Why Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Is the Underrated Horror Gem Even Scorpio Fans Can’t Resist After All These Years
Added on October 21, 2025 inEntertainment News Cards, Movie News Cards
Popular
Numerology Meets Netflix: Get Your Daily Dose of Cosmic Cinema Suggestions Powered By Our AI Astrologer. Find The Show Or Movie You Were Meant To See!
October’s chill is in the air and with it comes the perfect storm to revisit a slasher saga that’s as twisty as Mercury in retrograde: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Now, if the stars have taught me anything, it’s that timing is everything—and this entry in the long-running Halloween series couldn’t have been more “90s” if it tried, complete with cult conspiracies and enough quick cuts to make a Virgo’s OCD twitch. Michael Myers, the OG masked menace, has always marched to the beat of his own eerie drum—sometimes a relentless, haunting riddle, other times a bewildering mess of plots and producers’ whims. Thirty years on, we’re still scratching our heads over this film’s two wildly different cuts and the question begs: Did the Curse of Michael Myers really fall victim to the decade, or is there more beneath this ghostly veneer? Brace yourself for a journey through the thorny twists and turns of America’s most enduring nightmare—after all, even the cosmos love a good horror story. LEARN MORE
It’s October, which is not only prime spooky season but possibly the best time to talk about one particular series of movies. While not as consistent as Jason Vorhees in the 80s or as frightening as Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers has carried the slasher torch the longest. Premiering before either of his buddies and being the one to have the most recent entry with Halloween Ends in 2022, Myers has always had the most interesting discussion points because writers and directors have messed with his formula the most. They tried taking him out of the film with the originally divisive Halloween III as well as making him a part time player to one Corey Cunningham in his latest outing. The most interesting arc though is with the Thorn trilogy from Halloween 4-6. While 4 is generally seen as a hit with series fans and 5 typically ranks near the bottom, what about 6? Heck, that movie has two distinct versions to look at. 30 years ago, we got Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and more recently, even preempting wails of give us the Snyder Cut, we got a Producer’s Cut of the movie. How different is it and does it even matter? Let’s see if this movie truly is cursed or if time was kinder to it.
The Plot
We have already made a full timeline on the trilogy as well as a deeper dive on the making of this movie so please give those a look, but the backstory is too interesting not to at least touch on. The Halloween franchise in 1990 was at a weird cross section. Halloween 4 and 5 were released in back-to-back years and while 4 was seen as a return to form, literally called The Return of Michael Myers, and did well, 5 was a mess and didn’t do well critically or commercially. The Akkad family put the series on hold as Halloween had lost its way even though they had actor Don Shanks ready to return as The Shape as well as Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasence ready to go. A mega fan of the series named Daniel Farrands had written a script for a proposed part 6 and got it in front of one of the producers of part 5. That set up a meeting with the Akkads where he came prepared with what can only be described as the Halloween bible where he had all the timelines and characters and families sorted, even working in stuff from the novelizations of the films written by Dennis Etchison.
1990 came and went but the search was still on. Italian director Michele Soavi of The Church, The Sect, and Stage Fright who had also worked under Italian genre luminaries like Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento was being heavily courted by producers for the next film. He refused the offer and then the series got caught up in legal battles in 92. At the same time as that legal battle, studios were trying to buy the rights to the franchise with New Line pushing hard with John Carpenter himself in tow. Carpenter’s plan would be to put Myers on a space station which would leave only Leatherface and Freddy without a space adventure. The Weinsteins and Miramax/Dimension eventually won out, then went through a handful of suggestions including Quentin Tarantino, Gary Fleder, Scott Spiegel, and Fred Walton to either write or direct before finally landing on Joe Chappelle to direct and a reworking of Farrand’s original script as the shooting script as they had two weeks to go before production began and no movement.
Donald Pleasence came back as Dr. Loomis, but Danielle Harris would not be coming back as Jamie after a dispute with her and the studio over pay. Original Tommy Doyle actor was sought out but could not be found at the time so Paul Rudd would step into the role in his first movie. Instead of part 5‘s Don Shanks, part 4‘s George P. Wilbur was brought back to play Michael Myers. Howard Stern, Christopher Lee, and Denise Richards were all up for parts, but they ended up going to Leo Geter, Mitchell Ryan, and Mariah O’Brien. Shooting began on Halloween night in 1994 for an eventual release on September 29, 1995. The movie made 15 million on its 5-million-dollar budget and did not score well with critics or audiences.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers follows the characters and events of Halloween 5 with Jamie Lloyd, now 15 and pregnant, and Michael Myers in some facility run by the Thorn cult and the man in black. Jamie gives birth but escapes with Michael in pursuit. He catches up to Jamie and kills her but the baby was hidden. Dr. Loomis, who is visited by his old colleague Dr. Wynn, hears Jamie call for help on a radio station at the same time that Tommy Doyle, now obsessed with Myers, does and Doyle finds Jamie’s baby at a bus station. Relatives of Laurie Strode now reside in the Myers house, which really makes zero sense, and they are killed off as Kara, one of the Strodes’ adult children, and her son Danny, who hears voices telling him to kill, are wrapped up in a plot by the Thorn cult and need to escape Myers. The head of Tommy Doyle’s boarding house is in on the cult and Dr. Wynn is revealed to be the man in black. The cult takes Kara, Tommy, and Jamie’s baby, named Steven, to Smith’s Grove hospital where Tommy and Loomis go to attempt to save them. Michael kills the cult and chases the survivors into a room full of failed Michael clones where he is injected with something corrosive and beaten with a pipe. Tommy and the others leave while Loomis goes back inside to finish some business as he says. The mask is on the floor and Loomis screams, but we don’t see their fates… or…
The Producer’s Cut follows the basic outline with some big differences, mostly in the ending. This cut isn’t quite as graphic especially with the death of John Strode and Jamie doesn’t die at the beginning either. She is instead alive but comatose until she is shot in the head by Dr. Wynn/the man in black. The ending changes drastically too as instead of Michael killing the cult, Tommy comes in and kidnaps Dr. Wynn before the ceremony can take place. He then traps Michael using runes and helps everyone escape. When Loomis goes back in, he finds Wynn dying, wearing Michael’s gear, and the curse of leadership is now passed to Loomis, who screams the scream we hear in the theatrical cut. In the most outrageous take, we see Michael walking into the night as the man in black.
Signs of the Time
This movie is violently 90s and not just for the violence either. There is an incredibly timely Beavis and Butthead reference that the screenwriter was probably very proud of and the style of cinematography and filming in general is very of the era. The amount of flash cuts and quick MTV style editing stands out particularly in the Producer’s Cut but is still there in the theatrical release. It’s also another entry in the long line of stars appearing in horror movies as their first role. Paul Rudd, who would also appear in Clueless the same year, joins the lineage of Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Jennifer Aniston, and Tom Hanks, among others, whose big break was a horror movie. The shock jock radio show is a lost art and considering the role was originally pitched to Howard Stern at the near peak of his popularity, that role makes too much sense for 1995. While radio was still something a lot of people listened to in the time before infinite podcasts, the early internet is still very fun to look at in a nostalgic way. Paul Rudd weaves his way through in a scene that falls between Hackers and something that knows even less about what it’s talking about.
While most of those factors fall under real world situations, there are a couple more thematic or movie related choices and they tie together nicely. The first one is an obsession with cult stuff that really started in the 80s with the Satanic panic phase but became a catch all in the 90s particularly with stuff like the multitude of Children of the Corn sequels or one offs like Lord of Illusions. We were also putting our horror villains in weirder scenarios, particularly in space with Leprechaun, Hellraiser, and soon to be Jason all heading into the great unknown, even if the hockey mask hero had to go to Hell first. This movie takes everything that made Michael so scary and makes him a simple tool of a cult. While not on the same level as the others, though as we mentioned Carpenter intended to take him to space, it still takes the character out of everything they are used to. What part 5 started with psychic connections, part 6 elevated into something even further off the beaten path.
What holds up?
This one is a little trickier than I’d like. The Halloween series is not meant to be binge watched, its supposed to have favorites and watch them when the mood strikes. I’m sure this is someone’s favorite in the series either as the theatrical cut or the Producer’s Cut but for me it’s hard to get through either way. Some of the stuff that holds up are the kills, particularly the head explosion in the theatrical cut, and as silly as it is I do like the injection and beat down at the end of the theatrical cut too. The music, at least the Halloween theme, which has a great electric guitar portion still elicits that original Halloween feeling. The theme is one of those things that while it changes from movie to movie tends to still hold up ok. The movie is also undeniably well shot regardless of what version you decide to throw on, with interesting angles and scene selections and the stalking scene where the Strode mom is stalked through the house gives us a glimpse of what the character used to be. From the acting side I need to give a nice, big, grateful shout out to Donald Pleasence. This was his last role before he passed and dumb story aside, he really gave it his all. I’ve seen him in everything from schlock to prestige like The Great Escape and he really was reliable for entertainment in everything he appeared in. Thanks, Donald.
What Doesn’t Hold Up?
Apologies to any Curse fans out there but not a whole heck of a lot else. The story is convoluted and a mess regardless of what version you watch, which is a shame since the guy who wrote it is such a mega fan and incorporated so much lore into it. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t hold water. The Producer’s Cut is my preferred cut but even that has one of the worst endings ever with Michael FREAKING Myers walking off in the man in black’s uniform. The acting apart from Loomis and maybe Mitchell Ryan is also spotty at best and atrocious at its worst. This includes both men that play Myers, as a different actor was brought in for reshoots as the producers didn’t care for how the original actor, you know, the guy from part 4, did as the shape. Really just the sum of its parts don’t hold up separately or together and the characters are maybe the worst and least easy to root for in the entire series.
Verdict
Whether it’s the Producer’s Cut or the theatrical cut that you are going for here, this ain’t it. There is a reason that Scream Factory, as loving of a job as they did with the 4K of this set, released part 6, H20, and Resurrection as a pack, as even they were unsure that our beloved horror community would buy this or those other two on their own. The movie wasn’t very good upon its release and time hasn’t been kind to it either 30 years later. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is one of the most skippable movies in the whole series. If you need me, I’ll be in my den screaming like Loomis when he finds out the cult is his.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.
This will close in 0 seconds
This will close in 0 seconds
){kind=link}