To accomplish this, the Shape stages a bloody diversion at the clinic that will lure police away from his home. This diversion includes slashing through a handful of clinic staff and police. Halloween 5’s theatrical cut seriously truncates this part of the story, which can be confusing to some viewers. Othenin-Girard devotes a single shot of bodies being taken out on stretchers to communicate the plot point. Who all did Michael kill and how did he kill them? Seemingly unimportant details, but it wasn’t always this way. The filmmakers originally shot a sequence in which Michael slaughters an entire SWAT team outside the clinic.
This particular scene does not appear within any script and, according to Shape actor Don Shanks, was captured as second unit material by stunt coordinator Don Pike. As filmed, the Shape approaches a plainclothes officer outside the clinic. From behind, he twists the officer’s head around, shoves him to the ground, and stomps on his skull. Members of the SWAT team and police respond, with the Shape dismembering them in a number of graphic ways, including shoving an M16 rifle into one unlucky officer’s head. This graphic scene was presumably another casualty of the sequel’s struggle to achieve an “R” rating. In any case, this scene would have explained why Meeker and his officers abandon the Myers house and head for the clinic – and also why the Shape drives up to his old house in a stolen squad car. With a smaller police presence guarding Jamie, Michael is now free to go home.
In the film, Meeker leaves a single officer stationed outside the Myers house as everyone else responds to the Shape’s diversion. As first written, Meeker left several additional officers on guard at 45 Lampkin Lane including two rooftop snipers – all of whom the Shape kills in a much longer and bloodier sequence. Police also booby-trap the Myers house with a crudely fashioned bed of spikes that will fall from the ceiling to impale whomever enters through the front door. Per the script, the Shape heads toward a sniper stationed in a tree. Over Deputy Charlie’s walkie-talkie, we hear the first sniper slam into the ground with a thud. The Shape then uses the body as a shield to deflect sniper fire. The bullets pass through the dead cop and hit the Shape, causing him to collapse. Thinking him dead, a sniper approaches on foot only to find that his target was playing possum. The Shape leaps up to kill this sniper before using his body to trigger the doorway trap. The dead sniper is impaled on the spikes and a metal bar fastens the door behind them both, locking everyone inside. Using the sniper’s bayonet, the Shape kills two additional officers inside the Myers house parlor and kitchen. Unlike the aforementioned clinic massacre, this action spectacle was never actually shot. The filmmakers instead opted for the scaled-down deaths of deputies Charlie and Eddy.
The sequence then continues as in the film with Loomis begging Michael to surrender, Michael slashing him in response, and then chasing after his niece. The Shape’s creepy display in the attic was initially going to be even more macabre than in the film. The screenwriters first envisioned having Rachel’s corpse affixed to a giant cross that Michael had stolen from a local church. (This unholy theft would’ve been foreshadowed earlier with a quick shot of a priest discovering the missing relic.) Opposite Rachel was going to be Mikey’s corpse dressed in a black cloak holding a scythe – a recreation of death itself. The final difference from this sequence involved the Shape’s capture. In the film, Loomis drops a massive chain net overtop him and shoots him with tranquilizer darts - all before beating him unconscious with a two-by-four. In the script, Loomis has hidden a giant metal cage underneath the staircase, which has been structurally weakened on certain steps.
THE ORIGINAL ENDING
Halloween 5’s ending was also slightly different as first written and shot. In the film, we see a still-masked but oddly calm Shape fiddling with his chains in a darkened cell. The script envisioned this moment differently: “The Shape rages, smashing against its cell so hard that the metal door bends out, permanently dented. Two guards with shotguns looks nervous.”
Sheriff Meeker was originally a central character in this sequence. Sitting in his office, an exhausted Meeker was to have heard the Man in Black’s shootout and rushed to investigate with gun drawn. Finding only the bloody aftermath, it was originally Meeker – not Jamie – who discovered the Shape’s empty cell. (In fact, Jamie wasn’t even at the police station as first written.) As originally filmed, Meeker was to become a casualty of the Man in Black’s assault, which was more fully depicted but eventually deleted. (A photo depicting Meeker’s demise appeared in Fangoria.)
REFLECTIONS ON H5 by Michael Jacobs
(Michael Jacobs: Writer - H5)
(The following first appeared in Octavio López Sanjuán‘s Noches De Halloween: La Saga De Michael Myers from Applehead Team. It appears here with permission.)
It’s been interesting to read the fan response to Halloween 5 over the years. It began as one of the most controversial films in the series. It’s not hard to understand why. The film started the series down a path of de-mythologizing the Shape - the boogeyman of John Carpenter’s classic. Instead of the shadowy figure you might have seen out of the corner of your eye, he became - through the introduction of the Stranger in Halloween 5 - a serial killer in some strange cult that was later invented for Halloween 6.
Ironically this was contrary to virtually everything the director, Dominique Othenin-Girard, and I intended for the film. Like the fan reaction that has mellowed considerably over the years, things changed. How the film diverged from our original intentions is an interesting story. I can’t pretend to know the complete truth. All I can tell you is what I remember, which is from a long time ago.
The morning I got a call from Dom, I had been at a meeting at Orion Pictures, a long gone distributor. They were enthusiastic about an original action thriller I’d written and in the course of a meeting had given a few notes and asked permission to send it to talent. The producers and I said “yes” of course. The notes were very light. And I came home in an extremely good mood. The phone rang and it was Dominique.
Dom told me how he had met with producer Debra Hill, how she’d recommended him to direct Halloween 5, and that he now had the job. He explained that it was an unusual situation because Halloween 4 had been such a success that theatre owners were so desperate that they were pledging a flat guarantee for the film. Since the producers also distributed the film theatrically, all they had to do was make the film available for its traditional Fall opening in order to make a profit. The only problem was, they’d been working on a script for nearly a year and Dom had gotten the job by walking into Executive Producer Moustapha Akkad’s office and dramatically tossing the script into a trash can.
Dom and I were friends and in our phone call, he told me honestly that I hadn’t been his first choice. Bob Harders had pitched what sounded like a really smart iconic take on the project but as he recently wrote online, he realized that they weren’t interested in doing it the way he’d wanted to do it. And so he left. This meant that there were barely five-and-a-half weeks before principal photography was to begin. There was literally no script. All that Dom liked out of the previous draft was a sequence in a barn. That was maybe five or six minutes. And there were some other minor issues too, but he’d tell me about them in person if I wanted to come over and watch Halloween 4.
No discussion of Halloween 5 can ignore the shadow of Halloween 4. As most of your readers know, Dwight Little revived the film series with an 80’s revamp that brought Michael Myers clearly into the body count era that had been mined so effectively by Friday the 13th. There was a lot of great suspense in the film. But it was the ending in which Michael Myers' niece, Jamie, stands at the top of the stairs holding a bloody knife after stabbing her mother that sent fans giddily out of the theaters openly debating whether somehow Michael had transferred his evil to a new generation or turned her evil in some way. Our marching orders from Akkad and the thousands of theatre owners who were going to pay a guarantee was clear. Jamie must come back — and she can’t be evil. Just to be clear, a girl we saw with a blood
y knife standing at the top of a stairs after stabbing her mother could not be evil.
Welcome to real world movie-making! But we committed to take on the problem and we had until the next morning to figure out a take that would excite the executive producer. Dom shrewdly thought that it would be best to distinguish the series from its slasher brethren by stepping back to something closer to the original, something that teased the audience, played with their expectations and relied more on suspense than outright gore.
You’ve asked why the series has endured, I think that this is a large part of it. The Shape was the boogeyman that people have imagined in shadowy places ever since they walked through a forest or huddled in the furthest reaches of a cave. It may come from exposure to strong electromagnetic signals, or the deepest fears of our collective imagination, but I wouldn’t be surprised there has been some variant of the Shape since before formal human language. I think John Carpenter shrewdly updated that archetype by tapping into the fear of random killers, which were an obsession in the late 70’s tabloid news. Decoding these senseless killers, operating on their own internal logic, has fascinated us ever since. Witness Silence of the Lambs and countless television series. But the added supernatural twist of the killer who will not die elevates Halloween.
I met Dom at Akkad’s office the following morning. And while we were talking, Ramsey Thomas, the producer of the film, walked in. Dom greeted him and they chit-chatted and after a few moments Ramsey asked, “Where’s Bob?” Dom literally hadn’t told the producers that Bob Harders had quit. But in fine directorial fashion he neatly segued into introducing me. Ramsey politely shook my hand and turned to Dom. “Does Akkad know about this?” Dom smiled and shrugged, explaining “There hasn’t been time...” So off they went into Akkad’s office. The next few minutes were comical. I was sitting in the ante-room with the receptionist while the voices in Akkad’s office, while unintelligible, were clearly getting louder. After maybe ten minutes there was a silence and I was summoned into the office to join the discussion. Akkad to his credit was extremely polite and listened to my comments which weren’t really a well formed pitch yet. After a long pause to think, clenching a bit on his pipe, he turned to me and said. “Don’t read the other script. You two go off and create a story and come back to pitch it.”
So Dominique and I began what became a series of walks around my neighborhood to try to flesh out a story and by the next morning we had enough to get the green light to proceed. The late night walks continued. We would have discussions and I would go back and stay up till 3 AM getting them on paper, then Dom and I would meet the next day and revise and add ideas he’d had. Very quickly two major sequences developed. One was the only holdover from the original Bitterman script — the barn sequence in which happily sexy teens were stalked and pitchforked and who remembers how else they may have been killed.
The other was a great sequence in which we - the audience - think Jamie is being chased through a clinic intercut with what we are sure is the killer’s POV, which we figure out is something she’s seeing — the connection suggested by the end of Halloween 4. We see the POV approaching where she’s hiding and when the door is opened — we’ve tricked the audience — we reveal that it’s just one of the staff who finds her. Was she seeing the killer’s POV? Did she imagine it? It set up a central question.
When Dom suggested the sequence, I told him about Eyes of Laura Mars, which one of our executive producers, John Carpenter, had written. I was surprised he’d never seen it. I’m not sure if he even bothered to watch it. But when Debra Hill heard we were going for a nod to that film, seeing the killer’s perspective as the answer to whatever fans were speculating about the link Jamie had to Michael Myers, she was extremely supportive of the idea.
We came up with a killer ending. Like the ending of Halloween 4 which starts our film, a small army of cops arrive heavily armed. Jamie is standing between them and Michael. They call for her to get down, but this time she stops. She stands frozen. He could kill her — or having let her see his face moments ago — maybe there was a new relationship. Jamie hears guns cocking and turns to face the cops. She’s surprised a moment later when the cops look confused. When she turns back — the Shape, as we had returned to calling him, is gone. I loved the ending as it set up a new question for the audience. Could she tame the raging beast within the Shape? It stayed clearly in the lines of the Halloween mythology.
For reasons I never heard, it was decided that seventy-five year old Donald Pleasence dropping chains on the boogeyman (who hasn’t died in four films) and beating him down with a 2x4 and then having some mysterious stranger break him out of jail in a gunfight was a better ending. We had intended to return to the Shape and mystery and hopefully turn back the transition to Michael Myers which took the series into body-count territory. To some small degree we succeeded, but we largely failed.
A lot of that is, I suspect, the outcome of killing Rachel. In the original draft we turned in after a couple of weeks, Rachel was still alive at least for most of the film. But she was a different Rachel. I wasn’t a big fan of virginal girls in high school and I didn’t see why they got to be the ones who lived in these films and the “bad” girls, that is girls who had a healthy sex life, were in the trope of these puritanical films - fodder for the killer. I also wondered what effect being chased around the rooftops by a maniacal boogeyman killer might have on a person. I thought she might start living a little because let’s face it — it was a sure thing that the Shape was going to return to Haddonfield some Halloween. I was reinforced in this idea by a comment Debra Hill made — that she regretted how the original Halloween had been instrumental in setting up this sex-equals-death trope. So Rachel in 5 was very different. She was dating a “bad boy.” She cared less about what others thought and she was distinctly in the minority in Haddonfield, standing by Jamie, whom many regarded as nothing but a murderer.
For whatever reason in a meeting at which I was not present, a new idea emerged. Rachel would be killed early on which would shock the audience and a new character, Tina, would take her place in shielding Jamie. In some ways Tina was the new Rachel only more so. And one has only to read the fan boards to see how they reacted. I think they would have been more forgiving of Rachel — understanding her motive for being different. With Tina, a newcomer, she was, in the audience’s view, just different. And ask any kid who grew up Middle America about being different in high school. Even the other different kids probably don’t like you.
From that point forward with the onset of a time pressured pre-production, the process seemed like a struggle of competing points of view. The beginning and the ending were changed. I think it was on a visit to the set that we added the four or five scenes that introduced the mysterious stranger. There was no back story or rationale to the Man in Black in Halloween 5. He was the ultimate enigma.
In the end, as others have said, the film was too rushed. But some of what we wanted to accomplish, bringing back the more subtle eeriness and tension of the first film, crept in. Especially during the early parts of the film. If we could have figured out more black humor, like the moment where the Shape is arriving in the kitchen during a party and he spots a rack full of chef ’s knives and is momentarily forced to pause, the film could have been much better. If we had simply shot something closer to the original draft of the script, it probably would have been a better film. But writers always say things like that. In the end there are more than a couple of very intense moments in the film. On opening night I remember seeing a grown man literally hiding behind his popcorn during the chase in the house.
And it’s been fascinating to see how over the years more and more of the audience has come to appreciate how scary some of the sequences in that film are. Maybe because in the progression of horror from Freddy and Jason to torture porn, some of the taboos we broke now seem quaint by comparison.
INTERVIEW: Dominique Othenin-girard
(Dominique Othenin-Girard: Writer/Direc
tor - H5)
First off, are you a fan of the genre? Do you have any notable favorites?
Oh, definitely. But I’m a filmmaker. I’m a storyteller. I’m not a superb audience who watches a lot of films. I do but I’m a storyteller constructing stories. The horror genre has given me the opportunity to tell stories that are forbidden, unusual, extraordinary… where characters like Dracula and Frankenstein are way bigger than life. It has possibilities of tricking the audience, playing with the audience… creating tension and fear… and making the audience captivate not only with the mental but with the Gods and the heart. The emotions. That’s the horror film genre, you know.
Eyes of Laura Mars, for example, was really great. Or the first Omen… the very first Halloween… or the Hammer films that I really enjoyed from London from the '60s. So those were films that I thought were extraordinary. But I never thought that I would be able to tell a story of the genre.
You had other interests to pursue?
Yeah, psychological thrillers. Drama and action films. My very first feature film was a psychological thriller [After Darkness]. A really twisted story between two brothers with John Hurt and Julian Sands. The second one was an action movie [Cop Trap]. I went from psychological thriller to more like an action thriller. And then supernatural – Night Angel. That lead me to Halloween.
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