Myers and the Curse that wouldn't go away

I picked up the producer’s cut of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers and had a chance to watch it tonight. Eh, it’s okay. It was a version that felt more complete than the piece of shit I watched at the theater in 1995. 

Funnily enough, in 1995, I turned 18 and had my chance to watch my first R-rated picture at the movies. It looked hastily cobbled together and turned loose on a public looking for so much more after a sixth year absence. This Druid Thorn business, and how it motivates Michael to kill and continue to go on past his expiration date. I’m just not sure what else is left really. It does seem like in the Producer’s Cut Donald Pleasence has a much better presence. 

At least this version doesn’t obliterate a much beloved character in Jamie Lloyd, even if her send off is a silencer gun’s bullet while she dozes in a coma thanks in part to the Man in Black with the Steel-Toed Boots. There are cheesy scenes regarding Loomis being desired to join the Thorn cult to “restore balance” and a symbol *passing* from the Man in Black (his reveal is a betrayal to Loomis) to Loomis forcing him to *control Michael*. 

Again, if you like all this, the runes and Samhain, and Michael actually doing what he does at the obedience of others then I guess this version will be up your alley. I just didn’t care for it. I do like how in either version, enough of what makes the Halloween season so effective, the seasonal change and the décor of the holiday all over the town is there. There’s some emphasis on the Strodes occupying Michael’s house and how it is important to him. A lot of the film is at that house, with particular interest exposing how fractured it is. 

Marianne Hagan is just a single mother trying to get a college degree and struggles to cope with a nasty father (Bradford English) and an emotionally battered mother (Kim Darby) in a household ripe with tension and anxiety. English even calls his own grandson a bastard, hits Hagan, and has a knife put to his belly by Hagan’s boy. Once again a weird kid is cast in the *child always in danger* role. He hears the voice calling him to act on violent impulses…the voice from the same man in charge of Michael’s trail of blood. Included in this version is Jamie as a child (actually portrayed by Harris, who wisely avoided a nothing Jamie Lloyd part diminished by a script with little for her to do but pass off Michael’s child (ewww) and die when her *work is done*.) and Pleasence with a face repaired for the most part by plastic surgery, at home retired, asked to return to Smith Grove Sanitarium by the current administrator, Mitch Ryan. Why poor Loomis just can’t rest, bless it, and be at peace…well that just wasn’t in the cards now, was it? At least the movie doesn’t end with Loomis crying out and us having to deal with him suffering some horrible fate at the hands of Michael. But Tommy (this time as a very young Paul Rudd who does odd well, I must say) laying out wooden carvings of runes and smearing blood on a floor which stops Michael in his tracks kind of leaves me a bit amiss. 

Hagan, to me, was an outside-the-box casting choice. She is much older (not ugly by any means but not the typical casting choice of early twenties you normally see), with a kid, and has this haggard exposition written all over her that says her life hasn't been a piece of cake. Her brother is prettyboy dolt with a hot girlfriend who uses the re-emergence of Halloween in Haddonfield as a reason to vocally dismiss Myers and tell the town to move on. A radio show with this douchebag prick who spends his time mocking his listeners, sent to Haddonfield to cover the return of the holiday to the town cursed by Myers' reign of terror's memory on assignment is a minor subplot. The host obviously enters the wrong van (Myers' Smith's Grove Sanitarium van instead of the radio van from the station) and is knifed real good just because he's an asshole and that would be celebrated by an audience wanting him dead.

I think it was the only 90s Myers film besides Jamie Curtis’ return in about three years, but I think the gas for this franchise was exhausted. I didn’t feel much of anything, I must say, this early morning while watching it. I noticed this version removes the gruesome thresher death of Jamie and doesn’t show English’s exploding head. This version just isn’t particularly interesting to me. Maybe I’ll feel different in the future, though. Howarth’s score is quite affectionate towards Carpenter, adding a level of nostalgia to the scenes of Hagan ascending the stairs looking for her kid who got away from her. I do wish Michael was more, I don’t know, an aesthetic presence. Even in Part 4 Michael seems much more central, while the whole Druid nonsense seems to be so important in almost everything in the film. Of course, in saying that the version which came out in theaters was Michael focused, but because the initial directing and screenwriting was dedicated to Thorn, trying to eliminate all that emphasis was next to impossible. So those desiring to see the original vision obviously were vocal in getting it released in its truest form. Well, that came true. Here it is. It doesn’t totally shit on Jamie or Loomis like the theatrical version, but just the same, I can easily put it down the list as one of my least favorites of the series just above Resurrection (even Curse couldn’t be that awful).