Our first Honorable Mention piece is from Christopher Fujino, a friend from Letterboxd, who encourages you to give the infamous "Producer's Cut" of Halloween 6 a try.
This review contains
minor spoilers about the previous films in the series. Having seen all these
films, I personally don't think it matters, but if you really don't want to
know if Michael Myers dies at the end of the second film, you should stop
reading now.
Okay, still here? Yeah, he dies.
I'm usually a stickler for official titles. It's not really
"The White Album," it's called "The Beatles." The book
isn't called "Alice in Wonderland," it's "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland." But for this series, I'm just gonna number them. First,
because who really knows the difference between The Return of Michael Myers and The
Revenge of Michael Myers? And second, because there seems to be no
consensus on what the heck this film was titled. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers? That seems most logical. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers?
The studios started doing this in the '90s, leaving out the numbers because it
was getting embarrassing. Halloween 6?
I guess the studio really didn't care what they called this. And you know what,
neither do I.
Further complicating matters, there exists three different
versions of this film. They have been dubbed by fans the Producer's Cut (think
of this as version 1), the Director's Cut (version 2), and the officially
released, theatrical cut (version 3). For those who are in the
behind-the-scenes goings-on of filmmaking, there's a lot of information on the
difficult production of this film. For everyone else, here's the short version:
The film started as a spec script written by Daniel
Farrands, a big fan of the series. It was startlingly original, pulling
together various loose ends from different films in the series, and also
exploring the motivation of the mysterious Michael Myers. In other words,
written by a fan for the fans.
After production wrapped, series veteran Donald Pleasance
died. The filmmakers put together a complete cut of the film and test screened
it for a dissatisfied, confused audience that "consisted primarily of
14-year-old boys." This is the Production Cut.
A dissatisfied, confused studio seized control of the
project (which, to be fair, was always supposed to be a cash grab) and cut out
the most controversial and complex parts of the plot, added some more exciting
kills, and shot a completely different, action-packed ending (without
Pleasance). In other words, they took out all the interesting parts, and were
left with an unoriginal, yet incomprehensible mess. This is the Director's Cut.
But this was too graphic to get an R-rating, so they trimmed some of the most
gruesome bits. Say hello to the version that disappointed Halloween fans in
theaters everywhere.
Somehow, VHS copies of both the Producer's Cut and the
Director's Cut circulated among hardcore horror fans, and eventually a
dedicated fan spliced together the gritty VHS footage of the "Producer's
Cut" together with the scenes it shares with the DVD release of the
theatrical version, forming a sort of cinematic Frankenstein's monster, and
sold as a bootleg and distributed on file sharing networks. As a response to
this intense interest from fans (and I'm sure the realization that they were
losing potential revenue), Disney/Miramax decided to include the Producer's
Cut in their 15-disc release Halloween: The Complete Collection, available for
the first time digitally mastered.
And so, the question which must be answered is: is it really
worth all the trouble? Well, sort of. It's certainly not a masterpiece on the
level of the original version of The
Magnificent Ambersons, or the newly discovered footage of Lang's Metropolis. It's more akin to Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, an
interesting parallel history, offering insight into the tension between the art
and business of filmmaking.
For fans of the series, and especially the fourth and fifth
films, it also answers a lot of questions. Why does Jamie stab someone in the
fourth film? Who was the man in black who rescues Michael at the end of the
fifth film? And why is he so darned determined to kill all his relatives? Not
only does it answer these questions, but it does so in totally bizarre and
unexpected ways. This is not an especially scary film, but it is original, and
after years of watching horror films, I value originality more. And especially
in the '90s, an uncomfortable period of transition for horror cinema, there
were those who tried to lay on more gore, guts, and sex, and then there were those
who dared to try something new, and that's what this version of Halloween 6 is. After this, the
franchise would revert to recycling the original formula with the return of
Jamie Lee Curtis for Halloween H20:
Twenty Years Later, making this one even more unique.
Ironically, the weakest part of this film is Michael Myers.
Especially in the middle section of this film, Michael Myers goes through the
routine, and he kills 5 or 6 people whose names I honestly could not tell you
(and I just watched the movie). The problem is that this film is more of a
mystery than a slasher film, and thus the important characters have to at least
make it to the final act, so Michael has to kill off unimportant characters who
haven't really been established. This is the stuff that should have been
trimmed, but I'm sure Miramax imposed some kind of kill quota on the
filmmakers. Oh well.
This film, as it appears in the Producer's Cut, was clearly
made for the fans. That doesn't mean, however, that all Halloween fans love it. When I wrote enthusiastically about this
film on Letterboxd, a passionate fan wrote in the comments and spoiled a
crucial plot point (which I won't repeat here). When I complained that he was
spoiling the movie, he replied:
“There's something more important here: deterring as many
people as possible from seeing that version of the film. This is like the one
time in history that we're able to stop a franchise crime from happening! The
least we can do is let people know why the original version of Halloween 6 should be buried forever.”
Then again, nothing will make people want to watch a movie
more than burying it!
Finally, if you're going to watch this movie, I have a
little cheat sheet which I made while rewatching it. I had already seen this
movie once before, and I've seen all the movies preceding, but I was still
completely lost as to who was who, especially since the characters who appeared
in previous films are all portrayed by different actors.
Tommy Doyle - portrayed by Paul Rudd
Not directly related to either the Myers family or the
Strodes, Tommy was a minor character in the first film, being babysat by Laurie
Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Jamie Lloyd - portrayed by J. C. Brandy
Laurie Strode's daughter, and thus Michael Myers' niece, and
thus Michael Myers' niece. Her mother's character was written out of the series
as having died in an automobile accident before the fourth film, thus leaving
Jamie Lloyd an orphan. She was the star of the fourth and fifth films, where
she portrayed by Danielle Harris.
Kara Strode - portrayed by Marianne Hagan
Laurie Strode's cousin, though not by blood. Kara's father
is the brother of Laurie's adoptive father. They are also living in the Myers'
house, where Michael originally killed his sister.
Dr. Terence Wynn - portrayed by Mitchell Ryan
Longtime administrator of the Warren County Santiarium,
where Michael Myers was hospitalized up until his escape at the beginning of
the first film. Appears briefly in the first film, where he was portrayed by
Robert Phalen.
And so, this hasn't so much been a review of the film as an
exploration into the strange story behind its genesis. And I think ultimately I
like this movie so much because of how strange it is. It's eerie watching the
legendary Donald Pleasance, knowing he would soon die and be cut out of the
ending of the theatrical version. It's exciting to finally have a new villain,
the man in black, take the spotlight and recontextualize Michael Myers. And, at
least until that massive box set arrives, it’s a guilty pleasure to watch a
fan-reconstructed bootleg of the cut that those almighty studio execs thought
you were too stupid to appreciate.
- Christopher Fujino is an IT consultant who moonlights as a compulsive list-maker on Letterboxd. His favorite filmmakers are Francis Ford
Coppola, the Coen brothers, and Hayao Miyazaki. He has seen every film in the
Aliens vs. Predators universe, but he hates The
Boondock Saints, I Am Sam, and Lost in Translation with a passion.
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