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| From http://www.impawards.com/1995/posters/ halloween_the_curse_of_michael_myers_xlg.jpg |
Director: Joe Chappelle
Screenplay: Daniel Farrands
Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr.
Sam Loomis); Paul Rudd (as Tommy Doyle); Marianne Hagan (as Kara Strode); Devin
Gardner (as Danny Strode); George P. Wilbur (as Michael Myers)
A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies #65
An important note for this review
is that I viewed the theatrical cut. The Producer's
Cut, which was made available in the USA in a limited edition Scream Factory set which put all
the Halloween franchise together, is
difficult for me to acquire so I had to judge the theatrical cut. This is
important as there're well documented differences which drastically effect the
versions. The theatrical cut of The
Curse of the Michael Myers, after a tolerance even to the dumber moments of
the Halloween sequels, is where the wheels fully fall off the franchise's cart.
I could accept illogical plot points, dumb characters and death by boiling therapeutic
Jacuzzi beforehand but The Curse of the
Michael Myers is legitimately bad in its theatrical form, not able to get
away with its sillier content because of how utterly dull and visibly tampered
with it is.
At this point, the franchise
acquired by Dimension Films, this is
the first 90s Halloween film with an
entirely new decade of fashion and type of horror movie in existence, yet they
decided to follow the twist ending of the 1989 fifth film and the entire pagan
plot line from before, Jamie Lloyd (J. C.
Brandy replacing Danielle Harris)
having escaped a cult with her newly born child, leading a much older Dr.
Loomis (Donald Pleasance in one of
his last films) and a grown up Tommy Doyle (Paul
Rudd), one of the charges of Laurie Strode's from the original 1978 film,
to discover said cult which has been responsible for Michael Myers and is using
him to kill. Allowing six years to pass for real is not a necessarily a bad
idea in terms of sequels - as Halloween
H20 (1998) will show, having time passing for viewers to have lived with
the prequel adds to the significance of the plot alongside seeing actors and
their characters age. Even visibly weak in voice and appearance, it's not sad
to see Pleasance here as a milder, inquisitive Dr. Loomis investigating the events
that are taking place, instead what should've been perfect closure as the
character is trying to close the book on what's consumed his life. The problem
is that's the only good comment I've got for The Curse of the Michael Myers within a film that's utterly disastrous.
What happens, in terms of trying
to take the cultist lore of the sequels before it, is that most of Pleasance's scenes are visibly cut from
the theatrical cut, absolutely reprehensible especially as the film's dedicated
to him after his death during its production, and Tommy Doyle comes off as a
sociopath, through Rudd's cold
delivery and spying at the old Myers house through a telescope, rather than a
sympathetic and psychologically damaged young man. The other protagonist, young
mother and college student Kara Strode (Marianne
Hagan) - a member of another Strode family clan living in the older Myers'
house under an abusive alcoholic father, and whose young son is being corrupted
by the cult - doesn't have a lot to do and, in how she looks and acts, would
make more sense if she was a single mother in her early thirties, forced to
live back with her parents, rather than the young college student she's clearly
meant to be.
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| From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mW1BZhZEhJo/VCRFJKApsiI/ AAAAAAAAwuY/Nm42O6msx04/s1600/HALLOWEEN% 2BTHE%2BCURSE%2BOF%2BMICHAEL%2BMYERS%2B(1995)%2B5.png |
The film's also an utter mess in terms of plot; even if the previous sequels weren't exactly bulletproof in their logic, here it does feels like the narrative was cut to shreds by post-production issues. The whole narrative arc of Part 4 onwards if already killed off in a terrible creative decision, to make a cult the reason behind Michael Myers in the first place, turning the character from a bogeyman to a toothless puppet, but the theatrical cut ironically cuts out all the cult subplot that originally tried to deepen it in the original version, thus making the whole point of the Part 4 to 6 story ultimately pointless. The noticeable tampering on the film also leaves a literal mess of snap cuts of images just for cheap scare effects, an obnoxious soundtrack of screams and moans for each kill, and more bloodier but terrible murder scenes including something worse than any from Halloween II (1981), involving a washing machine that somehow still works with all the electricity being turned off and electrocution, despite the power being cut out, leading to a Scanners-like head explosion. The ending, knowing what happened with the final cut of the film until the Producer's Cut came to existence, is embarrassing in how jarring the events in each scene are connecting to each other, taking place in a mental health facility that's designed as an industrial hellhole from a Silent Hill videogame with an abrupt end and Myers being able to be subdued with merely an iron pipe.
I find however the most
problematic aspects of The Curse of the
Michael Myers is how it's both aesthetically awful and as mean spirited as it
is. The general tone of the later is one dimensional, with crass figures like
the alcoholic father or especially the obnoxious shock jock who comes to
Haddonfield for cheap Halloween season publicity, less adult but more like
being screamed at in un-meaningful dreck. As for the former, the nineties was a
glorious decade for cinema, the last when celluloid was the main medium before digital
started to take over, and when even blockbusters could be unconventional and
inventive, but it was especially for horror films after Scream (1996) also when the worst traits of the American genre industry
started to appear, where the post-music video aesthetic used in The Curse of the Michael Myers is
distracting and the film even fails in using John Carpenter's musical theme, turning it into a guitar lick
abomination. Altogether, unless Halloween
Resurrection (2002) manages to be even worse, this is really the nadir for
the franchise; all the sequels before this still have some fun to them, whilst
the only humour I have here is calling it The
Curse of the Michael Myers with "the" added intentionally rather
than by mistake of my typing.
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| From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/ MV5BNjQzMDE4ZGMtZWMwOS00NGE4LWJkYz MtYzg0N2IwMjZjYjMzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTAyNDQ2NjI@._V1_.jpg |
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