Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Six years after Michael Myers broke out of the Haddonfield police station, he and his niece Jamie Lloyd are being held by a cult led by the Man in Black. Jamie is now fifteen. In the cult's underground hideout she gives birth to a baby boy, and the cult takes him away in a ritual. A midwife named Mary helps Jamie get the baby back and run. Michael catches up with Mary and kills her. Jamie gets away in a pickup truck with the baby.

Dr. Sam Loomis has retired and lives quietly outside Haddonfield. His old colleague Dr. Terence Wynn comes by to ask him to come back to Smith's Grove. On the radio they hear Jamie call in to Barry Simms's show, begging Loomis for help, while Simms brushes her off. Michael chases Jamie down and she crashes the truck at a barn. There he kills her on a corn thresher. When he checks the truck, the baby is gone. Jamie had already hidden him at the bus station.

In Haddonfield the old Myers house now belongs to the Strodes, relatives of Laurie Strode. There is John, a mean drunk, his wife Debra, their grown daughter Kara, Kara's little boy Danny, and Kara's teenage brother Tim. Danny has started hearing a voice telling him to kill. Across the street, in a boarding house run by Mrs. Blankenship, lives Tommy Doyle, the boy Laurie babysat in 1978. He is grown up now and cannot stop thinking about Michael. Tommy finds Jamie's baby at the bus station, takes him home and names him Steven.

Tommy tells Kara and Loomis about Thorn, an old Druid curse. It picks a child in a family and drives him to kill his own relatives on Halloween night. Tommy thinks that explains Michael, and he thinks Danny is next. Mrs. Blankenship says she was babysitting across the street the night Michael killed his sister in 1963. Michael comes home and starts on the Strodes. He kills Debra with an axe. He stabs Barry Simms. He kills John by throwing him into the fuse box, where he is electrocuted. Then he kills Tim and Tim's girlfriend Beth.

At the boarding house the truth comes out. Mrs. Blankenship is part of the cult, and the Man in Black is Dr. Wynn. The cult knocks out Tommy and Loomis and takes Kara, Danny and Steven to Smith's Grove Sanitarium. Wynn explains that his people have been studying Thorn and the evil it puts in Michael, and they plan to pass it on to the children.

Tommy and Loomis go after them. Kara is locked up at the sanitarium, and Tommy finds her. Then Michael turns on the cult. He walks into the operating room and cuts down Wynn's doctors. Tommy stabs Michael with a needle full of a corrosive liquid and beats him with a lead pipe until he goes down. Tommy, Kara, Danny and Steven get out. Loomis tells them to go on without him because he has business inside. In the last shot, Michael's mask lies on the floor and Loomis screams somewhere off-screen, so nobody knows what happened to him.

The Producer's Cut tells a different story. Jamie is stabbed at the barn but lives, and later the Man in Black kills her in the hospital. The ending is a ritual. Tommy stops Michael with druid stones. Loomis then finds Wynn wearing Michael's mask and clothes, and Wynn passes the mark of Thorn on to Loomis while Michael gets away.

Story notes

• Six years after disappearing with Jamie Lloyd, Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield.
• Tommy Doyle, Kara Strode and Dr. Loomis become entangled in the mystery surrounding Michael, the Thorn symbol and Smith's Grove.

Release facts

• Runtime: 88 minutes theatrical; the Producer's Cut runs about ten minutes longer
• Distributor: Dimension Films (Miramax); Alliance in Canada

A teaser trailer went out under the title Halloween 666: The Origin of Michael Myers. Dimension released the film on September 29, 1995. It opened second behind Seven with $7,308,529, then fell to eighth with $2.5 million the next weekend. It finished with about $15.1 million in the US, around 3.5 million tickets, on a $5 million budget.

Critics hated it. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 8 percent from 38 reviews and Metacritic gives it 10. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it by far the worst in the series. Stephen Holden of The New York Times said the script was impossibly convoluted. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post said the filmmakers forgot to stop in at Plots R Us. The Salt Lake Tribune said the runes, Satan worship and DNA testing never came together.

It won Worst Film at the 1996 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards and was nominated for Worst Sequel at the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

Some people have come around on it. John Kenneth Muir wrote about how the film gets lost in its own backstory. In 2022 Jamie Righetti of IndieWire ranked it fifth in the series. A lot of fans like the Producer's Cut better.

The Producer's Cut got its first public theater showing on October 27, 2013, at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Halloween: The Complete Collection, which included it, won the 2015 Saturn Award for Best DVD or Blu-ray Collection.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: Scream Factory direct-order poster — screen-connections.com.

Cast

Crew

Production

After Halloween 5 did poorly, the series sat for years while the rights were fought over. Moustapha Akkad and the Weinsteins came out on top, and Dimension Films, part of Miramax, took over distribution.

Several writers and directors came and went. Phil Rosenberg wrote a script called Halloween 666: The Origin. Gary Fleder was attached to direct. Quentin Tarantino pitched an idea with Michael and the Man in Black killing their way along Route 66, then passed and suggested Scott Spiegel, who also left. Matthew Patrick quit in May 1994. Fred Walton was attached for a while. The job finally went to Joe Chappelle, whose film Thieves Quartet had impressed the Weinsteins.

Daniel Farrands, a longtime fan of the series, wrote the script. He built the Thorn story to explain Michael's strength and why he keeps going after his family. He wrote Dr. Wynn with Christopher Lee in mind.

Danielle Harris got legally emancipated at seventeen so she could play Jamie again. Dimension offered her scale pay, about $1,000, which was less than the emancipation had cost her, and she turned it down. J.C. Brandy took the part. The producers wanted Brian Andrews back as Tommy Doyle, but he had no agent and they could not find him. Paul Rudd got the part. It was his first starring role, before Clueless. The Weinsteins said Marianne Hagan was too thin and her chin was too pointy. Howard Stern turned down Barry Simms so he could make Private Parts. Denise Richards tried out for Beth. George P. Wilbur came back as Michael, the first actor to play him twice.

Filming took place in Salt Lake City in the fall and winter of 1994. A snowstorm made it hard to pass Utah off as Halloween. The Akkads and the Weinsteins fought a lot. In the middle of production, Dimension cut $1 million from the budget to help pay for Hellraiser: Bloodline.

Donald Pleasence signed on for the original script, which was later rewritten against his wishes. He died on February 2, 1995, before the film came out, and it is dedicated to him.

A test screening went badly, and a Fangoria intern who was there wrote it up. Dimension ordered reshoots in Los Angeles. Rand Ravich rewrote the ending. Chappelle thought Wilbur was too bulky, so A. Michael Lerner played Michael in the new footage. Wikipedia puts the reshoots in the summer of 1995, and 45 Lampkin Lane says February and March.

Farrands does not like either version, but he likes the Producer's Cut better. He suggested the title The Curse of Michael Myers as a joke about how rough the production was, and it stuck. He also pointed out that Return, Revenge and Curse follow the same pattern as the Pink Panther sequel titles.

Paul Rudd filmed The Curse of Michael Myers before Clueless, although Clueless reached theaters first.

The official archive documents substantial alternate material and the producer's-cut history.

Danielle Harris was considered to return as Jamie Lloyd before the role was recast.

Writer Daniel Farrands recalled that much of the theatrical cut's heavier blood-and-gore material was added in post-production/reshoots after an initially less-graphic shoot.

The official production archive locates most principal photography in Salt Lake City, Utah.

An early winter in 1994 forced the crew to create an autumn Halloween setting despite winter conditions.

After Donald Pleasence died following principal photography, a stand-in supplied the additional Loomis shots required for revisions.

Daniel Farrands first pitched Akkad in 1990, then was hired after a renewed call in June 1994.

Farrands’s screenplay was titled Halloween 666; he says The Origin of Michael Myers appeared on an early video trailer, not his script.

Farrands initially wrote the role of Dr. Wynn with Christopher Lee in mind.

Farrands cited Donald Tyson’s Rune Magic as a source for his fictional Thorn mythology.

The writer borrowed Mrs. Blankenship’s name from the Minnie Blankenship reference in Halloween III.

Filming locations

• Salt Lake City, Utah: Most of principal photography, as with Halloween 4 and 5
• Old Primary Children's Hospital, Salt Lake City: Smith's Grove Sanitarium
• Midvale and Ogden, Utah: More Utah locations
• Los Angeles: Reshoots for the theatrical cut
• The film shot mostly in Utah from late October 1994 into early 1995, using Salt Lake City, Midvale and Ogden. An early snowstorm forced some planned exteriors indoors; locations included 1926 Lincoln Street for the Myers house, Westminster College for Haddonfield Junior College, and the former Primary Children's Hospital for sanitarium/hospital material.
• Farrands identifies Salt Lake City sewage tunnels as the opening underground setting and Los Angeles’s abandoned Queen of Angels Hospital as the theatrical finale location.

Effects and makeup

John Carl Buechler designed the Michael Myers mask, basing it closely on the mask from the Halloween 4 poster.

The big gags include Jamie on the corn thresher and John Strode's head exploding at the fuse box.

Gary J. Tunnicliffe worked on special effects, and Larry Fioritto coordinated the physical effects.

Special-effects artist John Carl Buechler designed the Myers mask and hand-crafted it over George P. Wilbur's face, building a practical mask specifically around the returning performer's proportions.

The production's substantial theatrical-cut reshoots added new Los Angeles soundstage material to footage originally photographed in Utah, creating separate practical environments and effect setups across the two versions.

Props and costumes

Michael's mask: Buechler's design, based on the Halloween 4 poster.

The Thorn symbol shows up on Michael, on Jamie's baby, and on Loomis's wrist at the end of the Producer's Cut.

The Man in Black keeps his black coat and steel-tipped boots from Halloween 5.

Druid stones: Tommy uses them to stop Michael in the Producer's Cut ending.

Buechler's Myers mask took visual cues from the Halloween 4 poster image rather than attempting a literal reuse of an earlier production mask; its fit was tailored directly to Wilbur, who returned as the Shape.

Because the Producer's Cut and theatrical cut contain separately photographed finales, surviving costume and mask continuity must be tracked by version as well as by scene.

Production artifacts

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Alan Howarth wrote the score using the Carpenter theme. After the reshoots, music editor Paul Rabjohns redid it, and Howarth called the result a fix job. The new version adds guitar and drums to Howarth's synth and piano.

Varèse Sarabande released the score album with 13 tracks, running 56:41. Wikipedia's soundtrack page dates it August 24, 1995, and the film's page says October 24, 1995.

Brother Cane, a rock band from Alabama, has four songs from its 1995 album Seeds in the film: "And Fools Shine On" (when Kara, Tim and Beth get to school, and over the end credits), "Hung On a Rope", "20/20 Faith" and "Horses & Needles".

"Disconnected" by I Found God is also in the film.

Home Media

• 1996: VHS and LaserDisc from Miramax.
• 2000: DVD from Dimension.
• 2010: Canadian Blu-ray from Alliance.
• May 2011: US Blu-ray and DVD from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment.
• September 23, 2014: Halloween: The Complete Collection from Scream Factory and Anchor Bay. It has the theatrical cut and the first official release of the Producer's Cut.
• September 15, 2015: Producer's Cut on its own Blu-ray from Lionsgate.
• October 4, 2022: The Halloween 4K Collection (1995-2002) from Scream Factory, with H20 and Resurrection. Both cuts of this film are on 4K and Blu-ray.

Store exclusives

• Score album, Varèse Sarabande, 1995, on CD.
• Halloween 6 Michael Myers mask and other licensed items from Trick or Treat Studios.
• NECA Ultimate Michael Myers 7-inch figure based on this film, 2025.
• Halloween #1 from Chaos! Comics (2000), co-written by Daniel Farrands, with Tommy Doyle as a main character.
• Trick or Treat Studios Halloween 6: Myers Mask, cataloged for Halloween 6.

The catalog

• Official trailer — HalloweenMovies.com

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Props