HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS
USA. 1995. Director - Joe Chappelle, Screenplay - Daniel Farrands, Producer - Paul Freeman, Photography - Billy Dickson, Additional Photography - Tom Calloway, Music - Alan Howarth, Halloween Theme - John Carpenter, Special Effects Supervisor - Larry Fioritto, Makeup Effects - Magical Media Industries Inc (Designer/Supervisor - John Buechler), Additional Makeup Effects - Image Animation (Supervisor - Gary J. Tunicliffe), Production Design - Bryan Ryman. Production Company - Nightfall Productions. Marianne Hagan (Kara Strode), Paul Stephen Rudd (Tommy Doyle), Donald Pleasence (Dr Sam Loomis), George P. Wilbur (The Shape/Michael Myers), J.C. Brandy (Jamie Lloyd), Kim Darby (Debra Strode), Bradford English (John Strode), Mitchell Ryan (Dr Terence Wynn), Devin Gardner (Danny Strode), Keith Bogart (Tim Strode), Mariah O'Brien (Beth), Janice Knickrehm (Mrs Blankenship)
Plot: Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield on Halloween night where he stalks Laurie Strode's cousin Kara and her family who have moved into the old Myers house. Kara's nerdish neighbour Tommy Doyle discovers abandoned the baby that is the last surviving inheritor of the Myers name that Michael is determined to kill. As he tries to protect the baby he discovers that Michael Myers is the incarnation of an ancient druidic personification of evil and is being sought by a group of modern druidic cultists in the town.
A strong case could be made that John Carpenter's cult 1978 hit `Halloween' was a film that shaped the face of the modern horror film. With `Halloween' Carpenter set out with no real intent other than to craft a pure rollercoaster ride of jolts and shocks. `Halloween's appeal rested as much in the ability to streamline the horror film into a pure shock machine, as it was to take it out of the shadows of Hammer Gothic and the melodramatic thriller contrivations of `Psycho' and its ilk and make it a wholly modern new form. The film's influence can be felt through an enormous number of other films from `Friday the 13th' and `A Nightmare on Elm Street' and their various sequels and imitators through to the obvious homages in the current `Scream' films.
After the success of `Halloween', Carpenter oversaw the obligatory `Halloween II' in 1981 but then with 1982's `Halloween III: Season of the Witch' tried to use the `Halloween' name to kick off an original, unlinked anthology series. That was an idea that promptly went nowhere. Carpenter then sold out interest in the franchise and 1988's `Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers' made a predictably sequelistic return to The Shape/Michael Myers saga. By the time of this, the fifth sequel to `Halloween', a thorough sense of pointlessness hangs over the series. What stood `Halloween' above the mostly worthless run of slasher film imitators - the `Friday the 13th' films being a perfect example - was the seat-edge directorial grip with which it was crafted. Sadly what made `Halloween' work is a lesson that almost no slasher film succeeded in learning, with almost all substituting potpourris of gory despatches and a lineup of faceless teen victims over the creation of suspense and characters that one could give a damn about. And even more sadly this is a lesson that all of the `Halloween' sequels have even failed to learn from the source they owe their own name to.
There are occassional moments were director Joe Chappelle seems on the verge of rediscovering some of the style that Carpenter infused the original with - the there again/gone again pop-up tricks and the spooky peripheral shots with The Shape appearing on the edge of the camera frame or behind people's shoulders. But these occasional moments are ruined by pointlessly gory payoffs which show the film has no real focus above the conveyor belt line of splattery novelty deaths served up in the average `Friday the 13th' sequel. The exercise is disappointingly hollow and by comparison manages to make both `Halloween's II' and `IV' suddenly seem a whole lot better by comparison.
The film is further shot in by a plot which throws in an absurd spin that turns Michael Myers into some druidic avatar of evil incarnate. The explanation for this is murky and sounds just as silly when offered up on screen as it does in description here. Even more ill explained are a series of subplots that reveal several of the cast members as belonging to some type of baby-snatching druidic cult that wants Michael Myers and the last surviving Myers baby. (Why, is never made clear). You could almost argue that the film might be trying to establish some type of grand thematic link to unite itself up with the druidic witchcraft plot of the unconnected `Halloween III'. But in truth the film is shabbily, indifferently plotted and a disgracefully poor blackening of the eminent name of its original that it bears.
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