Taking Shape

by Dustin McNeill

  The final act borrows heavily from the original Kneale draft of the film. Ellie is still replaced by an android clone, though it’s programmed to believe itself a six-year-old girl and that Cochran is her father. Robot Ellie does help Challis toss several boxes of dangerous mask tags onto the factory floor, though she’s not fully aware of her actions. In her childlike mind, robot Ellie is releasing birds into the air – not destroying the entire factory. Challis initially believes this to be the real Ellie, albeit badly brainwashed by Cochran. It’s not until he’s later attacked by the imposter that he realizes he’s been tricked.

  INTERVIEW Tommy Lee Wallace

  (Tommy Lee Wallace: Production Designer/Editor - H1, Writer/Director - H3

  You were the logical choice to direct Halloween II, yet you declined. Why?

  That’s a bit of a story. As you pointed out, I was the logical inheritor of the director’s chair. It would’ve been either Debra or myself if it wasn’t going to be John. I think Debra quickly declined the opportunity, which left me. I was thrilled to say yes because I’m so proud of Halloween. We were all a little mystified about the prospect of a sequel. You have to remember that back then sequels were not commonplace at all. There were plenty of them, but they weren’t what they’ve become today. Now you’ve got sequels, prequels, remakes, and so on. It’s an entire side industry now. We had made a good movie with the original Halloween and we knew it. The scope and scale of its financial success was surprising to us, however. Our first reaction to talk of a sequel was, ‘Why would we ever do that?’ I understand how that’s a really naïve position to take, especially from today’s perspective, but we were innocent and truehearted at the time. It became evident that the sequel ship was going to sail with or without us, so John and Debra said yes to it.

  There was some conversation at the start about what kind of sequel we would be making. I think John was mostly the driving force on this part. He decided he wanted to do a five-minutes-later sequel rather than a five-years-later sequel, which is what I had been advocating for. My approach would have been similar to Halloween H20 where a traumatized and paranoid Laurie Strode was off at college and the inevitable thing eventually happens. But I lost that argument pretty quickly, so it became a five-minutes-later sequel. And so I waited for the script to arrive and, during that period, I was the official director on the project. Someone even showed me an advertisement in Variety that had my name listed as the director. Then John and Debra turned in their script and I was completely dismayed by it. I really honestly hated it. I thought it was the antithesis of what had made Halloween good.

  With Halloween, we had unknowingly kicked off the slasher movie phenomenon, which led to lots of imitators, Friday the 13th being the best example. It became an arms race of violence, guts, and gore. That made for a completely different marketplace by the time Halloween II was up and running. In John’s view, the genre had changed and he felt pressured to keep up with it, so he entered that arms race. The most vivid thing I remember about the Halloween II script was the Shape punching a hypodermic needle through someone’s eyeball. I hated that so bad. It felt like a huge sell-out to me. I will say that I’ve noticed in recent interviews that John also feels like he sold out, but he was doing what he felt he had to do. And let’s face it, Halloween II was a profitable venture for both him and Debra. I think John’s instincts were proven correct as it was a big moneymaker. If that’s all you care about, then he made the right choice. So I stepped away from the project with great trepidation because it was a marvelous opportunity.

  Were you then surprised to get the call to direct Halloween III?

  That was a surprise. I was in New York writing the prequel to The Amityville Horror for Dino De Laurentiis at the time. Debra called to explain that it was going to be a clean slate, completely separate from the first two. She asked if I would be interested in directing it. I jumped at the opportunity for several reasons, one of which was to be back in good graces with her and John, who were old friends. That was a big deal for me because often in Hollywood, if you turn someone down for a project, it’s possible they may never answer your calls ever again. That’s just how the game works, so it was reassuring that they offered me this project. As it turns out, I was maybe their second or third choice. In any event, I jumped on board.

  Did you feel any pressure making your directorial debut on such a successful franchise?

  No, I was very confident. I had been to film school and knew how to direct a movie. I had been training at the right hand of John for several pictures in a row. I understood his style and approach to filmmaking. I also felt that I could successfully imitate that approach and perhaps add a layer of my own style to it. So confidence was not a problem.

  How did the screenplay come together?

  John and Debra had decided to commission a script by Nigel Kneale, who was known for his work on the Quatermass juggernaut in England. He was working from a premise Debra had come up with, a one-sentence pitch of ‘witchcraft meets the computer age.’ That’s what got the ball rolling. He came to California and we talked several times about his script. Once he turned it in, the general consensus behind the scenes was that, yes, it had some fascinating ideas in it, but that it was also a little off in its tone. Nigel’s script was very dark and very British. I thought it was overall a brilliant script because it contained the essence of what the final film was. It told the story of an evil toymaker who’s actually a timeless warlock out to reignite the traditions of Hallow’s Eve. In doing that, he’s going to sacrifice all of the world’s children. That premise was there from the get-go.

  But Nigel’s script had problems. As soon as we started voicing our concerns, it became apparent to us that Nigel had no idea what American pop culture was up to. In John and Debra’s view, Halloween III needed that in it. Nigel then backed away from the task of working on it any further. He’d been burned on earlier occasions with re-writes and people butchering his work, so he wasn’t going to have anything to do with that on Halloween III. In the end, he took his name off the project. John, being the godfather of the project, did a re-write. He’s a very fast writer. His re-write helped, but it wasn’t everything I felt it needed to be, so I did a further re-write. John never did put his name on the script, so I wound up with the sole writing credit on a movie that contained sixty percent of Nigel’s work.

  In the years since Halloween III, Nigel Kneale never hesitated to badmouth the project, though he always had praise for you as a director. How did you get along with him?

  We got along just fine. We didn’t have that much time together, one meeting in a restaurant with his wife and then another story meeting. I’m pleased to hear he had anything nice to say about me. That’s news to me. I did know that he badmouthed the film. He was a fairly bitter guy and probably justified in feeling that way from past experiences. I think he was hypersensitive to anyone messing with his work. It should be no mystery to you or your readers that writers often get the shaft in the Hollywood system. Directors and producers push and pull a writer’s work around, even hiring other writers to re-write it. That’s a typical story in this business. It’s pretty ugly and I think Nigel experienced a lot of that.

  I will say that I did not appreciate his leaving the project and I’ve said so before. I felt it was unprofessional and that he abandoned us. We were not talking about hiring other people to redo his work. We wanted him to work with us. John and I wound up doing our re-writes for free and, honestly, those were a distraction from what we were trying to do, which was get the movie off the ground. So I didn’t appreciate that.

  Nigel Kneale’s original script contained neither robot assassins nor Stonehenge. Who came up with these ideas, you or John Carpenter?

  Honestly, I don’t remember. John and I were joined at both the hip and mind at the time. I could finish his sentences, so it could’ve happened over coffee while we were kicking ideas around. I think I probably added the dark suits, which were a pet idea of mine. This prece
ded some other movies that had evil guys in suits. That’s a great image to me because I think we should all fear corporate world domination. And having killer androids in suits is just a symbolic way of going about that. Stonehenge? I just can’t remember. Debra probably had a voice in some of that too. Stonehenge was a pretty far-fetched idea, but a fun one. Fun is what Nigel’s version didn’t have much of. It was quite cynical. It lacked a light touch and a sense of, ‘We’re making a pop culture horror movie for teenagers.’ It needed pop-up scares and all the gimmicks that go along with that sort of thing. Nigel was tone-deaf to that stuff.

  Nigel’s original script was chock full of anti-Irish sentiment, though you ultimately toned that down in the final film. Tell me about that.

  Oh man, he just dumped on them. They were the butt of his ridicule. For me, it was a British version of blatant racism. I shudder to think if he had been raised in the American South what he would’ve done with that way of thinking and attitude. But yes, we wrote most of that out. I think the biggest benefit to our re-writes was the shaping and toning of the villain Conal Cochran. That character was a success thanks in no small part to the casting of Dan O’Herlihy. I thought he was just a triumph. Conal’s monologue about Halloween was mostly Nigel, but we took the nastiness out of it. In the final film, Conal doesn’t look upon himself as a villain. He’s doing a tribal imperative, something he feels is important. He says, ‘It’s time again.’ Great villains don’t twist their mustache at the camera. They just carry out what they believe to be the right thing, which is what makes them scary.

  Who came up with the title - Season of the Witch?

  There again, it could’ve been me or Debra or John. We were so tightly joined as a collaborative group at the time, so who knows? I was certainly aware of the Donovan tune, so it could’ve been me. It’s not a very complicated move from, ‘Wait a minute, he’s a warlock’ to ‘What could we put in the title that would indicate Halloween III is going in another direction? Oh – Season of the Witch!’ I could easily imagine the conversation that might’ve gone on for that.

  What led you to pay tribute to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in your film?

  If I were pinned down about what’s my favorite horror movie of all time, it would certainly be Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. From the get go, Halloween III was going to be an unlikely entry into a franchise that has proven itself to be strictly and totally about a knife-wielding psychopath. Our Halloween III was not a knife movie. I looked at it a little deeper and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a pod movie like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ That’s when I decided to throw in every reference that I possibly could, like the name of the town being Santa Mira. We also shot in Sierra Madre, which is where a lot of the original Invasion was filmed.

  Our ending was absolutely a tribute to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. With that film, the studio was nervous about the film having a downer ending because it was originally supposed to end with that famous sequence of Kevin McCarthy outside on the highway. He jumps onto a truck and sees pods inside it before looking straight into the camera and yelling, ‘You’re next! You’re next!’ The movie should’ve ended there, but I think the studio got nervous and insisted on a bookend that lets the audience off the hook. We see Kevin McCarthy on the phone telling people about what’s going on as though everything is going ot be alright. Man, I hated that ending. I bet Don Siegel hated it too, but I don’t know for sure.

  When it came to be my turn to have an ending that did something very similar, ‘Turn it off, turn it off!’, I was pretty sure that was the right ending to our film. And to John and Debra’s credit, they treated me so well and with so much support. I think John had final cut, but he treated me as though I did, which I think really made a difference in my performance as a director. He called me after the movie was completed and the studio had seen it. He said, ‘They’re nervous about the ending. They’re asking me if we would consider changing it.’ Then John asked me point blank what I thought about that. ‘I’ll do whatever you want to do,’ he said. He left it completely in my hands. That really tells you how John feels about filmmaking. He feels that the director should be the king of a project. I thought about it for a minute and said, ‘Let’s leave the ending how it is,’ and he said, ‘Done.’

  It’s interesting to compare your experience on Halloween III with Rick Rosenthal’s on Halloween II. You were both first-time directors though your experiences were different.

  I feel for Rick in the position he found himself in. The problem is that he wasn’t family, if you will. I was family and I was very much a known quantity. John and Debra knew they could completely trust me to get in the groove. Had I directed Halloween II, it would’ve felt like a John Carpenter-directed movie. That’s because I had a lot of experience working with him. I knew the way he thought and what he would’ve done to a notable degree. Rick didn’t have any of that going for him and he suffered because of it. I don’t think I’m telling any secrets here, but Rick’s cut of the film was not up to John’s standards in certain areas. There were issues with how you create a scary situation and pay it off, messing around with audience expectation, those kinds of tricks of the trade. There were also a few key close-ups and inserts needed to enhance the visual storytelling, so John went off and shot some additional footage himself. Like I said, I really feel for Rick. He was in a rough spot, but it was absolutely unique to that position and that time and that situation. I didn’t have that experience on Halloween III because we’re different people with different histories.

  The Halloween films are notorious for having deleted scenes and alternate endings, yet Halloween III doesn’t seem to have any at all. Were there any outtakes we didn’t see?

  Little, if any. There is a dynamic on a low-budget movie where you’re scrambling for every second of film time. You can’t afford to shoot a lot of extra material or overshoot or over-cover. Not if you’re going to finish on schedule and on budget. So there wasn’t much at all on Halloween III.

  There was one scene from the toy museum we shot at that didn’t make the cut. It was out in South Pasadena. They had a calliope there that was just eerie to me. Although the tune it played sounded celebratory and fun, I myself detected a note of melancholy in it. I thought this would make a great end credit sequence, so we shot that entirely. I intended to put it over the credits, but it just didn’t fit once we assembled it. That’s about the only thing I can remember cutting and it wasn’t major. We were just going to run credits over it.

  You mentioned that you and your colleagues knew on the first Halloween that you’d made a good movie, even before its debut. Did you have the same confidence on Halloween III in the period between completion and release?

  I would have to confess to having a blind spot here, which I believe was shared by John, Debra, and the studio. That has to do with how carelessly we put this film out into the public eye without sufficiently explaining what we were trying to do. I don’t think we recognized the ferocious interest in and loyalty to the Michael Myers legend. I certainly don’t think we tended to the need to prepare the audience for something so different. I do think Halloween III has since proven to be a good movie. It keeps coming back year after year. Without vanity, I think it can be said to be a cult classic. The problem wasn’t the movie. The problem was getting people ready for something as foolishly titled as Halloween III when it wasn’t at all a sequel. That was flawed thinking and we were naïve to release it that way.

  Having said that, I also believe that Universal didn’t really get the movie. Maybe they didn’t even like it, especially after I refused to change the ending, so perhaps they stopped caring. They did a really respectable ad campaign for it with beautiful artwork. It just wasn’t the right campaign. When the ads came out for the premiere, there was this teeny banner in the upper-righthand corner that said, ‘All New!’ What exactly does that mean? That’s something you put on laundry detergent or basketball shoes. ‘All New!’ didn’t mean anythi
ng to audiences. They still showed up expecting to see Jamie Lee and the Shape. When they didn’t see them, they were outraged. I think they had a right to be outraged.

  It’s taken an awful long time for the situation to be set right. And Halloween III: Season of the Witch does indeed endure because it’s a god story about the season. I’ve talked with so many fans who say they watch it every year. I’m also amazed when I goto these conventions at how young these fans are. They’re not old farts like me – they’re really young!

  That must’ve been a terrible disappointment at the time, yet the film has aged so very well in the years since. Has that been somewhat healing to witness?

  That’s a very astute question and the answer is yes. It hurt so badly when the film came out. I was crushed. When you’re in the position I was in, you feel as though you let everyone down. There was shame involved and all sorts of other horrible feelings. And yes, it has felt so fine to have some redemption in the years since. People come up to my table at conventions and say, ‘I don’t care what anyone says, this is my favorite Halloween.’ And I tell them, ‘You don’t have to defend it anymore. It’s finally found its audience. If anyone ever puts it down, just cock your head and say, ‘Didn’t you get the memo? This is a good movie!’

  Do you think Halloween III would have benefited from being a standalone movie?

  Had it simply gone out as Season of the Witch, I think it would’ve found its audience more quickly and been a success in its own right. And yet, ironically, that’s a film that would’ve probably never been made were it not entitled Halloween III.