me to look at, and it was like experiencing a Playboy for the first time, because I knew they were something I wasn’t supposed to see. And I can still recall vividly the first picture I saw within those pages. It was a still from Friday the 13th Part 2, a shot of Mrs. Voorhees’ severed head in the refrigerator, and I looked at it in horror, and then immediately said to Kathy, “You have to take me to see this movie! I’ll never tell my mom!”

Fangoria Issue #12

“And so,” Farrands chuckled, “because she was kind of a bad babysitter, she took me to see the film, and that horrified me even more than the magazine. I truly felt that I had seen the face of hell, and that I was never going to be the same.”

“And then,” he paused, “came Michael.”

As Farrands recalls, his first introduction to the iconic character of Michael Myers occurred later that same year, when John Carpenter’s immortal classic Halloween aired, albeit edited, on television as an NBC “Movie of the Week.”

Armed with the then-new technology of VHS, Farrands set out to both watch and to record it.

“We were some of the first families on the block to get a VCR,” remembers Farrands of the device, which at the time was duking it out with its rival, the Betamax. “So, I considered myself lucky. And I sat in the corner of our couch with a remote control, so that I could record it without the television commercials, which I thought was important, and with the pillows piled high around me so that I could peer through them, because I was at once both utterly horrified and exhilarated by the film. And at the end of the airing, I had a VHS copy of Halloween! And that was truly the beginning of my absolute obsession with horror, and with the Halloween series.”

“And that obsession grew the very next week,” Farrands effused, “when Halloween II opened in theaters! It was playing at the Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa, and there was no way that I wasn’t going to see it. I told my mom I’d go on a hunger strike if she didn’t take me. So, she did one of those things moms did in the ‘80s: she dropped me off at the movies. I recall that it was a rainy, Saturday afternoon, and that I literally had tears of joy while watching Halloween II, and also that at that moment I had the epiphany that it was what I needed to do with my life: make horror movies.”

Having already written and directed plays and skits during his elementary school days (roping his friends into the process), as well as shooting short films on Super 8 (also starring his school-yard chums), the die was cast early for Farrands, whose interest in filmmaking continued to flourish as he grew, both during his time at Rincon Valley Junior High and then later at Santa Rosa High School.

“I look back on those years fondly,” said Farrands, “and my corralling of groups of kids, some of whom probably didn’t like me, just to make blood-drenched films in the school’s hallways. Which later I found ironic, because when Wes Craven attempted to shoot the original Scream there many years later  — Santa Rosa High first accepted the production, but the Santa Rosa City School District Governing Board then denied it. They literally banned the production because of the script’s violent content!”

Santa Rosa High

“And as that happened right on the heels of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, and as Dimension Films was behind both films, a Dimension executive – having gotten wind that I’d gone to Santa Rosa High – asked me to call the school, and to try to talk some sense into them. But what was I going to say? The school board just didn’t care.”

“Many years later, when I was shooting the 2011 documentary Scream: The Inside Story, I returned to Santa Rosa High School in order to interview the board members, and I said to them, ‘You know how interesting it is to me that you banned Wes Craven, a very respected filmmaker, from making a horror film here, when as a student I literally dragged headless, blood-gushing human props up and down these hallways while making my own short films?’”

“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” he continued. “Before any of that, as a kid, I just wanted to make films. And you know, my life as a teenager revolved around it.”

Catching endless horror films in both wide distribution at local cineplexes and otherwise (the latter at Santa Rosa’s Park Cinema, known for screening indie horror flicks one couldn’t see anywhere else) and purchasing the latest issues of Fangoria in downtown Santa Rosa’s sketchy “Anarchy Alley” (a backstreet frequented by mohawked punks and ‘80s counter culture misfits, who Farrands mused about casting in a film he conceived but never shot humorously called Escape From Santa Rosa), Farrands’ path to Hollywood was forming.

“So yeah, to say that John Carpenter’s Halloween, and his other films of the time, influenced me, is an understatement,” mused Farrands, who like many a young cinephile worked over a summer in a local theater, which allowed him to more efficiently consume ‘80s fright fare. “I can’t express enough how absolutely life-changing Carpenter’s movies were to me personally. They helped me through difficult times and were also personally inspirational. You know, as a teen, you are thinking about becoming an adult and about, ‘What will my life be?’ And for me, I think the reason that people succeed at things is because they believe they really didn’t have any other choice. And I think that’s kind of what it was for me. I didn’t really give myself something else to fall back on. There was no other option (than film).”

Farrands’ first stab at Hollywood (years prior to moving to Tinsel Town, where he’d eventually become part of the Halloween franchise) came at the young age of fourteen, when he boldly decided to personally reach out to the producers of that other slasher franchise, Friday the 13th, in order to tell them exactly what he wanted to see in the fourth installment.

“I decided that I needed to write the next Friday the 13th movie,” Farrands recalled with a laugh, after having seen 1982’s Part III in 3D, “and I needed to let the producers of that franchise know that I was there for them. So, somehow I found the address of the production office of Frank Mancuso, Jr., who was the producer of those films, and I typed him a letter over Christmas vacation, explaining in great detail what Friday the 13th Part 4 should be, and I mailed it off. Well, a few weeks later, I opened my mailbox, and there was an envelope in it with a return address that read: Friday 4 Incorporated! And I opened it, and inside there was a type-written one-page letter with a signature at the bottom that read ‘Frank Mancuso Jr.’ And the letter said, ‘Even people twenty years your senior do not write like this, and I had to pass your letter around my office to see if this could be real. This is the first time I’ve responded to anyone about Friday the 13th, and I think you have talent. I think you are smart. I think you have passion. And I think that that is the foundation of this industry, so let me be the first to welcome you.’”

“To this day, I have that letter framed in my office,” said Farrands, “and it will always be there, as long as I’m alive, because that for me was the moment when things became tangible. The moment filmmaking became doable. And that I could make it happen.”

Four years later, many horror film screenings later and upon graduation from Santa Rosa High School, horror fan Farrands packed up his 1978 Datsun 200SX and set off for Hollywood, and onto his journey to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

You can find part two here, in which we discuss his path to Michael Myers, his initial meetings with Halloween series producer Moustapha Akkad, and his script originally titled Halloween 666.

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Writer’s note: this interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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.

Exclusive Interview: Halloween 5’s Don Shanks Speaks! – Part 3

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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, and touched on topics ranging from the film’s 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 Indian brave 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 that in Part 1 of our interview series here), prior to assuming The Shape’s mantle Shanks had cut his teeth on an entirely different slasher film, the 1984 flick Silent Night, Deadly Night (you can dig into that in Part 2 here, as well as his recollection of shooting the infamous ‘lost’ “Dr. Death” scene from Halloween 5).

As for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers itself? With principal photography kicking off in May of 1989, a mere five months before its scheduled release on October 13th, 1989 (in a year already saturated with slasher sequels, including Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, along with dozens of other hopeful contenders), Shanks didn’t have much time to prepare for the role – or to prepare for the evening on which series regular Donald Pleasence accidentally broke his nose with a two by four, either.

Shanks recalled of that spring night in 1989 in Salt Lake City, Utah (where the majority of principal photography took place), “(It was our fault that) we didn’t let Donald know. The board we were using was foam, but it had a piece of PVC in it, and so as long as you hit with the right side of it, you’d be fine. But if you hit with the other?”

Don Shanks and Donald Pleasence in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

“He was getting tired,” expounded Shanks of Pleasence and the scene, which finds the actor’s character of Loomis dropping a chain net onto Myers before striking him repeatedly, “and he caught me (with the prop), and blood was running out of my mask, and (stunt coordinator) Don Pike ran over asked if I was OK. I said that I was, and not to worry about it, and not to say anything (to Pleasence). But the next day my eyes were black, and that’s a pretty good sign that you broke your nose.”

Aside from that unfortunate incident, Shanks recalls that working with the actor, “Was great. That scene where we were on the staircase (in the Myers house) and he’s talking to me – I swear I was getting lulled by his voice. It’s almost hypnotic, just listening to him. And (even at his age) he wanted to do all his own stunts. So when I slam Loomis into the window (in the film)? That was actually Donald Pleasence.”

 A famously committed actor, the classically trained Pleasence’s desire for authenticity was additionally illustrated in his request to Shanks for him to remain on set – for a scripted scene in which the latter doesn’t appear.

“They were to shoot the scene which takes place right after I wreck the car (at the Tower Farm), and they had wrapped me for the night,” remembers Shanks. “And there was a knock on the door and I answered it. It was Donald and he said, ‘Might I impose on you? I have to shoot the scene where I’m talking to you and I won’t see you, but I just want to know that you’re out there. Would you mind?” I’d already wrapped for the night, but I was like, ‘It’s OK. Cool.’ So I was out there in the trees when he’s saying, “If you want to get rid of this rage, Michael, go home. Go home. Go to your house.’”

Shanks also holds fond recollections of the film’s young lead Danielle Harris, who had returned to reprise her role of Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 5, which she’d originated in its predecessor.

“I thought she was a trooper,” effused Shanks. “I mean, for eleven years old, she was like a little person. She was always there, and she always wanted to do her own stunts.”

One of those stunts required Danielle’s character to be marauded by Myers while trapped within a metal laundry shoot, while The Shape stabs violently through it with an actual butcher knife.

Danielle Harris in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

“That whole thing, she wanted to do it,” offered Shanks of the sequence, “And I was stabbing blind. I couldn’t see where she was. So we worked it out, and I put marks on the inside where she had to be, and I would stab through it.”

 “Even when we were doing the chase (at the farm), she wanted to be there. I was tearing up the place in that car (with her running in front of it), and there was so much fog!”

Inarguably one of the more visually arresting moments of the film, the scene finds Myers, having previously dispatched the character of Mike and having stolen his prized 66’ Camaro, chasing down not only Harris, but actors Jeffrey Landman and Wendy Kaplan (the latter in the role of Tina Williams) in it. And as Shanks tells it, it was for Kaplan that things got a bit dicey.

Wendy Kaplan in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

“Well, we had very few doubles,” Shanks said of the production’s apparently anemic approach in hiring stunt people, “(and for that scene) we were using the car for lighting. (Cinematographer) Rob Draper was in the back seat, and we had the headlights on Wendy and we were chasing her, so we had to be fairly close. So we had done it three times, and she asked Rob between takes, ‘When does the camera see my face?’ And Rob said, ‘Well, I really don’t see it.’ So, I think it was on the fourth take that she turned towards us (during the chase), and when she did she stepped on her cape, and it pulled her down and screamed. My heart was jumping out of my chest. I said, “My god!” and slammed on the brakes. I put it right on top of her. I didn’t run over her, but I could have. And I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And she said, ‘Well, I want them to see my face.’ I told her, ‘It’s not worth getting killed over!’ But she was a trooper too. They all were!”

 “There’s one shot (though from that sequence) that I wish I had,” said Shanks, “where I had the mask on, and there was so much fog that it was coming out of the eye holes.”

Having previously dived into the “Dr. Death” alternate opening, conversation then turned to the other ‘lost’ footage from Halloween 5: the long rumored SWAT team massacre at the hands of Myers.

“Oh, I took out Haddonfield’s SWAT team,” confirmed Shanks. “I killed a whole bunch of people.”

Expounding of the filmed scenes, “They took place at the hospital, the place where Danielle’s character left from,” he offered of the location in Orem, Utah which stood in for Haddonfield Children’s Clinic. “If you remember, the police get on the radio (in the film) and they say, ‘He’s here,’ and the whole SWAT team (which is stationed) at the Myers house gets in their cars and they drive off, and there’s one guy left up (in the house) with Danielle in the bedroom, and then there’s one guy down below in a police car (on the street), and over the radio he hears people screaming. So that’s where the (SWAT massacre) scene was to be – just before that.”

Of the extent of the sequence, Shanks said, “Well, I think we didn’t spend that much shooting it, because it was mostly second unit, with Don Pike directing instead of Dominique. So we were doing it fast.”

Speed of set-ups aside, Shanks does indeed recall the kills.

“There’s one guy, and I mean they show it, when they’re taking out one of the bodies, whose head is twisted around,” recalled the actor. “They put the wardrobe on him backwards, and he looks like his head’s been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees. And another, the direction was, ‘Take an M16 rifle, and you’re just walking through these guys and killing them.’ There’s Donre Samson, a big tall black guy that I kill, and another one, I put the M16 through his head, and another guy, I break his neck and stomp on him, you know. The whole idea was that you’d hear everybody screaming (over the radio) when he’s killing everybody. So we did all these really quick shots. You know: ‘Pick this guy up. Knock this guy down. Stab this guy.’”

In addition to the body count Shanks racked up in Halloween 5 as The Shape, he additionally tallied up a few as the film’s other antagonist, the nebulous Man in Black, a character whose identity and connective tissue had yet to be determined at the time of filming.

Gorezone Magazine. January 1990. Issue #11.

“Well, I wasn’t sure where they were going with that,” said Shanks of the conceit, “because in the scene where Danielle’s in the coffin, we were shooting stuff where I didn’t have the Myers mask on. And I was asking (executive producer) Moustapha (Akkad) about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not going to use the footage here, I’m going to use it later.’ So my thought was that in Halloween 6 that they’d cut back to scenes that were in Halloween 5 that would show that the Man in Black (and Myers) were the same person. Because later (after production) when Moustapha had called me and said, ‘We’re thinking about doing Halloween 6, and we would like you to go out and promote part 5,’ he also said, ‘but don’t say anything about the Man in Black.’”

And while Shanks would not return to reprise either role in 1995’s Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (those would go to George P. Wilbur and Mitchell Ryan as Myers and the Man in Black, respectively), the actor said of working with Halloween 5’s director Othenin-Girard (whose unique stamp on the franchise forced many a challenge for its immediate follow-up), “If you look at Halloween 5, it has certain artistic qualities to it, which is what he brought to it. You know, there’s little inner meanings and nuances, that when you watch it, aren’t in the other ones. Like the “Dr. Death” scene: the occult items (in it) happened through Dominique. He’d gotten in touch with (local) witches to get them, and he wanted it shot on a certain day, or it had to be a certain date, I don’t remember which. But numbers were a big thing with him for some reason. His (hotel) room even had to be have certain number, and his bed had to face a certain direction.”

 “And that’s just what Dominique did.”

 As for what Shanks, now sixty-nine years old (and surprisingly still fit, regardless of the spinal fractures he endured as a stunt man in the 80’s) is up to, “I’m still riding horses,” he said. “I have one friend, and she’s been doing horse rescues and stuff, and so I help her train the horses. You know, just taking it easy.”

“Although,” he added, “She did just start doing Mongolian archery. That’s where you shoot targets with a bow on horseback.”

 “I think I might try that.”

Horror’s Hallowed Grounds’ Sean Clark Talks Halloween in Collection Complete

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The docu-series Collection Complete (which takes an in-depth look into the lives of filmmakers and artists and the collections that fuel their work) has returned for 2019, and the first episode of the new year takes a deep dive into Horror’s Hallowed Grounds’ filmmaker Sean Clark’s life-long fascination with terror.

From his childhood introduction to Fangoria magazine and that publication’s famous Weekend of Horrors conventions to his jaw-dropping collection of screen-used props (notably here the clown from the classic 1982 film Poltergeist), the episode offers a look into Clark’s rarely-seen personal collection of artifacts from scary cinema.

In addition, the episode also chronicles his evolution from that of a self-proclaimed horror nerd to respected business man via not only his co-shepherding (with Trancas International Films) of the 25th, 35th and 40th Halloween anniversary conventions (which have over the years taken place in Pasadena, CA to much fanfare), but also through the creation of his own celebrity appearance booking company Convention All Stars, which features many of the Halloween film series’ creatives within its roster (the grande dame of final girls, Jamie Lee Curtis, among them).

You can watch the episode below.

AMC Hosting Michael Myers Marathon NOW!

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With the holiday of Halloween holiday taking place in less than three days and the latest Halloween film currently #1 at the box office, what better way to celebrate than with AMC’s annual FearFest, which is comprised of nothing but Halloween films from now through Wednesday!

So grab a bag of candy, a pumpkin and your carving kit, and settle into this television schedule of “Haddonfield all of the time” (with a brief detour to Santa Mira thrown in for good Silver Shamrock measure). In our humble opinion, there’s no better way to prep for your trip to the theater to see the #1 movie in America, David Gordon Green’s Halloween.

Get your tickets here.

And without further ado, the FearFest Halloween line-up!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29TH

9am – Halloween (1978)
11am – Halloween II (1981)
1pm – Halloween III
3pm – Halloween 4
5pm – Halloween 5
7pm – Halloween 6
9:05pm – Halloween H20
11:05pm – Rob Zombie’s Halloween

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30TH

1:35am – Halloween (1978)
3:40am – Halloween II
9am – Halloween 4
11am – Halloween 5
1pm – Halloween 6
3pm – Halloween (1978)
5:05pm – Halloween H20
7:05pm – Rob Zombie’s Halloween
9:30pm – Halloween (1978)
11:35pm – Halloween II (1981)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31ST

1:40am – Halloween III
3:45am – Halloween 4
11am – Halloween (1978)
1pm – Halloween II (1981)
3pm – Halloween III
5pm – Halloween 4
7pm – Halloween 5
9:05pm – Halloween 6
11:10pm – Halloween (1978)
1:15am – Halloween II (1981)
3:15am – Rob Zombie’s Halloween

Halloween Premiere Photos, Video & More!

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Director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s Halloween held its official premiere to a packed house this past Wednesday, October 17th at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California, and HalloweenMovies was there to document the buzzed-about event forty years in the making. Read on for video, photo galleries and more.

Attended by director and co-writer Green, co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley and producers Malek Akkad of Trancas International Films, Jason Blum of Blumhouse and Bill Block of Miramax (among others), as well as returning series star and executive producer Jamie Lee Curtis and fellow key cast members Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Nick Castle and James Jude Courtney, the cast and crew arrived to a Grauman’s courtyard decked out with a façade emulating the infamous Myers house from John Carpenter’s 1978 originating classic.

Additionally in attendance for the event were Halloween 2018 stars Rhian Rees, Virginia Gardner, Dylan Arnold, Miles Robbins, Drew Scheid, Jibrail Nantambu and executive producer Ryan Freimann and co-producer Ryan Turek, as well as FX artist Christopbher Nelson and Halloween 1978 producer Irwin Yablans and cast members PJ Soles and Kyle Richards.

Following the carpet, producers Akkad, Blum and Block took to Grauman’s stage to kick-off the screening (see the video below).

Followed by McBride and Green.

And lastly the grande dame of final girls herself, Jamie Lee Curtis.

On the heels of the wildly received premiere, a filmmakers after party was held poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Blvd.

 

The eleventh film in the long-running and successful franchise, Halloween is now in theaters. Get your tickets here.

My Favorite Horror Movie: Alex Napiwocki on John Carpenter’s Halloween

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With director David Gordon Green’s 2018 feature Halloween fast approaching, we thought it time to further celebrate John Carpenter’s 1978 classic of the same name via a series of essays on the subject.

Culled from the 2018 Amazon best-selling book My Favorite Horror Movie, which features 48 essays by horror creators on the films which shaped them (from our own Editor-in-Chief Sean Decker to filmmaker Matt Mercer and beyond), they serve to explore just why forty years later, The Shape still terrifies.

HALLOWEEN
by
ALEX NAPIWOCKI

How does one pick a favorite horror film when there are so many? I love the exploitation of the ‘70s, the pure slashers of the ‘80s, and the gory melt movies of the early ‘90s. How do I narrow it down to just one? The only fair way seems to be to choose the one that started this horror obsession in the first place. The granddaddy of them all, the slasher that defines the genre – John Carpenter’s Halloween.

I grew up as a sick kid – allergies, asthma, the works. This left me with a lot of down time while the other kids were getting brainwashed at school. I’d run the gauntlet of late ‘80s and early ‘90s daytime TV. It was cheesy and I was already beginning to hate commercials. They bring you out of fantasy and back into reality, totally ruining the experience. This is why, at a young age, my tastes started moving from television to movies.

My sister, being seven years older, definitely had an impact on the movies and music I would find myself chasing. Through her, I found punk rock at nine, and horror films not long after. One particular illness left me home for a long haul. I had my tonsils removed and I was allergic to the anesthetic they used to put me under. During the surgery, my heart literally stopped. I was on bed rest for weeks. Blockbuster couldn’t keep up with me and I was running out of new releases left and right.

My sister had a best friend with quite the movie collection. He also had two VCRs hooked up to each other. One day, he sent a stack of VHS tapes through my sister to help me heal. Little did I know that they would change my life forever. One tape had a couple skate punk flicks, Thrashin’ and Gleaming The Cube, both of which I still love to this day. But those are guilty pleasures, not the Holy Grail. Halloween 1-6 were also in the stack, and holy shit, was life about to be worth living.

I’d seen some horror flicks and had an idea what the Halloween movies were. I knew about the Jason movies and the Chucky movies. Most of the horror films I’d seen were part of the ghost, vampire, or werewolf genres. None of those prepared me for what was about to take place. I began watching Halloween. Seeing Michael Myers take the screen was the first time I was truly terrified while watching a film.

Halloween is not a movie that requires gore. It’s the fear of what’s behind you that makes this film truly terrifying. Michael doesn’t move like a man. He doesn’t move like a maniacal monster either. He moves like only Michael Myers can: smooth, stealthy and calculated. He doesn’t have any cheesy catchphrases. In fact, he never says a word, and it makes him so much creepy than any other horror icon.

There’s more to Halloween than Michael Myers to make it my favorite. Jamie Lee Curtis is the quintessential final girl. No one can match her innocence and strength. Following Laurie Strode (played by Curtis) through Haddonfield is how we viewers became locals. The town and Michael are both viewed through her eyes. Her cat and mouse game with Myers is among the best in horror history.

I spent a couple weeks just watching Halloween over and over. I had the whole series up to the Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle one, but the first flick, I watched twice as much as the rest combined. It has the best characters and the best scares. The music is next level, the lighting is eerie, and the locations are haunting. It’s everything one should strive for when making a horror film.

When the curator of this collection of essays, Christian Ackerman, gave me this task, I don’t think he knew how much he was involved in making Halloween my favorite horror film. He accidentally (or knowing him, quite purposely) taught me the fundamentals of film. He did this by giving me a bunch of VHS tapes in the ‘90s, and it all started with this one perfectly scary flick.

Flash forward to 2015: I filmed my first short film as a writer and director. A trash comedy Halloween slasher titled The Curse Of The Glamulet. My inspirations at the time were definitely more John Waters and Troma than classic horror or even slashers, but the model was Halloween. My film turned into its own take on the final girl and the Halloween slasher. I was even compelled to name the main character Laurie. Forty years later, the film industry still pays homage to this flick. I literally wouldn’t be making films or writing this essay without it. Sorry Jason. Sorry Freddy. My favorite horror movie is, without a doubt, Halloween.

_ _ _

Check out the new trailer for the re-release of 1978’s Halloween below, and for theater and ticketing info, please visit www.CineLifeEntertainment.com

 

TAKEN FROM THE BOOK
MY FAVORITE HORROR MOVIE
© 2018 CHRISTIAN ACKERMAN/BLACK VORTEX CINEMA
MYFAVORITEHORRORMOVIE.COM

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trancas International Films or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

John Carpenter’s Halloween Returns to Theaters TODAY

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Celebrating its 40th anniversary, John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic is being re-released in advance of David Gordon Green’s sequel, and returns to theaters beginning today, September 27th, 2018.

For theaters and showtimes, please visit CineLifeEntertainment.com.

Read on for further and exciting details!

From the press release:

LOS ANGELES, CA – Cinelife Entertainment, the event cinema division of Spotlight Cinema Networks, has teamed up with Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films Compass International Pictures and to bring John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 classic back to select theaters worldwide beginning September 27, 2018.

In the film, the villain, Michael Myers, has spent the last 15 years locked away inside a sanitarium under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis. On October 30, 1978, Myers escapes and makes his way back home to Haddonfield, turning a night of tricks and treats into something much more sinister for three young women, including Laurie Strode, the star-making role for Jamie Lee Curtis.

The original Halloween will be released on over 1,000 screens in over twenty countries across the globe. “I’m thrilled to have the original make its way back into theatres, as we prepare for the release of the sequel. Having both back in theatres this fall is remarkable,” says director John Carpenter.

Fans will be treated to view big screen presentations of the restored and remastered digital print, created under the supervision of the world-renowned cinematographer, Dean Cundey.

“We are thrilled to be a part of the 40th anniversary celebration, working with Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films to bring the most fear-provoking and enduring horror movies of all time to cinema screens around the globe,” said Mark Rupp, Managing Director, CineLife Entertainment.

The release of John Carpenter’s Original Halloween comes just ahead of the release of Halloween (2018) – the direct sequel to John Carpenter’s classic. Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle reprise their roles as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, respectively. It is set for release on October 19th, a week before the 40th anniversary of the original Halloween release date.