Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers - The Producer's Cut

aka Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

The Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was an early version of the film that bombed badly with test audiences. It was scrapped in favor of reshoots. Even though the Producer's Cut does a much better job of explaining the movie's plot than the theatrical version, it doesn't make for a better version of the movie, just a more coherent one. Most of the scenes involving the Thorn cult and its mythology were changed or removed altogether for the theatrical cut. In the Producer's Cut, Jamie survives her encounter with Michael after escaping from Smith's Grove. We get to see an extended flashback of her being impregnated, where we also learn that Michael is the baby's father. So, incest. After that, Jamie gets murdered in the hospital by the Thorn cult's shadowy leader. The other main difference between the two versions comes in the third act. In the Producer's Cut, after jumping out of a window in the Myer's house, Kara wakes up tied to a sacrificial alter. Tommy is able to rescue Kara and Danny from the cult. During their escape, Tommy uses runes to trap Michael. Loomis goes back into the sanitarium to "take care of business" only to find that Michael has escaped. In the theatrical cut, Kara wakes up in a locked room. Tommy breaks her out, they find Danny and the baby, Michael kills most of the Thorn cult members, Tommy and Michael get into a fight, Tommy beats the shit out of Michael with a pipe and the good guys escape. When Loomis goes back into the sanitarium, he finds only Michael's mask. We hear Loomis's screams and we have to assume that Michael has killed him. I say we have to assume because, of course, Donald Pleasance died before the reshoots took place and therefore not much of his performance could be changed. There are more scenes with Pleasance in the Producer's Cut, with many of them centered around Jamie's character clinging to life after Michael's attack. A lot of the other performances were reshot, mostly for the better, and the film's score is almost completely different. The score in the Producer's Cut is better but is still pretty weak. It's essentially a watered-down version of John Carpenter's original score. Ultimately, most of the differences between the two versions are superficial and inconsequential. The Producer's Cut is, by no means, a lost classic or some horror Holy Grail.

Rating: 60%

(Image from Wikipedia)