Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) [Theatrical Cut]

 

Director: Joe Chappelle

Screenplay: Daniel Farrands

Cast: Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle, Marianne Hagan as Kara Strode, Mitch Ryan as Dr. Terence Wynn, Devin Gardner as Danny Strode, J. C. Brandy as Jamie Lloyd, Keith Bogart as Tim Strode, Mariah O'Brien as Beth, Kim Darby as Debra Strode, Bradford English as John Strode, Leo Geter as Barry Simms, George P. Wilbur as Michael Myers

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took six years to get a follow up to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), yet we finished the Thorn cult story. In an attempt to elaborate on a premise, in the killer Michael Myers terrorised one Halloween night, the previous two films had brought up a secret cabal based on sinister Druid practices who created Myers. For a story which was never designed to be an entire franchise without having to drastically elaborate on this one night's worth of story and the epilogue, they had set up a drastic change in the world beyond this being a single night of murders from a person who became a psychopath, but an entire conspiracy. They tried, bless them, with this idiosyncratic direction but they ended up finished it with a change of studio with Dimension Films, and not without infamously a drastically altered theatrical release. Director Joe Chappelle himself was left unscathed, but perversely ended up having to work on another horror sequel which faltered and needed him to film reshoots, Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), which was also from Dimension Films, which presents the ultimate irony with The Curse of Michael Myers itself. This review is not about the Producer's Cut, which got an official release eventually, which changes a lot in tone, but for a series' turn which took the risk of even bringing in supernatural details into the main franchise, not the non-Myers tangent in the third Season of the Witch film from 1982, but the original slasher film premise, the resulting Theatrical Cut even without seeing the other version is visible damaged on arrive to its theatrical release. Removing almost all the main actors from the original films barring Donald Pleasance, we ended up with an abrupt conclusion as a result of this.

Continuing from the fifth film's huge "To Be Continued" ending, we finish off the tale of Jamie, the character who was central to the previous two films, abruptly written out when she was that important to the previous two. She was kidnapped as a child and, whilst never explaining the huge age jump considering the six years are chronologically nodded to in film world time as much as between the sequels, there is the disturbing implication of a young adult Jamie having being forced to have a child with her uncle Michael Myers watching on. Whilst the Producer Cut gives this character more time, the sense of the film having this disregarding her in the first version that was released in edited form, and with what came before, is really felt, and even for those who hated this Thorn story arch, they would still have found this insulting to have even attempted to finish off in this cut. She is the catalyst for this story if cruelly removed, which sadly emphasises this - despite the fact she gave birth the night before or less, and should not be able to walk yet let alone drive, Jamie is allowed to flee (and steal a car) with the baby by a female doctor's kindness. The theatrical cut was also going for more violence, with newly filmed scenes, and nineties edginess, Jamie's end by way of farming equipment in this version, and significant emphasis on sharp cuts in the editing and grungy industrial influences. Whilst it has its grimy charm, the immediate problems come from the production slicing the story up into shreds, and not sticking it back together in a cohesive and sensible way.

One of the kids from the original films, Tommy Doyle (as played by Paul Rudd here), grew up obsessed with the idea Michael Myers will return to Haddonfield, and that in itself was an inspired idea to have, as Tommy from the original narrative crosses over into the Thorn trilogy, finding the baby, staying all night in a public bathroom cupboard unscathed, and decides to protect it. Dr. Sam Loomis as mentioned returns, in one of Donald Pleasence's last roles before his passing, now retired only for Jamie's call to a radio shock hock DJ whilst fleeing to drag him back in. Sadly, Tommy, nor Loomis, have much to do. Neither the female lead Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan), a daughter on the Strode family tree who moved into the old home of the original Strode character from the first film, who is bullied by her father as a college student who had a son named Danny in her teens. Three layers of interesting dynamic are here for a sequel to continue this franchise, of one of the survivors of the original 1978 Halloween as an adult, Loomis closing his story, and a female character with a fascinating back-story never used, and also related to the Myers' family by blood, with Danny likely cursed by their lineage and hearing creepy voices like Michael would have, none of which is found in this mangled cut.

There is a nasty, fun film to have been found in the theatrical cut if it had not been such a pig's ear in presentation - a man does explode from electrocution, and that cannot be ignored - and because of the clear problems with this more initially available cut, there is a sense midway this franchise was not going to get off the ground from this turn into a lucrative franchise into the late nineties. The drastic reinterpretation which ditched three films' worth of lore with hindsight makes little sense, and even the decision to have more gore was an attempt to sell a film which feels a mess in this cut. It also really does not stand out, which is worse. Baring the morbid image of a girl twirling under red, warm rain from a tree at one point, there is the sense the Halloween name is not helped by this, even if you reinterpret the iconic tension stinger in the score with an edgy industrial guitar solo, and the film should have been its own original and be allowed to breathe. It could have been its own Halloween tribute, about a town celebrating the season and getting an edgy Howard Stern-like radio host, one which felt its era of the mid-nineties when Stern was popular, rather than making details like that party and this obnoxious DJ figure barely existent subplots. Even very important plot points, like a conspiracy to cultivate the perfect lineage of Michael Myers-like killers, with a scene in a medical room full of foetuses from possible failed attempts, feels barely detailed in the slightest, making no sense of the plot progression this film's titular "Curse" is meant to be about. I am aware that the Producer's Cut had more idiosyncratic traits, playing more to the Samhain folklore even in how Myers is defeated, but focusing on this version, with its nineties mood lighting and an ending involving green neon toxic needles for the win, as toxic neon green was also very nineties, it would have been a future weirdo cult nineties slasher people would admit a guilty pleasure for if this never had to worry about being a Halloween film or be the mess it came.

As it is, a Frankenstein's cobble of the negative, I can see why Scream (1996) was such an important resurrection for the slasher franchise a year later in the mainstream, a much needed kick in the ribs to shake the subgenre up. It was not just the self-referential tone with hindsight that was important, but arguably more important was updating the template to how people dressed and talked like the new audience for horror even if the idealised version, with the type of male and female characters they would like to see onscreen, like casting Courteney Cox in mind to her success on the Friends television series or Neve Campbell as the lead, who were close to their target audience in having their emotions and dramas as much as now having some self aware snark and irony on the tropes. We cannot even get a logical plot to the theatrical cut of The Curse of Michael Myers, let along real characterisation or even unintentional mangled humour to the proceedings. Thankfully Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) got Scream's snark, alongside both sympathetic characters and also paying respect to the source in a way which allowed a sequel to work. Halloween 6 in this original theatrical version, even in how abrupt in ends and ends Dr. Loomis in the final, is a deflated mess to the whole Thorn trilogy. All three films have their pleasures, but from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) to here, we sadly ended this era with this flat conclusion which felt like the two previous films were a nuisance but ends up sabotaging the entire rebooting of the series, requiring another one three years to fix this issue.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995)

Art by Graham Humphreys

Director: Shinichi Fukazawa

Screenplay: Shinichi Fukazawa

Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa as Shinji, Asako Nosaka as Mika, Masahiro Kai the Psychic

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A guy needs muscles after all!

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell from the get-go has the story of its director Shinichi Fukazawa. An outsider to the Japanese film industry, he was interested with bodybuilding, splatter films imported into Japan like the Evil Dead series started by Sam Raimi's 1981 independently made horror film¹, deciding to make what would become a film just over an hour in tribute. It belongs to a long history of Japanese lower budget films like this with homemade splatter effects and mid-nineties video production. The difference to others, like those made for the straight-to-video market, like Jôji Iida's Cyclops (1987), which were forty plus or so minute mini-features which got released soon after they were filmed for the video market, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell was left unfinished and unseen for fifteen years¹. It took, according to its star/writer/director/practical effects creator Fukazawa seven and a half years just to shoot the film, between re-scheduling, problems with the film stock he was forced to film on, and working around his and his cast's lives, and another seven and a half years for post-production¹. Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production in 2009 after beginning the editing process of all the 8mm film started on from 2005². Including having to take an additional two years for the original independent version of DVD¹, Fukazawa was finally able to complete the production which would become a work of international interest as well.

Those two obsessions of its lead/director Shinichi Fukazawa are very clearly visible in the film itself, and far from a critique to note the clear tributes to the Evil Dead films, as a tribute that came to us long after originally intended, by the time the Evil Dead became a pop culture institution, this really stands out again because of this. The plot is very simple, set up in a thirty years earlier prologue where a man accidently kills the girlfriend, he was about to leave, when she was trying to kill him with a knife. Burying the body in the house, this is the father of our lead Shinji (also played by Fukazawa), aptly leaving a curse for the son of a different woman he would marry that will haunt Shinji. Keeping the house as an heirloom, in real life a house the director's real father was going to scrap that was in a Tokyo suburb and his son took advantage of to film within¹, Shinji will only go back when convinced by an ex-girlfriend and journalist Mika (Asako Nosaka). With her fascination in haunted houses and wishing to write about examples like her old flame's, when learning of the strange goings-on in the premises, Mika takes him to the building.

He does not believe in ghosts, only in fitness and that smoking ruins one's beauty by sapping away the vitamin C in one's body, but the curse of his father before he met his mother now is in his lap. He goes with Mika and a male psychic (Masahiro Kai), and the later becomes the start of the hauntings as he has legitimate psychic abilities, allowing the ghost of the jilted girlfriend to possess him, thinking Shinji as his lookalike is his father and deserving punishment. It feels a homemade production, which begins because when wanting to use another 16mm or Betacam, Shinichi Fukazawa for the budget had to use 8mm, which caused as much as the problems which would cause this film to take as long as it did to be finished even in terms of digitizing the footage in the extended post-production¹.  Thankfully, with a complete film, it has the charm and atmosphere of a home movie of the time, played on a projector with actually sprockets, adding a distinct look. With hindsight, especially as its production history adds a layer like it was rediscovered and rebuilt, that helps in mood as, in mind to the homemade quality of the first Evil Dead, you see a one-man band show an incredible amount of moxy and quality to this, as well as provide a distinct tone to this film. There are visible lifts from The Evil Dead, as the psychic is possessed and even dismemberment will not stop a spurned lover who confuses son for father, but there is as much its own spin on the material even when Shinichi Fukazawa does get a moment to say "Groovy" like Bruce Campbell.

It has its own atmosphere, helped by the small house the production was able to spill fake blood within and furthered by the practical methods to depict this gory splatter fest, the later entirely of Shinichi Fukazawa's own craft and in itself worthy of incredible praise. Some moments have eerieness to them, such as the father returning from the dead on a TV, and others are funny, such as the punch line to a random criticism of Mika's smoking biting the leads when trying to dispose of evil sentient corpse pieces. The practical effects, even the moments where they seemingly took still images and coloured over them, are memorable especially as it is overtly humorous and deliberately repulsive in the "slapstick" tone. As a fan of films like Evil Dead or Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992) when he wanted to make the film, Fukazawa got the right tone with what he loved from these films, in touches like the hand-feet meldings to the attempts at dynamic shots like the camera following flying projectiles taken from Raimi. His interest in body building does come into play, being able to hulk out of his shirt onscreen and use gym equipment as an improvised crossbow at one point, itself adding a distinct touch to the proceedings.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell even in terms of its turbulent gestation history really exemplifies what entices about micro-budget cinema for me. It is about outsiders who get to make films away from industries to their personalities, putting everything including probably actual blood into the materials to get it made. Shinichi Fukazawa has yet to make another film, but he can at least be proud he completed this one, with the warm reception received even globally as the perfect introduction to this type of cinema in attitude.

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1) An Interview with Director Shinichi Fukazawa, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written by Ken Wynne for Attack from Planet B and published on April 28th 2017.

2) Reel Review: Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, written for Morbidly Beautiful and published October 11th 2017.