SLASHERS – Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Published on: 25th September, 2009

SLASHERS - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers  | read this item

Related News

• VIDEO NASTIES – The Burning
• NEWS – Danny Boyle to Develop Frankenstein Play
• REVIEW – Class of 1999 II: The Substitute
• INTERVIEW – DICK MAAS talks Dutch Cinema

It had been seven years since Michael Myers had made an appearance when the fourth Halloween 4 movie rolled into production. The original creators, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, had been eager to steer the series in a new direction and so Halloween 3, released in the fall of 1982, had jettisoned the Myers plot in favour of a tale of a demented toymaker’s plan to kill the children of America on Halloween. Yet the critical and commercial failure of the movie had forced the producers to return to the concept of an indestructible killer terrorising a small community. After attempts to convince both Carpenter and Hill to write a new story had proved unsatisfactory, they had sold their interest in the franchise to Moustapha Akkad, who had decided to back the series back to its origins, and thus Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was born.

The slasher genre had begun to run out of steam by the mid-1980’s, and so by 1988 all that remained were a few low budget efforts and the ongoing franchises. A Nightmare on Elm Street would enjoy major success with its third sequel The Dream Master, taking in over $49m at the US box office, but Friday the 13th had fared less well with its seventh entry, The New Blood, which would earn just $19m. In the years since Michael Myers had last appeared in a Halloween movie, the slasher boom had progressed to marketing, with various children’s merchandise boasting the faces of their favourite villains. Yet, with the Halloween franchise having been missing in action for several years, Michael Myers had remained largely unexploited and so the producers felt they would be able to make the character scary again.

Having acquired the rights to the series from Dino De Laurentiis, who had produced the previous two sequels, Akkad decided that he wanted to return to the basic formula of the first movie: Michael Myers stalks teenagers whilst Dr. Loomis tries to hunt him down. But with the impending writer’s strike that was about to take effect, the producers were forced to hire a writer to develop a script as soon as possible. Alan B. McElroy, who had previously enrolled on the Columbia Pictures Writing Program, was forced to write the story and screenplay in just eleven days. There were a few obstacles that the producers would be forced to overcome before they could decide exactly what the story should be. Jamie Lee Curtis, who had been crowned as the ’scream queen’ due to her portrayal of the virginal heroine Laurie Strode in the first two movies, had since become a major Hollywood star, following her roles in such blockbusters as Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda, and so she expressed no desire to return to the horror genre.

This would force McElroy to develop a new storyline and protagonist to take the place of Curtis, whom the fan base had adored. Eventually, he decided to kill Laurie off by revealing that she had died in a car accident and that her daughter, Jamie (an homage to the actress), had been adopted by a new family. One actor that they were able to convince, however, was screen legend Donald Pleasence, who had portrayed Dr. Loomis in the original movie and its sequel. Set ten years after the events of Halloween (the second film continued on immediately afterwards), Michael Myers has remained comatose after almost being burnt alive but is now being transferred to a new hospital. Learning that his bloodline continues with Jamie, his niece, Michael escapes and once again makes his way home to Haddonfield, indiscriminately killing along the way.

With Akkad insisting on the movie being closer in tone to Carpenter’s original, he began searching for a suitable director and eventually discovered Dwight H. Little, whose previous film, Bloodstone, shared many similarities with Akkad’s own body of work. Little was already a fan of the early movies and was enthusiastic at the chance of bringing back both Michael and Loomis. Whilst Halloween 2 had been notably more gruesome than its predecessor, with Carpenter re-shooting sequences to cater for the fans of the more violent slashers like Friday the 13th, Little intended on remaining closer in style to the original, with the deaths more suggestive and less graphic. Incidentally, another Carpenter film that Halloween 4 would share similarities with would be Assault on Precinct 13, with a group of survivors barricading themselves inside a building as an invading force attempts to destroy them (Carpenter had also used this device for The Fog, The Thing and Prince of Darkness, also produced before Halloween 4).

With Curtis out of the picture, the viewer’s sympathies were to lie with Jamie, and so Akkad and Little would require a competent and likeable young actress. Danielle Harris was ten-years old and had previously appeared in the daytime soap One Life to Live. For the role of Jamie, another young hopeful who would provide competition for Harris was Melissa Joan Hart, who would later find success with the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Her on-screen stepsister, Rachel Carruthers, would be portrayed by Ellie Cornell, who had narrowly missed out for the lead of The Dream Master. Stuntman George P. Wilbur was cast as Michael, with the role requiring a variety of different stunts, including a complex car chase that would conclude the movie.

Shooting began on April 11 1988 in Salt Lake City, Utah, with the low budget making it impossible for the production to be based in California as with the previous films. Much like with the original, the crew were forced to set their movie in the fall, despite it actually being shot in spring. Thus, artificial leaves were imported to cover the grounds, whilst they would use big squash as pumpkins by painting them orange. Harris would turn eleven during the shoot and, along with Cornell, was required to be present on set for all but four of the forty-two day shoot. A sequence shot on a rooftop (a four-foot set designed by the art department) would result in Cornell receiving minor injuries when a nail cut into her torso, whilst gaffer Garlan Wilde cut his wrist after falling whilst setting up lights. Thankfully, neither were seriously injured and were able to complete the shoot.

The production would begin to take its toll due to the night shoots, with both cast and crew exhausted from the unsociable schedule. One instance when this would cause a problem was when Pleasence had decided to wear a hat in between takes due to the unbearable cold, and when watching the footage afterwards the filmmakers realised that in certain shots the actor was still wearing his hat, forcing them to have to re-shoot the entire night. The film would cause minor controversy, however, when neighbours saw Harris being chased by a man in a mask and the police were immediately called to the scene. At Akkad’s insistence, special effects wizard John Carl Buechler and his company Mechanical and Make-up Imageries were brought in to add some additional gore effects when the producer feared that the movie was too uneventful and could disappoint the fans.

For the aforementioned chase sequence, this was achieved by Wilbur throwing professional stuntmen off the back of a pickup truck, whilst large plywood planks were laid out under the vehicle and rocked side-to-side as Cornell (who would be replaced by stuntwoman Debbie Evans for the actual driving) pretended to drive, creating the illusion that the vehicle was in motion. The crew of stuntmen on hand to assist Wilbur included Tom Morga (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Fred Lerner (Tron, Die Hard), Carl Ciarfalio (Police Academy 3: Back in Training) and Laura Dash (The Goonies, Poltergeist II: The Other Side), who stood in for Harris. Despite his impressive stuntwork and body language, Wilbur would be replaced for the next sequel by Don Shanks, although he would return to the role several years later for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was released on October 21 1988 and made an impressive $5m during its opening weekend. Whilst it understandably failed to generate the same kind of praise as Carpenter’s film had a decade earlier, the reviews were generally positive, despite the movie adding little originality to the slasher formula. By the end of its US theatrical run, Halloween would only gross $17,768,757, even falling shorter than Friday the 13th Part VII, although with no major studio backing this was still considered a success. The film had managed to rejuvenate the franchise and it came as no surprise when, exactly one year later, a new sequel would emerge. Released on October 13 1989, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers would be an incoherent mess that would fail to receive the same positive feedback that its predecessor had achieved.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Readers Comments