Taking Shape

by Dustin McNeill

  The original Halloween shot both day and night exteriors in beautiful Pasadena. Most of the action in Halloween II was relegated to a darkened hospital. Did that setting make your job as a visual storyteller more difficult?

  It certainly did. The original Halloween gave us so much variety in terms of the visual style. With Halloween II, we were trapped in the hospital for so much of the film. It’s not like you’re in some fabulous Victorian house or castle. The hospital in Halloween II was very bleak. The challenge was in how to make those drab hallways feel interesting and scary. If you go look at an actual hospital, everything is well lit by fluorescent light for perfectly good reason. As a result, those places aren’t particularly scary or evocative for a horror film. We had to come up with excuses to light the hospital differently. I had the electricians and prop people build these artificial emergency lights to put throughout the halls. These were actually our own movie lights, which allowed us better control over the amount of light and shadows in a given shot. So yes, the hospital location was a challenge on the second film.

  Halloween II, unlike the original, was chock full of deleted scenes, some of which emerged in the eventual broadcast cut. Did it feel at all like you were overshooting at the time?

  I have a hard time remembering the deleted scenes. Those moments were deleted not only from the film but from my brain as well. I don’t know that we were necessarily overshooting. I will say that it’s so much easier to take something out of a film during editing than to wish you had gotten it while you were shooting. It’s better to have a scene that overexplains something that you can remove later on than to need it and not have it. Halloween II had some of that with additional angles and scenes. I’ve always encouraged this, however, especially when you’re trying to get the pacing right.

  Did you suspect there would be yet another sequel after Halloween II?

  Still no. When I heard they were making a third one, my first reaction was, ‘Who’s gonna believe that Michael Myers is still alive after that fire?’ Then they told me they were going to use the traditions of the holiday itself as the basis for another story. I liked the idea of setting the film around the culture of Halloween. That intrigued me. I’m glad that people still come up to me and say how much they love Halloween III and how refreshing it is. I really do appreciate that.

  In a sense, I get that Halloween III doesn’t really belong in the series. Its only connection to the previous two films are that it has Halloween in the title. But I had so much fun working on it. Being that we were dealing with new characters and a new mythology, I was able to approach it differently than I had the other two films. But it was disappointing when it came out and everyone went, ‘Wait, where’s Michael Myers?’ That’s when we realized we probably shouldn’t have called it Halloween III but instead just Season of the Witch. Maybe we could’ve still included the Halloween name but called it something like Tales of Halloween. It might also have worked better as the second film rather than the third.

  Did you see any of the later sequels as they were released?

  I haven’t seen many of them, which is sort of deliberate. I did see Rob Zomie’s so-called remake and I was disappointed that he went to so much trouble to create a backstory for Michael Myers as an abused child. That really takes away from what we had originally intended Halloween to be – a very stylized story about relentless evil without a personality. It was almost as if we were supposed to feel sympathy towards this poor kid who had no choice but to become a monster due to his upbringing. Then again, once you start making so many sequels to any one film, you’re sort of grasping at straws for ways to further the mythology or story. It eventually becomes too much of a strain to keep saying that Michael Myers isn’t really dead yet again. I do think some of the sequels are effective in their own ways, though I haven’t seen the latest one.

  Would you have considered returning to work on another Halloween even if it lacked the involvement of John Carpenter and Debra Hill?

  I might’ve tried it. It would have depended on who the director was and the quality of the script. I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to do the Rob Zombie one, although it would’ve been a visual challenge. I was never dismayed to not be called back for the later movies. Sequels are very difficult to do. How are you supposed to take a movie like the original Halloween and make a follow-up that’s somehow better than that? Can you? Take Romancing the Stone, which I worked on. That movie was an action-romance adventure in an unknown world and a surprise success. When I head they were doing a sequel called Jewel of the Nile, I thought, ‘How can you possibly create a follow-up that has that same freshness to it?’ So I was not at all disappointed to not be called back for that one.

  I heard that Halloween 2018 cinematographer Michael Simmonds reached out to you prior to shooting the new film. Is that true?

  Yes, we spoke. He had specific questions about lighting certain scenes in the original. Those can be a bit nebulous and frustrating to answer. I’m not sure I had much to offer him. They’re valid questions, but hard to answer without actually being there while I’m shooting. I’m glad if anyone tries to learn from my work, but it’s more important for a filmmaker to bring their own sensibilities to a project, even a sequel. I told him to be sure to apply his own style to the project. I applaud guys who can effectively do their own version of something that’s already been done.

  You mentioned that Tommy Lee Wallace was an obvious pick to direct Halloween II, but have you ever considered moving into the director’s chair yourself?

  I did direct Honey We Shrunk Ourselves for Disney. They came to me and said, ‘We think there’s a market for home video movies. Would you be interested in directing this?’ And I told them, ‘Sure, but shouldn’t we shoot this like a regular feature and not on this low-grade video format?’ And their response was, ‘No, this is going direct-to-video. That would be a waste of time and money.’ Then when it was over and the movie was complete, they told me, ‘Wow. This should’ve been a theatrical release.’ But by then, it was too late because we’d already shot the whole thing in the wrong format for theatrical. I still appreciated the opportunity because I’d always wanted to direct. I’ve got two or three other scripts that I’d love to do.

  FILM: HALLOWEEN III

  For John Carpenter and Debra Hill, it was nothing short of a potential legal spar that prompted their return for Halloween II. As both have stated, they had no real passion for the project. Whether this lack of interest could be seen on screen or not is another story. Despite its shortcomings, Halloween II performed rather well at the box office. For the filmmakers, it had been difficult to remain faithful to the original Halloween in a marketplace that favored blood and guts over suspense. Given this, you can imagine their response to a potential Halloween III was less than enthusiastic.

  Hill would later inform The Baltimore Sun that there were “no plans to make another Halloween.” Dino De Laurentiis, however, felt otherwise. Bolstered by Halloween II’s success, the producer was quick to exercise his contractual option to produce a third installment. Carpenter and Hill would return on the condition that the new film stand alone and not continue the Michael Myers storyline of the previous two entries. After all, there was simply no need to return to Haddonfield if the Shape was dead. And to Halloween’s filmmakers, he truly was.

  The prospect was alluring. The idea that Halloween could be reinvented as an anthology series focusing on the holiday itself appealed to the filmmakers. Under this pretense, the brand could be extended, meeting the monetary interests of the rights holders, while also offering the filmmakers a sense of creative satisfaction. Their bold plan going forward was to focus each new Halloween on an original storyline which, if successful, could spinoff its own sequels.

  “I take no responsibility for Halloween III,” producer Irwin Yablans decries on the film’s Blu-ray edition. “I had nothing to do with it. They just sent me a nice fat check. The decision not to use the Michael Myers character was stupid, really
ill-advised. We now know that Michael Myers is the backbone of this whole franchise. Why they decided to leave that, I do not know.”

  Carpenter’s original choice to direct Halloween III was filmmaker Joe Dante, who had just released The Howling through AVCO Embassy to great success. Dante accepted Carpenter’s offer and suggested he seek out famed British screenwriter Nigel Kneale to pen the sequel. Kneale is perhaps best remembered for having created Professor Bernard Quatermass, genius scientist and arguable precursor to the BBC’s Doctor Who. (Kneale would likely balk at the comparison, but it’s true.) As it turned out, Carpenter was already a huge fan of Kneale’s work. His fandom would later manifest itself in the script for 1987’s Prince of Darkness, which Carpenter wrote using the pseudonym “Martin Quatermass,”

  At the time, Kneale had just begun work on an ill-fated reboot of Creature from the Black Lagoon for Universal Pictures. While at Universal, he had heard praise of Carpenter and agreed to meet with him to discuss a new project. To Carpenter’s delight, Kneale accepted his invitation to pen Halloween III despite his vocal dislike of the first two films. As quoted in Andy Murray’s Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Kneale, the writer criticized Carpenter’s work, stating, “[Halloween] was pretty ordinary, rough stuff. I could do better than that.”

  This attitude would pervade meetings with both Carpenter and Dante. Despite being an unabashed fan, Carpenter would note difficulties he experienced working alongside the imbittered screenwriter. “Nigel Kneale was a brilliant writer, but by the time I met him, he was pretty irascible and mean,” Carpenter told Vulture.com. “He was a mean character. He started making fun of Jack Arnold, the director of the original Creature from the Black Lagoon. At that point, Jack Arnold had lost a leg and Nigel made fun of him for that. Terrible. Nigel thought he was above us horror filmmakers.”

  No sooner did Nigel Kneale board the project than did Joe Dante suddenly depart it. The filmmaker had received an invitation from Steven Spielberg and John Landis to direct a segment of The Twilight Zone Movie for Warner Brothers. With Twilight Zone being so much further along than Halloween III, Dante accepted the invite. Ironically, Halloween III would ultimately beat Twilight Zone to theaters by eight months, debuting before Zone had even wrapped filming. To fill the vacant director’s chair, Carpenter turned to Halloween production designer and editor Tommy Lee Wallace, who had previously turned down an offer to direct Halloween II. Wallace very much liked the idea of telling an original story with Halloween III. The sequel would mark his feature directorial debut.

  CREATIVE DISAGREEMENTS

  Personality conflicts aside, all parties involved were in agreement that a new direction was needed for Halloween III. Speaking further with author Andy Murray, Kneale expressed his initial optimism for the project. “I was quite keen on doing [Halloween III]. Particularly as they wanted to take the series away from its slasher movie origins. So, I thought up a story, we had a conference, and I went off to write the full script.” The producers allowed Kneale enormous creative freedom in writing his first draft of Halloween III. His only instruction per Debra Hill was that the film should bring witchcraft into the computer age.

  Kneale would draw heavily upon the Halloween traditions of his youth growing up on the Isle of Man, the self-governing island between Great Britain and Ireland. These celebrations were a far cry from the hyper-commercialized holiday celebrated in the United States, though he would incorporate that too. Kneale would complete his initial draft in just six weeks. His story told of an evil mask maker planning to sacrifice millions of children on Halloween night as part of an ancient tradition – a far cry from the knife-wielding maniac of the first two films.

  Carpenter and Wallace liked much of Kneale’s first draft, though they both agreed that extensive revisions were needed before the film could begin production. As it turned out, Kneale proved quite stubborn and unwilling to accept any notes on his work. This forced Carpenter to personally champion a re-write without the screenwriter’s involvement. Wallace then somewhat brazenly expressed dissatisfaction with the Carpenter draft, which he elected to re-write himself. It was this hybrid Kneale/Carpenter/Wallace screenplay that would ultimately reach the big screen. The project’s original scribe was most unhappy over changes made to his script, in particular the addition of graphic violence. In all fairness to him, nothing in his original draft even approached the horror of children’s heads melting into bugs and snakes. Kneale was so displeased with these re-writes that he demanded his name be taken off the project, depriving himself of both credit and royalties. Since Carpenter’s name was never technically added to the byline, Wallace then became the film’s only credited screenwriter, which he fully acknowledges as being incredibly misleading.

  In the years since, Kneale has steadfastly defended his decision to disown the project. Speaking to Starburst Magazine: “I said to them, ‘Don’t you want some kind of suspense at the beginning? A zero point from which to build?’ And they said, ‘No, you must start with tearing heads off. We’ve got to keep faith with the kids.’ What they actually mean is how important it is to extract all the money from the campus kids within the span of two weeks. Any story that attempts to explain something or set up characters isn’t going to interest them. […] So I took my name off it, even though they tried to persuade me otherwise. Suddenly you had a story of someone stealing a five-ton stone from Stonehenge, grinding it up, and producing microchips.”

  Despite his candidly negative opinion of the film itself, Kneale had nothing but praise for Wallace as a filmmaker. “I think he will probably be a great director,” he continued. “He’s a very intelligent man with a strong feeling for character and storyline, some of which will appear in Halloween III.” Though never officially discussed, Kneale admitted to having an idea for Halloween IV that would’ve involved ghosts. He further told Starburst that he dismissed the concept after deeming it too similar to 1982’s Poltergeist.

  WITCHCRAFT ENTERS THE COMPUTER AGE

  Halloween III’s story - per its twice re-written script – begins a week before Halloween with a deranged man named Harry Grimbridge being chased by mysterious henchmen in suits. Clutching a rubber mask, he seeks help at a gas station and is hospitalized under the care of Dr. Dan Challis. That night, one of the henchmen kills Grimbridge in his hospital bed. Challis chases him out into the parking lot only to watch the assassin self-immolate. The following day, he meets Grimbridge’s daughter, Ellie, who is in town seeking answers about her father’s murder. Together they trace his final days to Santa Mira. The small town is home to Silver Shamrock Novelties, maker of the mask Grimbridge died clutching.

  Using fake names and posing as a couple, Challis and Ellie check in at the same Santa Mira motel where Grimbridge stayed before his death. The town is strangely quaint, under heavy surveillance, and has a 6:00pm curfew. They learn that wealthy Irishman Conal Cochran founded Silver Shamrock shortly after World War II and that it has since become the world’s largest mask manufacturer. Challis meets shop owners Marge Guttman and Buddy Kupfer along with his wife Marge and son little Buddy. That night, Guttman is badly injured by a laser blast while investigating a microchip hidden inside a Silver Shamrock mask. Challis goes to investigate her accident, but is blocked by Cochran, who assures him that she will be adequately cared for at the factory. The next day, Challis and Ellie visit Silver Shamrock posing as buyers. They manage to join the Kupfer family’s tour of the facility where Ellie recognizes her father’s car being kept in a warehouse. Later that night, Ellie goes missing from the motel. Assuming the worst, Challis breaks into the factory in search of her. He’s quickly apprehended by the company’s silent henchmen, who turn out to be robots. Cochran hails his android security force as “loyal and obedient, unlike most human beings.”

  Cochran then reveals his company’s secret plan. Each Silver Shamrock mask includes a special microchip powered by a tiny piece of Stonehenge. When activated by a special commercial, the mask kills its wearer by dissolving
their head into insects and snakes. Cochran plans to murder millions of children on Halloween night through the company’s “Big Giveaway” broadcast, which will instruct them to put on the masks before activating the chips. He then reveals himself to be an immortal warlock looking to honor the ancient traditions of Samhain, specifically the sacrificing of children. Cochran forces Challis to watch a fatal demonstration of his plan on the Kupfer family, which kills them all.

  Challis escapes his confinement and destroys both Cochran and the factory by tossing boxes of volatile microchips onto the computer terminals. He rescues Ellie while fleeing the factory, who turns out to be an android clone and tries to kill him. The film ends with Challis seeking help at the same gas station from the opening. Hysterical, he phones broadcasters to stop running the “Big Giveaway” broadcast. All but one network pull the feed. The film abruptly ends with Challis screaming into the phone receiver for the final channel to stop its broadcast.

  Like it or not, the filmmakers deserve credit for going all in on this new direction, never once retreading ground previously covered. There isn’t a knife in the entire film. Take the new big bad – Conal Cochran. Charming and stately, the Irishman could not be more different than the silent slasher of the previous two movies, though he’s no less evil. In fact, Cochran’s ambitions and abilities make him far more evil than Haddonfield’s most famous resident. Michael Myers killed roughly fifteen people and a couple of dogs across the first two movies. Cochran aims to kill millions of children in Halloween III, which almost makes the Shape seem amateur by comparison. The warlock’s scheme is all the more disturbing in that he feels so thoroughly justified in his actions. As he sees it, this is the right thing to do for the good of humanity as decided by forces beyond our control. To him, whole ritualistic sacrifice is divinely ordained by nature. (“We don’t decide these things, you know. The planets do. They’re in alignment and it’s time again.”) But Cochran isn’t all business – he relishes in his grisly duty with sickening delight.