Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (aka. Halloween 6)

This movie starts off with Jamie (who is the daughter of Laurie Strode, Michael’s sister) giving birth and having her child taken away from her.  It seems that there is a cult that has her and wants to do nefarious things with the newest member of the family.  She makes her escape, but her Uncle Mike is right behind her.  He eventually catches up, but not before she stashes the baby away.  The rest of the movie is a group of familiar characters, including Dr. Loomis and Tommy Doyle trying to protect her child and stop Michael and the cult from whatever they are doing.

And honestly I’m not quite sure what they are trying to do.  I’d say this is because Halloween 6 (which is what I’m going to call it damn it!) is a mess.  The story makes very little sense, fails to accomplish the back-story (more on this later), and is filled with unlikable characters that are mostly just there to be killed.  It is well known that this movie was being rewritten from the minute it was green light right thru till they were finished.  If that weren’t enough it was reedited after it didn’t’ do so well at test screenings.  This is not the formula for a successful movie. 

I don’t know why they decided that giving Michael Myers some back-story and explaining why he is a killing machine was necessary.  I mean not knowing why the character did what he did was what made the story so interesting.  But if you are going to do it then please make some sense.  We get to see some cult members, and find out they are called Thorn, on and off thru the movie.  But other then a brief bit where Michael inexplicably slaughters them all we never find out what they were up to.  Even the head cult guy sort of disappears (we never get to see what happens to him). 

I will give the movie some props for the gore and kills.  Most of them aren’t terribly explicit, but there is a decent body count.  We get a couple throat slashings and a nice bit with an electrical panel that was creative.  Also Michael uses a guys face to break down a set of metal bars, which is kind of cool.  So in spite of the screwed up story they did have this part of the formula down pretty well.  Hell we even get some teenage premarital activity and nudity.  So at least in this way if feels like a slasher movie. 

In the end it boggles me why they just didn’t stick to the formula.  If you want to make a Halloween movie then have Michael stalk a new batch of victims, toss a few jump scares in, and allow we the fans of the franchise to fill in his motivations.  Sure maybe the 5th installment wasn’t great, but it was a hell of a lot better then this.  And for me the final straw is how they treated the Loomis character.  Apparently at some step in the editing they cut a ton of Donald Pleasence’s scenes because they were boring.  Really?  This tells me that whomever made that decision totally missed the point of what this series was about. 

I’m going to hold onto this blu-ray simply because I feel the need to have all the installments in the Halloween franchise.  But unless you are a collector like myself I’d recommend that you pass on this one.  There is a very good reason why the later installments ignored this (as well as everything after part II). 

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2011 John Shatzer