The Lost Adventures of Michael Myers

by Nelson

When it comes to horror movies, the Halloween series has a special place in my heart. Freddy may have introduced me to the genre, but Michael Myers’ bloody trick or treating shenanigans have always appealed to me just a little bit more. It’s probably because I’m completely and utterly obsessed with the holiday of Halloween as a whole. Every year, my parents would ground me for getting bad marks in Conduct mere weeks before I was set to roam the neighborhoods in costume on a quest for free candy, and I’m pretty sure that all those October 31sts I spent sitting in my room wearing a costume and watching horror movies left me permanently fixated on All Hallows’ Eve and all the fun I missed out on.

Today, Halloween is one of the longest running and most critically acclaimed horror franchises of all time. It’s been rebooted, remade, rebooted again, and, much like Michael Myers, himself, it always manages to come back, despite how much damage it has taken over the years. Halloween even did the seemingly impossible by managing to successfully return to its original continuity in 2018 after the release of a remake and a sequel to said remake. In doing so, Halloween 2018 basically wipes the series slate clean by effectively erasing every previous entry with the sole exception of John Carpenter’s 1978 original, something the series did previously in 1998 with Halloween: H20.

Much like 1998 release, Halloween 2018 brings in Jamie Lee Curtis to reprise the character of Laurie Strode that she first played in the 1978 original. This time around, however, none of the sequels count, and Halloween II’s revelation that Laurie is actually the long lost sister of Michael Myers is entirely off the table, taking away a plot twist that the series has held to for nearly forty years and returning to John Carpenter’s original premise of Michael Myers seeking out random teens in order to relive his childhood murder of his older sister, Judith, over and over again.

Aside from having a horribly uninspired title that forces me to constantly refer to its release year to differentiate it from the first movie, I thought Halloween 2018 was easily one of the best series sequels I’d seen. But I’m not here to review Halloween 2018. People liked it. It was a big success, and now it’s getting two follow-up sequels in the upcoming Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. That’s awesome. But today, I want to take a look at all of the sequels that effectively got wiped out of continuity by this latest trilogy. After all, these were Halloween movies I grew up with, and, just because they don’t “count” anymore doesn’t mean they aren’t awesome!

Halloween II (1981): For my money, this is the most perfect horror movie sequel ever crafted. It picks up right as the first movie ends with Dr. Loomis emptying his revolver into his former patient and sending him plummeting out of a second story window. By the time the good doctor is able to look out the window, Michael is already gone, and, as Part II shows us, the nightmare is far from over! Now, sure, Halloween II had much bigger production values than the original film, and, as a result, it looks much shinier and newer, and, okay, the wig Jamie Lee Curtis is wearing looks an awful lot like a wig instead of actual hair, but, dammit, Halloween II picks up seamlessly from the first movie, and it’s awesome because of it. Getting to see the town of Haddonfield react to Michael’s homecoming is a highlight, and getting to see Dr. Loomis slowly become totally unglued as he pursues his murderous patient has kept me coming back year after year after year. Sure, the sibling twist is a plot convenience that may be a little eye rolling to some, but, honestly, I bought that twist without batting an eye, thanks largely to the fact that they filmed extra footage that substantiates it and added it to the television version of Halloween. I had no idea that the idea of Laurie being Michael’s long lost younger sister was something John Carpenter got drunk and came up with while making this movie against his will. I’m truly sorry that he was so dead set against it, because Halloween II is awesome, and I hope to continue my annual tradition of watching it back-to-back with the original on October 31^st forever and ever.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982): This one was never really taken out of continuity because it was never intended to be a part of the Myers saga to begin with. In fact, Carpenter went so far out of his way to divorce this story of cursed Halloween masks powered by Stonehenge that you can even catch some of the characters in this movie watching the original Halloween on TV. That said, Season of the Witch has evil masks, robots, annoying kids who totally get what’s coming to them, and Tom Atkins. If you’re skipping this one because someone told you “it doesn’t have Michael, and it sucks!” then shame on you.

Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988): The “it doesn’t have Michael, and it sucks” reaction was so prevalent after Halloween III that filmmakers knew they needed to make it really, really clear that Michael was coming back in this tenth-anniversary sequel. Unfortunately, by this point, Jamie Lee Curtis was well on her way to becoming an A-List celebrity and not interested in revisiting her Scream Queen roots just yet. As a result, we’re introduced to Michael’s newest long lost relative, Jamie Lloyd, the daughter of the now recently deceased Laurie Strode. We also discover that both Michael and Dr. Loomis managed to survive Halloween 2’s straight up explosion that engulfed them both in flames with fairly minimal injuries. Loomis has some scarring and walks with a cane, and Michael has been left in a ten-year coma that abruptly ends when a paramedic mentions his surviving relatives and causes him to spring back into action. Highlights from this one include Loomis catching a ride with the most awesome man of the cloth to ever exist, the whiskey guzzling, hymn singing Reverend Sayer, a guy named Wade being told to fuck off, and Michael’s pretty brilliant means of crippling the town and isolating his young niece.  

Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989): If I had to rank my favorite Halloween sequels, this one would be near the top. While I will always view Halloween II as a quality horror movie, it’s the sheer insanity of Part V that keeps me entertained time and time again. In the aftermath of The Return of Michael Myers, Michael’s niece has developed an inexplicable psychic bond with her uncle and gone mute. Dr. Loomis has completely lost his mind and seems ready to take his cane to the first person who looks at him the wrong way. Michael, himself, has morphed into a hulking giant of a man, which sort of goes hand-in-hand with the fact that his childhood home, previously a standard family dwelling, has become a full-on gothic mansion. Loomis screeching about Cookie Women and a pair of clownish cops complete with clownish sound effects may be textbook examples of series absurdity, but the sequence with Michael and Jamie in the laundry chute is one of the most intense horror chases I’ve ever witnessed, and Loomis going to town on Michael with a 2×4 is second only to the original as my favorite Halloween ending ever.

Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995): Oh boy. This one is a bit of a mess. We’ve got a cult that may or may not be controlling Michael Myers, depending on which version you watch. We’ve got Michael’s niece having a baby that may or may not have been fathered by Michael, himself. Hell, we’ve even Paul Rudd popping up to explain to us that Michael only comes out when the stars form a certain constellation on October 31^st. But somehow, some way, this movie manages to work in spite of everything going against it. Its plot is literally so stupid, so asinine, that two radically different cuts of this film exist that basically approach the revelation that a cult operating inside of Smith’s Grove hospital has been controlling Michael Myers from the outset of the series from two different angles. Still, The Curse of Michael Myers gives us Donald Pleasence’s final performance as Dr. Loomis, the most brutal and pissed off depiction of Michael ever, and, of course, Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle.

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998): This was the first one that tried to wipe the series slate clean after the sheer insanity that preceded it. Gone were Paul Rudd, the Cult of Thorn, and the idea of Michael being controlled by the stars. Jamie Lloyd and her baby were also tossed out the window, all to usher in the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, who is revealed to have changed her identity and taken on the headmistress position at a fancy California prep school. She’s also a total alcoholic, tossing back bottles at a pace that would make Nightmare on Elm Street’s Marge Thompson nod and smile in approval. Halloween H20 came hot on the heels of Scream-mania and weirdly takes a few too many cues from a movie that was essentially playing tribute to Halloween in the first place.  But, it does free up the series from the convolutedness of cults and magical runes and tattoos, which was certainly more appealing to general audiences. More appealing than that, however, was the movie’s depiction of a grizzled, world weary Laurie Strode who has finally decided to stop running and face her evil brother. H20 certainly has its issues, including a bit of plot sloppiness resulting from the fact that director Steve Miner didn’t initially intend for H20 to follow-up from Halloween II, but it brought mainstream success back to the series and effectively saved it the direct-to-video fate suffered by franchises like Hellraiser. I’m a little surprised that I still haven’t come around to this one, as it was the first Halloween I ever managed to see in theaters, but something about its ending just never sat right with me….

Halloween: Resurrection (2002): I’m a unique Halloween fan in the fact that I love Resurrection and always have since catching it on opening night. Again, I hated the ending of H20, and Resurrection basically tap dances all over it by revealing that the grizzled, world weary Laurie Strode finally decided to stop running and faced down….an innocent paramedic unfortunately dressed as her evil brother. Following this controversial revelation, Resurrection makes the (JLC mandated) decision of having Michael finally kill his younger sister in the opening act. Afterwards, Michael….puts down his knife and goes home. Literally. It seems like he’s content to enjoy retirement, but, unfortunately for him, Bustah Rhymes and a bunch of kids are filming an Internet reality show in his house. What unfolds is an odd story of a serial killer defending his home from trespassers. Folks absolutely hated this one. If they weren’t mad about the (fairly popular) ending of H20 being thrown out, they were upset that Laurie was killed in the first ten minutes, or, worse yet, that Bustah Rhymes successfully manages to use Karate against Michael in the final act. I can’t deny that any of that stuff happens in this movie, but, for whatever reason, I’ve always been fond of it. When it came out on DVD, I worked at a video store and a made a huge deal of taking the promotional poster home with me where it spent the next several years hanging in the various apartments I lived in during my numerous attempts at college.

Resurrection effectively ended the original Halloween series for the next sixteen years. In the interim, Rob Zombie remade the original movie during the height of remake mania. Zombie’s version proved popular enough with audiences to merit a sequel, but his take on the Myers Mythos never resonated with me. Turning Dr. Loomis into a fame obsessed blowhard and Michael into a bearded hobo guided by visions of his mother and a white horse were directorial choices I could never get behind, which made Halloween 2018, terrible title and all, all the more of a triumph for me. Sure, I’ll miss the movies that it wiped out of existence, but I’ll gladly accept a few casualties if it means I never have to think about Zombieween again.