Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers (Producer's Cut)

(1995)
Director: Joe Chappelle
Writer: Daniel Farrands

In this sixth installment of the Halloween franchise, the now adult Tommy Doyle from the first film (played in this film by a young Paul Rudd) is still attempting to find a motive for Michael Myers' killing sprees. After finding the baby of Jamie Lloyd at a bus station, he eventually pieces together that Michael Myers is actually under the influence of the ancient druidic rune of Thorn. The cult of Thorn believes that in order to prevent sickness and famine, one vessel (Michael Myers) is chosen to sacrifice their next of kin on the night of Samhain. As Jamie's child would be Michael's last sacrifice, the curse of Thorn would then have to find a new vessel and the most likely candidate seems to be Danny, the youngest of the Strode family who also hears the same "voices" that Michael did when he was a child. Along with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance in his last film role) and Danny's mother Kara, Tommy attempts to stop the Thorn cult from more senseless killing.

Having already seen Halloween 6 (though admittedly it was a long time ago), I decided to watch the Producer's Cut of the film instead as it's supposed to be the better version. I can't really say for sure whether or not that's true, I was just as confused after watching this version as I was the first time I saw the movie. Halloween 6 is definitely ambitious and tries really hard to tie all of the movies together into a cohesive narrative, but in explaining the origin of Michael's immortality and superhuman strength it sort of loses some of it's punch. Making Michael Myers into the victim of a nefarious cult kind of forces him to lose his "boogeyman" image and become another mentally damaged killer. Albeit one with supernatural powers. However, I didn't completely hate this movie. It's not good by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it's somewhat interesting. I can't really fault the makers of the film for trying to make sense of a series that had already kind of gone off the rails. Their efforts really are admirable, but in the end Halloween 6 just ends up as a confusing and jumbled mess. Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers gets 2 1/2 out of 6 beers.