The Shape

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.”