Review #36: Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Cast/Notable Credits:
Joe Chappelle (Director): Phantoms (1998), Skull 2 (2002), Hellraiser 4 (1996)

Donald Pleasence (Dr. Loomis): Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 4, and Halloween 5

Paul Rudd (Tommy Doyle): Clueless (1995), 200 Cigarettes (1999), Anchorman (2004), 40 yr Old Virgin (2005), Night at the Museum (2006), Reno 911: Miami (2007), Knocked Up (2007), Walk Hard (2007)

Marianne Hagen (Kara Strode): Dead Calling (2006)

Mitch Ryan (Dr. Wynn): Liar Liar (1997), Judge Dredd (1995), Hot Shots Pt. Deux (1993)

Kim Darby (Debra Strode): Teen Wolf Too (1987), Better Off Dead (1985)

George Wilbur (Michael Myers): Halloween 4

Trailer:


Plot:

Three words: What the hell? Hmm…let’s see, where should I begin? Crap. Crap. And more crap. For Christ’s sake, you had six years to put this baby together! And THIS is what they came up with? A midget trying to pleasure himself with the tube of a vaccumm would have been more entertaining to watch than this pile of sh*t.

The Curse of Michael Myers starts with an opening scene like this: some cult looking figures...SDW's (Satanic Devil Worshippers!)...has a chick strapped down to a table giving birth to a child. Well it's somewhat erotic and interesting, but the film turns for the worse. By the way, the chick strapped down turns out to be Jamie Lloyd character from the past two movies...you know Mikey's niece. Here's where a series of mistakes starts off:

Mistake #1: Making the film. A little too late now.

Mistake #2: Recasting Jamie Lloyd.

Yep. It's not the lovely Danielle Harris playing the role of Jamie this time. Instead, J.C. Brandy (pictured right) takes the part. The new girl playing Jamie looks way older than what the time-line suggests.

Danielle wanted to play the part, but the studio didn’t want to cough up the $5,000 price tag she wanted to do the film. Cheap bastards, I would have paid the 5K. I'm just saying, "Help a girl out in her efforts for college." 5K will barely cover a year...or sememster depending on the type of school.

Mistake #3: Little Jamie “knocked up” giving birth?

Once again...what the hell? The film doesn't even go into any of the detail of how it came to be. It's just poor ole' Jamie strapped to a table ready to pop out a kid.

The child pops out and...remember that tattoo I was talking about in Part 5? Well the “cult” members paint that same tattoo on the baby’s chest in blood. Oh no! The baby's been marked. It's the devil's mark or something like that.

A couple of minutes later one of the chick cult members frees Jamie and gives her back the baby. She then tells her to escape and escorts her through some labryinth of basement hallways out of the place. She stops and tells Jamie to “go that way” as we hear screams of others in the background.

Mistake #4: This cult chick points the way out for Jamie, but instead of going with her, she stands around looking scared until Mikey pops up and kills her.

Really? If you're leading a daring escape from a bunch of SDW's and a lurking Michael Myers, why wouldn't you take off? Nope...too easy. The chick could have left with Jamie, but for no reason at all she stays behind for an extra minute to get diced up by Mikey. Is that what a Good Samaritan cult member does in a daring escape? Why didn’t she leave with Jamie? There was no reason to be a sacrificial lamb!

Now that Mikey has disposed of the SDW chick...wait a second. Where did Mikey come from? What's been the deal with him? We haven't seen or heard from him in 6 years and BOOM! there he is killing off SDW's.

Jamie escapes the basement dungeon with baby in tow, and she runs outside the complex and it is revealed to us that the place was the Smith’s Grove Mental Institute. OMG...the plot thickens!

Jamie hops in a truck with the baby and drives off down the road. Okay, no problem with that…but after driving a little bit, she decides to park at the bus station to catch a bus.

Mistake #5: Stopping to take a bus.

WHAT!!? You have a truck, why do you need to take a bus? Better yet, why stop? This move doesn't make sense.

Jamie enters the bus station and...no one’s there. The bus stop is literally deserted. The time is around midnight and a sign on the front counter reads “Back in 20”. Apparently the clerk took off for dinner.

Jamie overhears the radio playing over the station's speakers and decides to call into a radio show and ask for Dr. Loomis's help. Hopefully he's even listening to the broadcast.

What d'ya know...he WAS listening to the program. Apparently everyone in Haddonfield listens to this radio show as...get this...Tommy Doyle (the babysitting kid from the first movie) is also listening to the show and hears Jamie's plea for help.

Tommy Doyle...Rrr-RIGHT. Apparently he’s been a hermit, hiding in a bedroom across the street from the Myers house all these years waiting for Michael to come back. What he was waiting for, I don't know. It's not like he's had a few sequels to do anything about it. I call this LAZY writing...don’t worry it gets worse. I’ve given up on the mistake count.

Moving on…Uber Tracker Michael has tracked Jamie down to the vacant bus station while following her in a stolen Smith's Grove van. Mikey enters the station looking for Jamie and the child.

Jamie runs down stairs to the restrooms and hides. Mikey follows down and in an attempt to build up suspense for the audience, the movie pulls one of those “which bathroom stall is the person hiding in” sequence.

Answer: None. The last stall reveals that she broke a window above the stall to escape. Aw, those clever script writers!

Quick note to self: why is there a window looking down on the basement bathroom stall. Does this not cry out for some pervert to hang around the bus station to peek down into? I got you script writers!

Jamie hops back into the truck and takes off. Thus proving my exact point and question: Why’d you even stop in the first place?

Jamie's back driving down the dark and isolated road in the middle of nowhere...and Michael has already caught up to her in the van. She must really suck at driving to be caught twice now by a psycho driving a van. Mikey runs her truck off the road with his van onto a farm.

Jamie flees the vehicle leaving the baby wrapped in a blanket on the front seat and hides behind haystacks in the barn. Eventually Mikey finds her hiding and gruesomely kills her. This is how Jamie goes out? What a rip off! After the past two movies of trying to get to Jamie, Mikey finally "ofts" her with some farm equipment. BULL SH*T!

Now I really don't care about this movie...but getting back to the plot...Mikey heads back to the truck for the baby. If you haven’t figured out the relationship yet, then:

Michael Myers & Laurie Strode = Brother & Sister
Jamie is Laurie’s daughter = Michael’s niece
Jamie’s child = Michael’s great nephew?

Michael picks up the blanket containing the baby and discovers a roll of paper towels. Oh no, where did the baby go? Who cares at this point?

After all that excitement...the film moves back to Haddonfield where the Strode’s have just finished moving into the Myers house. Yes the Strode family. The brother of Laurie Strode’s father and family moving INTO the Myers house.

You got to be f*ckin' kidding me.

Wait...what I really mean is what brilliant writing! Really. Let’s recap what the movie has brought to the table already:

1. Jamie (Michael’s niece) re-casted, some how knocked up and given birth to Michael’s great nephew, and oh…dead.


2. Smith’s Grove Mental Institute (from original) is harboring cult activities.


3. Return of Tommy Doyle…who lives across the street from the Myers house now. Probably wets his bed too.


4. Yet again the return of Dr. Loomis. FYI: Donald Pleasence died during making of film.


5. Laurie Strode's uncle and family moving into the Myer's house.

Lazy writing I say. LAZY! At least we don’t have psychic powers any more. Or do we? Oh yeah, last time I check wasn’t Jamie linked to what Mikey saw? How could she not know he was in pursuit of her? Sigh! I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

The new Strode’s have three kids (Laurie’s cousins), the youngest happens to be the "target" for the cult. Apparently he’s got the “evil gene” in him, making him a hot commodity.

Speaking of the kids, I don't know about you, but if I was one of them and found out that I was moving into the MYERS house after all the murders and crap over the years...and the fact that Mikey's been missing for a while, I would be like:

"F*ck that. I ain't movin' my ass into that house!"

Meanwhile, Tommy tracks Jamie’s phone call to the radio station down to the bus station. Kind of like in the movie “The Fuguitve”, where the special agents filters out the sounds of a train through a tape recorder. Well Tommy does something to the same degree. Don’t ask me, I didn’t write the movie.

Tommy gets to the bus station and finds the phone booth where Jamie made the call to the radio station. Inside the booth, Tommy finds some blood still hanging around. He follows the blood trail down to the basement restroom and finds the baby hidden in a cleaning supply cabinet. I guess the bus station doesn’t believe in janitors. They must love having blood trails in their stations so Super Slueths can trace Jamie's steps.

Tommy decides to bring the baby to the local hospital to have it checked out. At the hospital he runs into Dr. Loomis. How convienent.

Back on the Mikey front...Mikey is pissed that someone’s living in his house. Why? If you think about it, the Strodes are kind of like his distant family. Who better to own the family pad than...family?

Typical Halloween B.S. plot filler happens as Mikey stalks, kills kids having sex in his house. Let’s skip past all that mumbo jumbo and dive into the SDW's “cult” plot.

Remember me mentioning a mysterious dude dressed in black in last film? You know, the one who blew up the cop shop to free Mikey…V for Vendetta…yeah that guy. I think we need something pleasurable to recharge the brain stems...here's a picture of Natalie Portman who also starred in V for Vendetta.

The mysterious man in black ends up being Dr. Wynn. Who the hell is Dr. Wynn? Well, Dr. Wynn is the head cheese at Smith’s Grove Mental Hospital. Smith's Grove has been the place where Mikey has spent a lot of his time (outside of killing people in Haddonfield). Mikey once escaped Smith's Grove to start his legacy.

Dr. Wynn leads a mysterious cult full of other SDW's. They all know that the tattoo that Michael wears on his arm (the tattoo introduced in Halloween 5) is actually the mark of the devil...or some bull sh*t like that.

This cult protects Mikey and they’re willing to make sacrifices on his behalf to please the “unholy one”. If you didn’t understand that…well neither did I. And I WATCHED the movie. The quick low down from my perspective is that a cult of SDW's protect Mikey at all costs. Yep. The big mystery is solved. SDW's are the masterminds that have protected Mikey in all these movies. Yeah, let's see you try and work with that Mr. Rob Zombie when you do your remake.

Eventually, Kara Strode (Laurie’s cousin), Tommy Doyle, Danny Strode (the cousin with the "evil" gene) and the baby all get captured and brought to the dungeons of Smith’s Grove. The SDW's want to sacrifice the baby or study it. At this point my head just hurts from thinking about it.

Either way...bottom line is that Mikey tracks everyone back to Smith's Grove's cult basement and slaughters the SDW's as Kara and Tommy duel Mikey to the death while protecting the two kids (the baby and the "evil cousin").

Tommy beats Mikey to a pulp with a pipe and they escape. While exiting, they bump into Dr. Loomis. Loomis goes down into the basement to find Mikey. We hear screams in the distance and the movie goes black. A “In memory of Donald Pleasence” shows up on the screen and we have...End film. Insert gun into mouth.

Villain:

Mikey looked a little bit better (costume-wise) in this movie compared to the last couple. George Wilbur dones the mask of Michael again. After a one film hiatus, he returns to the iconic role. Why there was a break in the action...I don't know.

For some reason with the whole cult thing going on in the background, I lost track of Michael being the bad guy. I know he is the bad dude for the franchise and he killed his fair share, but it just seemed like he took a back seat in this one.

Cast:

Paul Rudd played the once babysat by Laurie Strode now grown up trying to hook up with her cousin, Tommy Doyle. Who’s Paul Rudd? Just in case you don't know, he commonly has roles in the Judd Apatow comedy films.

Rudd has been spitting out roles in films like two to three a year, but as of this review he had most recently he played the character of Pete in Knocked Up. You know the fantasy baseball playing husband who had to sneak out from his wife to see Spidey 3. Here's a picture of the amazingly hot Alicia Silverstone who co-starred with Rudd in another 1995 film called "Clueless".

Donald Pleasence returns for the last time as the legendary Dr. Loomis, Michael's childhood psychiatrist. Donald unfortunately passes away during filming which resulted in his character's appearances and disappearances through out the film. Also the producers had to make a vague ending of the film with his character. I guess you do the best you can with what you have to work with.

Marianne Hagan plays the film's lead female, Kara Strode. Kara is the never-before-heard-of cousin of Laurie Strode. Hagan's character is, well...blah. She doesn't really bring anything new to the table and I never really felt an emotional bond with her as a viewer. Kara's just another character who stars in a single film and is never mentioned afterwards.

SFX/Gore:

In Halloween 6 I counted fifteen total deaths. I admit...I maybe a little off with the whole cult massacre thing in the basement. By that point in the film I didn't really care to keep track who's who anymore. The goriest death in the film: Jamie's demise in the barn. That's too bad. For one...she died. Secondly, it was like in the first fifteen minutes of the film leaving the rest to be undesired.

TNA:

What the film lacked in everything else, it tried to make up for everything in it's TNA category. Halloween 6 featured four hot chicks (Shark Factor), shower scene, sex act, a little bondage, and a set of BOOBS! Bravo!

Unfortunately, Marianne Hagan (pictured right) doesn't show off the goods but someone else does though. I needed an extra emphasis on this category and eye candy to wash away the "burn" the movie gave my eyes.

T.Gun's Take:

After watching all the Halloween movies the past couple of weeks, I was starting to like them more and more…until these last two. Oh my God, Part 5 and 6 sucked the life out of me. I grew stupider by the minute.

At least the Friday films were having fun with their umpteenth sequels and they were enjoyable to watch. But Halloween seemed to be getting progressively worse by the sequel. The acting, the script, you name it...it just got worse.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers is by far the worst of the Halloweens that features Mikey in them. Halloween 3 still takes the cake, but it didn't have Mikey in it. Halloween 6 is just an awful head scratcher that makes little sense at times. Thank H2O for the revival of the franchise.

If you want to see a movie that will make your head hurt, then I recommend checking this one out. Even for hardcore Halloween fans, this film is tough to swallow.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
- Halloween 6 opened on October 1, 1995 and made $15.1 million at the box office ($8.5 million opening weekend)
- Script went through 11 different drafts (And they picked that one…man, what were the others like?)
- Denise Richards turned down the role of Beth (Amazingly a nice career move)
- Film went through many re-shoots and re-writes
- Cast hated the final version of the film (what a coincidence, so did I)