Halloween 6 History: Moustapha Akkad and Trancas International planned to carry on their recently instated year-after-year marathon of new Halloween sequels with a sixth entry in 1990. However, mysterious legal battles and problems prevented them from doing so. As a result, Halloween fans waited for five long years once again (as they had before from 1983 to 1988), but this time were not as satisfied with what was released.In 1994 the rights to the release and distribution of continued "Halloween" sequels were aquired by Dimension Films, the science fiction/horror division of Miramax Films, which had recently been acquired by the Buena Vista corporation, otherwise known as Disney.The production company at this point changed to Nightfall Productions, but Moustapha Akkad returned as executive producer, bringing along his son Malek as associate producer. After looking at several different scripts throughout the period of 1989 to 1994, they decided upon Daniel Farrands as the writer. Farrands' original first draft had been in the tradition of an "edge-of-your-seat", explosive thriller, that tied together the loose plot ends of Part 5 in the process. But the screenplay would have required a much bigger budget than Dimension Films (known for low budgets) had in mind, so they opted instead for a more barebones script that explained the mysteries of the last installment, while incoporating some new characters and bringing back characters from the originals (Tommy Doyle and Dr. Loomis). Paul Freeman, the producer of the successful fourth installment, returned to produce the sixth one. But the trouble began when Joe Chappelle was hired as the director. He and the Dimension executives ended up assembling a shooting script from the cheapest to produce elements of all the original drafts Daniel Farrands had written, making the story have less impact. Actor Paul Rudd was hired, in his first film role, to play Tommy Doyle. (Farrands had originally suggested bringing back Brian Andrews, the young actor from the original, but his idea was apparently scoffed at.) And of course, Donald Pleasence was brought back to turn in another great performance as the obsessed psychiatryst Dr. Loomis. And so they began filming in mid 1994, finishing up in early 1995. Along the way, Chappelle added some of his own cheap lines and the ending filmed did not have as much of an impact as the original script had. Tragedy struck, however, shortly after filming was completed when veteran actor Donald Pleasence died on February 2, 1995. Pleasence had previously said in an Entertainment Tonight interview that he was impressed with the latest Halloween installment, calling it the scariest and the best since the first. Little did he know what the eventual fate of the film would be. In the months following Pleasence's death, work was completed on a rough cut of
HALLOWEEN 6: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. The original version of the film stuck with the "Thorn" mystery all the way through, and in the end, Michael Myers was temporarily stopped by a combination of good runes from Celtic legend. Eventually, Myers switched costumes with Dr. Wynn and became The Stranger, and Loomis found that the Thorn symbol was branded on his own wrist, and that he was the new one that had to track Michael down and control him. The film, although not as compelling as it could have been, seemed good enough. But it wasn't right to director Joe Chappelle. He felt that the last 25 minutes of the film should be entirely different, possibly because a sequel based on the original ending would have required Pleasence to reprise Loomis. Chappelle called in the surviving cast members for days of tedious reshoots that completely restructured the last act of Halloween 6. This angered many cast members to the point where they decided they would never work on a Halloween film again, which is why further sequels have not had the same characters. The reshoots composed a completely different, and much more confusing, ACT III. All the while Chappelle assured the cast and original writer Daniel Farrands that it would all make sense once it was put together, but of course nothing in the last act really makes sense to anyone except the director himself. But Chappelle wasn't done with muddling Halloween 6. He decided that the music score needed to be more edgy and hip, and Alan Howarth's brooding synthesized score, in the tradition of Carpenter's original themes, was reorchestrated to include assaulting guitar and insane percussion to accompany strange shock cuts and inane montages that would pepper the entire film. The original version was almost completely reassembled, and it became known as the "Producer's Cut", as Chappelle assembled his strange Director's Cut, which eventually became the Theatrical Cut. But even though Chappelle altered Halloween 6 to the point of utter confusion and insanity, the writing of the film was still credited solely to Daniel Farrands. Thus, he has been incorrectly blamed for the film not making sense, when his original screenplay made much more sense than the eventual watered-down theatrical cut.During the summer of 1995, trailers for Halloween 6 began appearing in theaters. These trailers were assembled from the original "Producer's Cut", and featured a release date of October 13th. However, during the course of that summer, Chappelle had changed the film entirely around, and the release date was bumped up to September 29th, 1995. And so the film was released, completely restructured from its original version to include sounds and visions more akin to the Gen-X audience it was hoping to attract. Of course, the film received scathing reviews and fared miserably at the box office. It appeared to be the end of the Halloween series, and some diehard fans hoped it was so that future filmmakers didn't further ruin what was once a good series of films. |
