Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is a 1995 American slasher film directed by Joe Chappelle, written by Daniel Farrands, and starring Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, and Mitch Ryan. The sequel to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and the sixth installment in the Halloween film series, the plot depicts Michael Myers hunting down the infant son of his niece, Jamie Lloyd. It expands significantly upon the supernatural horror elements that were sparsely introduced in the previous film, mainly the subplot of a cult that controls Myers and drives him to murder his bloodline using the ancient Celtic rune of Thorn. It marks the final appearance of Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis before his death, as well as the feature film debut of Rudd, who portrays an adult Tommy Doyle from the original Halloween (1978). This also marks the last major role of George P. Wilbur before his death in 2023.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers had a protracted development that spanned several years, comprising numerous revisions, drafts, and contributions from different screenwriters, including Daniel Farrands and Scott Rosenberg. Farrands ultimately completed the final version of the screenplay shortly before filming began in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1994. The film also had a troubled post-production: its original cut performed poorly with test audiences, leading to the film undergoing a series of reshoots and edits. The finished film was distributed by Dimension Films, who would go on to distribute the rest of the series until 2009's Halloween II. Pleasence died on February 2, 1995, seven months before the film was released. The film was dedicated to his memory.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was released on September 29, 1995, grossing $15.1 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $5 million. It was lambasted by critics, with criticism focused on its weak story, ending, Rudd's performance, and the origin story given to Michael Myers, though Pleasence's performance and the look of Michael Myers were better received. After the film's home media release, the original workprint of the film, which featured 45 minutes of alternative footage and a different ending, was discovered by fans of the series. This version, dubbed the Producer's Cut, developed a cult following, with bootleg DVD copies sold on eBay and online petitions targeting for an official release of it. In September 2014, the Producer's Cut received its first official home media release by Scream Factory as part of a Blu-ray box set of the Halloween series.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was followed by Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in 1998, which does not contain any references to the Jamie Lloyd storyline of the prior three films (although they were featured in the original script and comic book tie-ins published by Chaos! Comics), instead serving as a direct sequel to Halloween II (1981).
Plot Six years after escaping Haddonfield's police station, Michael Myers and his niece Jamie Lloyd have been abducted by the Man in Black and his Druid-like cult at an unknown facility with medical staff. By Halloween Eve, a now fifteen-year-old Jamie has been impregnated and gives birth. With a help of a nurse, who soon becomes Michael's first victim, she escapes with her baby in a stolen pickup truck with Michael in pursuit.
Meanwhile, a now retired Dr. Loomis is visited by his friend Dr. Terence Wynn, the chief administrator of Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael had been incarcerated as a boy. As Wynn asks Loomis to return to Smith's Grove, they overhear Jamie's plea for help on a local radio station. Michael catches up with Jamie and kills her, only to find that she has hidden her child elsewhere.
In Haddonfield, the old Myers house is now owned by relatives of Laurie Strode's adoptive family: John and Debra Strode, their adult children Kara and Tim, and Kara's six-year-old son Danny, who is tormented by visions of the Man in Black telling him to kill. At the Blankenship boarding house across the street lives Tommy Doyle, the boy Laurie babysat in 1978, now a recluse obsessed with Michael's motives. Also hearing Jamie's cry for help, Tommy tracks the call down to a bus station and finds the baby, whom he names Steven. Tommy crosses paths with Loomis, who visits Debra to warn her. After Loomis leaves, Michael kills Debra with an ax.
Tommy locates Kara and Danny and takes them to safety at the boarding house. He tells Kara that he believes Michael is under the influence of Thorn, an ancient Druid curse that drives a person to kill their family on Halloween, and that Steven will be his final sacrifice. Tommy then leaves to meet Loomis at the local harvest festival. Michael electrocutes John in his home before going to the harvest festival and killing shock jock Barry Simms, after which he follows Kara's brother Tim and his girlfriend Beth back to the house.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Blankenship recounts the history of Halloween to Danny and tells Kara she was babysitting Michael the night he killed his sister in which he heard a voice telling him to do so. Mrs. Blankenship also states how Danny hears the same voice, implying that Danny is to follow down the same path. The Man in Black beckons Danny to the Myers house. Kara rescues Danny, discovering the corpses of Tim, Beth, and Debra upstairs, and is pursued by Michael. Upon returning to the boarding house, they discover the Man in Black to be Dr. Wynn. Cult members burst in and, with the help of Mrs. Blankenship, abduct Kara, Danny, and Steven and take them to Smith's Grove. Kara is locked in a maximum-security ward while the boys are kept in an operating room.
Tommy and Loomis go to the sanitarium where Loomis confronts Wynn, who insinuates that the Smith's Grove staff have been studying pure evil to learn how to control it; Steven is implied to be the successful result of this conspiracy. Wynn wants Loomis to join him, as he was the first to recognize the power of Michael's evil. Loomis refuses and is knocked out by a doctor. Meanwhile, Tommy frees Kara as Michael pursues them through the sanitarium. They watch as Wynn and his team prepare for a surgical procedure before Michael suddenly appears and turns against the cult, killing them all.
Tommy and Kara rescue the kids as Michael chases them into a laboratory containing fetuses from Wynn's failed experiments to clone Michael's DNA. Tommy injects Michael with corrosive liquid and beats him unconscious with a lead pipe. Tommy, Kara, and the children leave Smith's Grove while Loomis stays behind, stating he has "a little business to attend to here". Inside, Michael's mask lies alone on the lab floor as Loomis screams in the background, leaving their fates unknown.
Cast
Production Development and screenplay Early drafts
After an unfavorable critical and commercial response to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers which came out only a year after Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, producer Moustapha Akkad put the Halloween series on hold to re-evaluate its potential. Akkad felt Halloween 5 had strayed too far from Halloween 4 and the box office response was much lower than expected. As early as 1990, both Danielle Harris and Don Shanks were expected to return as Jamie Lloyd and The Shape, with the possibility of Donald Pleasence and Wendy Kaplan reprising their roles as well. That same year, screenwriter and long-time Halloween fan Daniel Farrands set out to write the sixth entry in the Halloween series. Farrands gave his horror film scripts to the producer of Halloween 5, Ramsey Thomas; impressed by his writing, Thomas set a meeting for Farrands with executive producer Moustapha Akkad.
Farrands, who knew the films, as well as Dennis Etchison's novelizations intimately, constructed a bible of the entire franchise and presented it to the studio. The film lingered in development as a planned October 1990 release was missed, but Akkad persisted and began courting Michele Soavi in 1992. Soavi would reject the offer and not long after the producers entered a series of complicated legal battles which delayed plans for a sequel; eventually Miramax Films (via its Dimension Films division) bought the rights to the Halloween series. Concurrently with the legal battle, series co-creator John Carpenter had teamed up with New Line Cinema to outbid Miramax. Carpenter's proposal saw the film take place on a space station.
Following Miramax's acquisition of the series, the studio hoped to start production by October 1993, but again, this did not materialize. Bob Weinstein subsequently hired Gary Fleder to direct, with Phil Rosenberg becoming the first writer hired for the project. Rosenberg's screenplay, titled Halloween 666: The Origin, follows a Chicago news reporter who arrives in Haddonfield to cover the town's first Halloween celebration in five years, during which a series of killings begins. Akkad expressly disliked the screenplay, but Miramax responded to it favorably and opted to continue moving forward until Fleder eventually dropped out, citing "creative differences".
Miramax then approached Quentin Tarantino, who had recently completed Pulp Fiction (1994) for the studio. Though a screenplay was never completed, Tarantino pitched a story idea involving Michael Myers and the Man in Black fleeing Haddonfield together and going on a road trip down Route 66 while murdering people, events which bear resemblance to those depicted in his screenplay for Natural Born Killers, which he was pitching to Miramax Films at the same time. Tarantino ultimately declined the offer, but suggested Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel as a potential director. Spiegel was unenthusiastic about Phil Rosenberg's screenplay and ultimately departed the project.
By April 1994, Phil Rosenberg's brother, Scott was tasked with revising the script, but failed to satisfy Akkad. With Scott Rosenberg's draft rejected, the studio pursued upcoming writers Irving Belateche and Lawrence Guterman to completely overhaul Halloween 666. With an October 1994 release window instilled by Weinstein, Matthew Patrick of Hider in the House was selected as director. Upon his hiring, Patrick immediately flew to Salt Lake City for location scouting and brought in his frequent cinematographer Billy Dickson. However, neither Patrick or Akkad were appeased by the script, with the former even referring to it as "unfinished". Patrick was granted his own revision of the script, but tensions rose between Akkad and Weinstein. With production gearing up to begin in two weeks without a finalized cast, Patrick ultimately quit the project in May 1994.
Farrands' re-drafting In June 1994, Daniel Farrands was hired to write a new screenplay, as the film had an impending shooting date scheduled for that October in Salt Lake City. At this time, Fred Walton was attached to direct. Walton soon became reluctant to take on a "movie about a guy with a knife killing people". Instead, the filmmaker envisioned a plot akin to Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, with Jamie Lloyd living in a halfway house and committing suicide in the film's opening scene. The Weinsteins swiftly moved onto Joe Chappelle after being impressed with his debut film, Thieves Quartet. Farrands expanded on the presence of the "Man in Black" in Halloween 5 as well as the appearance of the Thorn symbol, both of which appear without explanation at the end of Halloween 5. When beginning the script, Farrands contacted the writers of Halloween 4 and 5 for additional information, but they were unable to provide clear answers, leaving him to "pick up the pieces".