Halloween Marathon: 1995
I’m doing this because I haven’t seen them all and have a lot of work to do and need something to watch. It’s been about 20 odd years since I watched this original, so let’s delve back in…
Previously:1978 – 1981 – 1982 – 1988 – 1989
Movie: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Released: 1995
Director: Joe Chappelle
Cast: Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Mitch Ryan, Devin Gardner, George P. Wilbur, J.C. Brandy
Plot: The fate of Jamie Lloyd is revealed as she is used to give birth to a baby to be sacrificed by the Cult of the Thorn who controls Michael Myers using occultism or something.
Review: My God, this is a complete train wreck.
I don’t just mean the story or premise is especially bad – which it is – but this entire production feels like it must’ve been a complete farce. There are some scenes that make absolutely no sense from a film-making or storytelling perspective. This was definitely made up as they went along, making the explanations of the previous film’s nonsense even more silly.
Let’s give some examples. After finding a hidden baby, Tommy (Rudd) heads to the hospital. Here, for no given reason, is Dr. Loomis (Pleasence). There’s no explanation for why this main character is now in this setting. They meet, introduce themselves and explain all the plot elements to each other before leaving the hospital. This scene has more logic in the alternative non-theatrical cut, but as it exists it makes no sense. Later there’s a sequence where Tommy, Loomis and Kara (Hagan) encounter a group of cultists, only for Kara to throw herself out the window. The scene is already edited together like it was attacked with a threshing machine, but we go from a Kara’s corpse on the lawn to a long fade to black. When it comes back, Tommy and Loomis are here without the cultists talking about having been drugged. What drugs? Where are the bad guys? It’s a poor attempt to try and glom together this patchwork of a story.
Maybe the intention was to give the audience drugs. It certainly feels like I’ve been drugged at this point.
The previous film introduced an unusual shape tattooed on Michael’s (Wilbur) wrist. Now we learn that it’s a constellation. Also an ancient rune. This links him and his bloodline to a cult led by the mysterious man in black who is now revealed to be a character we saw for 30 seconds in the first film, and who has never reappeared since. Thank goodness they dropped all this lunacy after this movie because it does nothing to make the films or characters more interesting. Taken on its own, if it didn’t rewrite the entire mythology of Michael Myers, it would still be crap.
Being the film debut of Paul Rudd, whose star has never shone brighter due to his role as Ant-Man, might have made this worth a look, but this is not the Rudd we love. It’s clear that everyone in the film is struggling with the material, but his character is especially gross. He’s introduced spying on our leading lady in her bedroom, and is a twitchy weirdo throughout. There’s really no sympathetic characters in this chapter, and we’re glad to see the backs of them as this weird trilogy of Michael Myers’ comes to a close. Even Jamie Lloyd, who only appears at the beginning of the movie, has been recast and bears no resemblance to the child we’d previously looked to as a hero.
Completely skippable. A complete soggy pile of trash to mark the centre of the franchise. It’s hard to believe that it was only three years before the complete retcon that the seventh movie would bring.
Rating: ONE out of TEN
