Was it your idea to feature the daughter of Laurie Strode or were you mandated to do so?
That was an assumption we made. We were able to ask about some of the story parameters beforehand, so Moustapha may have told us that Jamie Lee Curtis wasn’t coming back. She was onto bigger things by this point. Moustapha probably told us that Donald Pleasence was returning, but not Jamie Lee. Actually, he must’ve told us that because we knew we could use Dr. Loomis but not Laurie Strode.
When you look back at Halloween 4, are there any moments or details that you’re especially proud of having contributed to the story?
I mainly loved the twist at the end. That was entirely our concept. I thought we needed to end with something different and unique. That just seemed like something that would really surprise people, like they would never, ever see it coming. We tried to do things with terror using suspense just as John Carpenter had on the first film. We were also hoping for a more Hitchcockian feel, so our script wasn’t really about the graphic violence aspect.
At Halloween 4’s conclusion, it seems that Michael Myers is finally dead and that young Jamie will be taking up his mantle. In your mind, was this truly the end of the Shape?
We wanted to leave it ambiguous so that the next film could do whatever it wanted with the story. But we also wanted to end with a twist that made you want to see Halloween 5 to find out what happens next. Because Michael Myers can never really die, right? We knew it was possible that he could be resurrected and brought back. Maybe he would live on through Jamie or they would wind up working together. There were several possibilities to consider.
Did you ever see Halloween 5?
No, I didn’t. I’ve never actually seen any of the subsequent Halloween’s. I just went on to work on other stuff after that. Again, I was never really into horror. That’s the irony of it. My influences in writing Halloween 4 were more suspense thrillers rather than other slasher movies.
Are you aware of Halloween 4’s reputation as one of the better liked sequels?
I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes when I meet people, they’ll look me up and get kind of excited when they see Halloween 4 in my credits. We honestly thought we did a good job with it. The characters are already so iconic. The whole series is. I’m definitely proud to be associated with it. We were lucky. In this business, most movies don’t get a lot of attention and, even if they do, they’re forgotten in the years that follow. So to be able to participate in something that is still popular thirty years later is incredibly rare. It’s nice to be appreciated.
Did you view Michael Myers as a mere man or something more superhuman?
I think there was definitely a supernatural element to him. He’s a guy that was going to come back no matter what you did to him. I think Donald Pleasence’ character realized that even if no one else did. Maybe Jamie Lee’s character did too. That’s why they feared him so much. It was the fact that they knew this truth that other people refused to see that added so much tension to the story. That’s how it was for me.
You’ve worked on several serial killer films since Halloween 4, haven’t you?
Yes, I produced Dahmer and Gacy, but those come from a totally different place than Halloween. I’ve always considered myself more of a producer rather than a writer. With Dahmer, a filmmaker I knew named David Jacobson approached me saying he wanted to make a movie based on a book that Jeffrey Dahmer’s father had written about his son. It’s all based on real events, very factual. It explores themes of loneliness and isolation. It’s so much more of an art film than a horror film, though there are horrific moments in it. So we made that film and it did really well. It was nominated for some Spirit Awards. It also has one of Jeremy Renner’s first real starring roles and helped set him on his path to becoming a star. It was released through DEG, which was a division of Blockbuster. It was so successful that they asked us if we would do another movie based on a real-life serial killer, which is how Gacy came about.
Have Halloween fans or film journalists ever reached out to you before now?
No, I’ve never really been contacted about it by anyone. I think the same is true for Dhani and Ben. Years and years have gone by without anyone really mentioning it to me. And then this year, both you and Octavio Lopez Sanjuan got in touch with me about it. The interview with Octavio was for a book that was only printed in Spanish, so this is really my first English-language interview about the film.
INTERVIEW: Nicholas Grabowsky
(Nicholas Grabowsky: Author - The H4 Novelization)
Were you a horror fan growing up and, if so, which films were special to you?
I was a horror fan as far back as I can remember, even before kindergarten. My earliest memories are of watching Mad Monster Party on television. This would’ve been around the late 60s. That movie had a big impact on me. Yes, it was a cartoon, but it introduced me to the classic monsters all at once. It had Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf-man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon – pretty much everyone. Then I started seeing the original films for those monsters from Universal. I later came to enjoy more modern horror films like The Blob and It’s Alive. Those two in particular gave me recurring nightmares.
Unfortunately, my parents got heavily into religion when I was still young, which had quite an effect on me. I was in the ninth-grade when Halloween first came out and, ironically enough, I badmouthed it quite a bit. I would tell people, ‘That movie is from the devil!’ (laughs) My friends went to go see it and I remember telling them, ‘I’m praying for your soul. Those movies are evil! You shouldn’t be going to see them!’ (laughs) Fortunately, those days are long behind me. Who knew that I would one day be writing books like Halloween 4? It’s crazy.
How did the opportunity to write Halloween 4’s novelization come about?
Horror had always remained in the back of my mind, even in my younger Christian days. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. I also liked to write, so I began a project in tenth-grade that eventually became my first novel titled Pray, Serpent’s Prey. I came up with the idea for it after a trip I’d taken with my church’s choir. We had gone to Montana and spent the night right next to Evel Knievel’s house. So I centered my story around that. It was like blending Salem’s Lot with Footloose. There was a pastor who lived in this small town. Vampires come in and try to destroy everyone, but the pastor teams up with the local youth group to drive out the vampires and everyone lives happily ever. It was a Christian allegory kind of horror novel. As I wrote it, the story kept getting darker and darker.
I also dabbled in acting after high school and my acting teacher was Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original Star Trek series. His sister was a publisher, so I ask if I could send my book in and they said ‘Sure.’ Three months later, I get a phone call from Gary Brodsky of Critics Choice Paperbacks in New York saying, ‘I read your book, Pray, Serpent’s Prey, and I really liked it. I want to publish it in mass market.’ I was so incredibly excited. Like a lot of writers who have their first book published, I immediately quit my job and stated taking writing assignments. I did several romance novels and self-help books under different names.
Then one day, I ended up getting a call that went, ‘Hey, they’re doing another Halloween movie. Michael Myers is back. We’ve got the script and we’ve got the novelization rights. How would you like to write it?’ They sent me the script and gave me one month to do it. They told me I could take liberties with it if I wanted to. The thing is – they never sent me a contract for it. I kept waiting and waiting. Ultimately, I just decided to send in my manuscript anyways. They had decided to release Pray, Serpent’s Prey alongside my Halloween 4 novel the following October when the film hit theaters. I still had no contract and they hadn’t paid me a dime for it, but both books were out in all the supermarkets. My books were right next to books by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. That was a lot of fun to see.
So you were never paid for writing Halloween 4’s novel? That’s
crazy to think about, especially now that those books are fetching upwards of $150 on eBay. They’re pretty valuable these days. I would’ve been a little bitter about that, personally.
Yeah, I knew something was up with the publisher, I just wasn’t sure what. I had to go out and get a regular job since I wasn’t being paid for my writing. I was actually working at Video Giant when Halloween 4 came out, which was in the same shopping center as Albertson’s Supermarket. People would go over to Albertson’s to buy Halloween 4, and then walk over to Video Giant to have me sign it while I’m rearranging the shelves and what not. It wasn’t quite the life you’d expect for someone that just got published. I never did get a contract for it. The last words from the publisher before they went bankrupt was, ‘We put your name on the copyright page. The book is yours. You can do whatever you want.’
So my Halloween 4 novel is a mixed blessing. Yes, it would’ve been nice to get paid, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have written that adaptation. It really helped start my career. I can also officially claim to be part of the biggest horror franchise in the world. The Halloween fandom is simply amazing and it stretches all over the world. This is a top-notch franchise, way more so than Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. I’ve gotten to meet the fans at several conventions, including the 25th Anniversary one in Pasadena, and it’s just been so much fun.
How did the release of your Halloween 4 novel help boost the start of your career?
There was a certain notoriety that came with it. (laughs) That reminds me of a story. I remember sitting in a bar one night back in my younger days. I overhear a conversation between two people about how there’s this guy that wrote a Halloween novel living in a mansion in the next town over. I start listening a little more closely and it starts to sound like they’re talking about me. So I go join in their conversation and they are talking about Nicholas Grabowsky, but they don’t believe I’m really me. I eventually had to pull out my driver’s license just to prove it to them. I also told them that I didn’t live in a mansion. If I had a nickel for every time someone asks me, ‘Why aren’t you rich?’ Man, it doesn’t work that way. Even if I had been paid for my work on Halloween 4, it just doesn’t work that way.
Fans love catching all the differences between the Halloween novels and films. Were Halloween 4’s differences from the original script or your own additions?
Well, remember that there are two versions of the book – the original release and the Ultimate Edition. The original book followed the screenplay almost verbatim. I did add little things like a friend’s name here or there, but not much. When I went back to do the Ultimate Edition years later, I went a little further by adding in new scenes that I’d always wanted to see. My goal was to enhance the story as though these were deleted scenes. For example, I really liked the Reverend Sayer character. I wanted to expand on him, so that material is all mine. I had him come back in several more scenes and eventually he gets blinded by Michael.
The new scenes with Reverend Sayer are interesting additions, but even more interesting to me is that you found a way to bring back Laurie Strode, sort of.
Yes, I tried to think about what the fans would want to see because I, myself, am a fan. That’s when I realized that fans really wanted to see Jamie Lee Curtis’ character come back. The only way I could figure out to do that plausibly was to have her return in a dream sequence, so I did that. She winds up appearing to Jamie near the end. It was really fun to take those kinds of liberties with a story everyone knew. I think the fans really enjoyed those extra bits as well. I haven’t met anyone yet that didn’t like it.
Did you ever consider doing other Halloween movie novelizations after Halloween 4?
I get asked that question all the time. I did consider possibly doing that after the release of the Ultimate Edition novel. I managed to get my hands on the script for Halloween 5 and Daniel Farrands even sent me his original script for Halloween 6. I was kind of set on doing that at the time, but there was a strange disconnect behind the scenes. It wasn’t easy trying to work with Trancas Films. Not that there was any kind of animosity there, but I sensed a sort of indifference from them. Eventually, I just figured that I had enough things of my own that I needed to do and moved on.
Halloween 4 ends with Jamie having become evil like her uncle, though Halloween 5 quickly backtracks on this development. Did you think Jamie was really going to turn evil?
I think that’s where everyone thought the story was headed after Halloween 4. Jamie was clearly going to be evil in the next one, right? But Halloween 5 didn’t go in that direction and, as far as I was concerned, was kind of a mess. There are some good moments in it, but overall it missed the mark. I thought it was Jamie’s turn to be evil. How cool would that have been? It might’ve been hard for the fans to digest, but you’d have to bring Michael back as well. He’s the face of Halloween, but Jamie should’ve been demented too. That’s the direction they set up. Not that she should be holding Michael’s hand and saying, ‘Okay, let’s kill together!’ But it would’ve been great to see the heroes now have to deal with two killers instead of one. And maybe Jamie and Michael would’ve wanted to kill each other as well. There were so many possibilities that they never bothered to explore.
One thing the Halloween series has struggled with over the years is whether or not Michael Myers is human. In some films, he seems indestructable to a superhuman degree. In others, he has the limitations of a normal man. Where do you stand on this?
I think it’s best left ambiguous. Like how he can appear out of the shadows, it’s all just part of the enigma of that character. I don’t think we need it explained because it’s not that important. Daniel Farrands tried that with Halloween 6 by giving Michael this huge backstory. That was fun, sure, but my instinct is that you don’t need to have an explanation for him. He’s scarier when you don’t have that. He might even be supernatural, but we don’t need that spelled out.
Did you happen to see any of the newer Halloween movies and, if so, what did you think?
Yes, of course. Remember that I’m a fan too. I really liked what they did with the most recent one. That’s how you do a successful revival of something. I think the franchise needed that breath of fresh air. I loved seeing them take it all back to the roots of the first film. My only complaint was that I wish they could’ve done it in a way that didn’t write off all the sequels.
I will say that I did not like what Rob Zombie did with his films. He got my attention with his first Halloween, but why does he have to turn everyone into white trash? He can’t seem to direct a movie with normal people in it. For me, it’s just better that his family wasn’t like that. There were some good things about it, but not that many.
Per internet rumors, you were once attached to write a version of Halloween 9. Is that true and, if so, tell me all about it.
Yes, it’s true, but there really isn’t much to tell. I was trying to get a hold of Malek Akkad to discuss it. We exchanged a few emails back and forth, but we never set a meeting to talk about it. Anything I came up with was just preliminary. My main idea was called Beyond Halloween, which essentially took Michael Myers back to old school. I would’ve kept it in Haddonfield and, if I had my way, made it super scary without all the gore. My story also wouldn’t have had Michael Myers return home to find a bunch of people with video cameras running around his house shooting a webcast. (laughs)
In my story, there had been so many years without him that he was now just a legend. People would have to go to historical archives just to remind themselves that his killings actually happened. He does come back in the story, but I can’t remember exactly how. That, in a way, is not as original as I would like to go for. It was very preliminary. But the next thing I knew, Rob Zombie was announced as helming the new one, so I gave it up.
FILM: HALLOWEEN 5
For Moustapha Akkad’s Trancas International Films, Halloween 4 was a rousing success, debuting atop the domestic box office and r
emaining there for two weeks. The film would ultimately gross $17.7 million in the United States, just a few million more than Halloween III’s total six years prior. While that number might not have meant much to Universal Pictures, it was an impressive feat for an independent outfit such as Trancas. Admittedly drunk off this success, Akkad rushed Halloween 5 into production for release the following October. His hope was that Halloween 4’s creative team would return to helm the next installment.
“I was asked to come back for Halloween 5,” Dwight Little told The Daily Dead. “They asked me quite a few times. My feeling was that the ending to our film was almost perfect in such a way that I didn’t really know what to do after that. And I knew they had to make a sequel because ours had made them money, so obviously they should go and make a sequel. But I thought, ‘Okay, I took my best shot and I’m really happy with it,’ and I was afraid of making a mistake. I was so happy with what Alan and I were able to bring to the series. The fact that it was moving forward meant we must have done something right.”
With Little and McElroy out, Akkad was in need of new talent. He turned to screenwriter Shem Bitterman to write the sequel, who had also submitted an unused draft of Halloween 4. Bitterman’s script, which was titled Halloween 5: The Killer Inside Me, focused on a now evil Jamie Lloyd continuing in her uncle’s footsteps. The writer summarized his Halloween efforts to the LA Times in 1990: “I knocked off Halloween 4 in a week. Then they asked me to write Halloween 5. I did that one in three days. It was like writing a comic book, but it paid the bills.”
Akkad next took a meeting with Swiss filmmaker Dominique Othenin-Girard, who came recommended by original Halloween writer/producer Debra Hill. In a now famous anecdote, Othenin-Girard shocked Akkad by literally trashing the Bitterman draft during their first meeting. He then pitched his alternate vision for Halloween 5 with the help of screenwriter Robert Harders. Their story borrowed heavily from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and involved reanimating the dead Shape with a stray lightning bolt. Upon resurrection, Michael is no longer pure evil but a misunderstood monster à la the original Frankenstein creation. While unimpressed by this pitch, Akkad liked both men enough to offer them jobs. He assigned Othenin-Girard the director position and Harders the task of re-writing the existing Bitterman draft. Othenin-Girard accepted, though Harders did not.
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