Weinstein’s meeting with Curtis, Carpenter, and Hill occurred just prior to the release of Scream. The Dimension mogul very much liked the idea of an anniversary sequel with Halloween’s original filmmakers. This would certainly warrant a reversal of the franchise’s direct-to-video fate. Then came the rub. Feeling he was owed over a decade of unpaid profit participation, Carpenter was rumored to have demanded a $10 million fee to direct, a figure Weinstein balked at. The Halloween filmmaker also reportedly tried to negotiate a three-picture deal with Dimension, which Weinstein also refused. With this, Carpenter left the project as did Hill.
Curtis, while disappointed, maintained that the anniversary sequel was still a worthwhile pursuit. The loss of Carpenter and Hill may not have entirely killed the project, but it did seriously hamper its momentum heading into 1997. Curtis’ return to the series, however special, was not enough to propel the project forward. Halloween 7 was now without a script or director. If the sequel was going to come together in time for Halloween’s twentieth anniversary, it would need to happen soon. Fortunately, the horror genre was about to receive a jolt.
Wes Craven’s Scream hit theaters on December 18, 1996 and went on to gross more than $100 million domestically in a huge win for Dimension Films. Scream’s success would electrify the genre and make screenwriter Kevin Williamson one of Hollywood’s hottest commodities overnight. Recalling how strongly Scream had paid tribute to Halloween, Weinstein asked Williamson to pen a draft of Halloween 7. While an enormous fan of the series, Williamson was reluctant to accept this assignment given how busy he was writing and producing the pilot for Dawson’s Creek in Wilmington, North Carolina. Sensing this reluctance, the studio boss offered to produce Williamson’s script for Teaching Mrs. Tingle through Dimension and allow him to direct if he would only write a treatment for Halloween 7. This was incentive enough to secure the Scream writer’s involvement. As it just so happened, Curtis was also in Wilmington during this time shooting the sci-fi thriller Virus for Universal. Weinstein suggested that Williamson and Curtis meet to discuss story ideas for the new film. The two convened on the Screen Gems backlot and spoke at length about possibilities for the anniversary sequel.
On the subject of potential directors, Williamson noted that the pilot for Dawson’s Creek was being helmed by filmmaker Steve Miner, who had directed Curtis on Forever Young and whom she was fond of. Halloween would not be unfamiliar territory for Miner, who started off in Hollywood directing films like Friday the 13th Part II, Friday the 13th Part III, and House. Curtis and Williamson approached their mutual friend together with the prospect of helming Halloween 7. Miner was initially hesitant, but ultimately succumbed to the pressure exerted by his peers. While Williamson was unable to commit to writing a full screenplay for Halloween 7, he did eventually submit a story treatment.
Given Williamson’s unavailability, Weinstein scheduled a meeting with Robert Zappia, the purpose of which was two-fold. He first told Zappia that his Two Faces of Evil script was officially dead, though the project itself was not. He then revealed that Jamie Lee Curtis would be returning for the film, which was now being planned as a major theatrical release. Weinstein next asked that Zappia write a new script centered on Laurie Strode. Elated at this turn of events, the screenwriter immediately began work on a new draft titled Halloween: Blood Ties. This was the beginning of what would eventually become known as Halloween H20.
THE WILLIAMSON TREATMENT
In late 1997, Kevin Williamson penned a rudimentary outline for Halloween 7 independent of Robert Zappia’s work. This was based partly on his discussions with Jamie Lee Curtis but also drew from the cancelled Two Faces of Evil script. Spanning six pages, the treatment breaks down into three segments. The first act very much resembles the Halloween H20 that was eventually made, though the rest ventures in a different direction. By the ending, this Halloween 7 had little in common with the film that reached audiences in August 1998.
The Williamson treatment begins just before nightfall in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Rachel Loomis, apparent daughter of the late Dr. Loomis, arrives home to find her front door ajar. Scared, she enlists the help of her teenage neighbor Timmy to investigate. (This opening plays out nearly identical to how it does in H20 but with Rachel in place of Marion Whittington.) The scene ends with both Timmy and Rachel murdered by the Shape. Prior to her death, Rachel notices that her father’s office has been ransacked and a folder marked ‘Keri Tate’ emptied out. The Shape manages a narrow escape as police arrive.
The treatment then cuts to Tyler Prep School in Briarcliff, Maine. Here we learn that Laurie Strode faked her death after Halloween II and changed her name to Keri Tate. Now divorced, she is the headmistress of an all-girls preparatory school where her sixteen-year-old son Mick is the only boy on campus. Her relationship with Mick is a volatile one as he deeply resents her alcoholism and overprotective parenting. Keri is alarmed to read of Rachel Loomis’ death in the newspaper. This being the day before Halloween, she assumes the worst. Her anxiety worsens after a student delivers an oral report on Haddonfield’s grisly history, recapping the events of Halloween’s 1-6. This forces Keri to remember how she abandoned her vulnerable young daughter, Jamie Lloyd, who later died by her uncle’s blade.
“Originally, I saw Laurie in some flophouse, tormented and talking to herself, operating on the fringes of reality. But I was finally convinced it was too bleak of a place to begin.”
- Jamie Lee Curtis, The Detroit Free Press
Keri confides in English teacher Jake Brannen her long held fear that Michael Myers will one day return. He seizes on this as an opportunity to address her rampant alcoholism, which elicits an angry response. (“What you seem to be missing from your loving and non-judgmental point of view is that Keri doesn’t exist. At the end of the day, the Halloween mask comes off and it’s Laurie Strode who has to find a way to get to sleep at night without a butcher knife slicing into her dreams.”) As the day wears on, Keri begins to see the Shape around campus, though she’s unable to tell if he’s real or only imagined. Meanwhile, Williamson describes a Muriel’s Wedding subplot in which an ugly duckling named Molly attempts a makeover in hopes of wooing Mick as her date to an upcoming school dance. Unbeknownst to her, Mick is already going with the “bitchy” Sara. In the meantime, Mick discovers his mother’s personal journal and learns of her tragic past in Haddonfield. Armed with this new information, he dresses up as the Shape in order to fake an attack inside the girl’s locker room, the unfortunate victim being Molly. Keri finds this prank so upsetting that she forbids him from attending the school dance.
Halloween night finds the entire school preparing for the dance with males being bussed in from a nearby academy. The campus security guard, Hattie, notices a strange car parked outside the front gate and goes to investigate. The Shape sneaks in through the open gate and kills her. The girl from the locker room prank now encounters the actual Michael Myers and, recognizing the real McCoy, manages to call for help.
Undeterred by Mick’s rejection, Molly fancies herself a date to the dance with an overzealous boy. She and this date leave the dance for a romantic walk only to encounter the Shape. Molly barely escapes the attack and runs to Keri’s office. Although Keri orders a full campus evacuation, she soon learns that the front gate has been disabled and the phone lines cut. She reaches police on a cellular line, though they’re unable to complete the mountain journey to campus due to a wreck blocking a key tunnel. Police dispatch rescue helicopters instead.
Jake begins loading students onto a rescue helicopter when the Shape suddenly appears and slits the pilot’s throat. A desperate Jake tries to fly the chopper himself but immediately crashes into the mountainside, killing everyone onboard. Keri manages to open the front gate, allowing several busloads of students to leave campus. The Shape turns his attention to Mick and Sara, both of whom Molly save at the last moment. Despite this, Sarah is killed shortly thereafter, leaving Mick and Molly to team up with Keri.
; The three manage to escape campus by commandeering an empty bus – unaware that their attacker is on the roof. The Shape causes the bus to crash inside a mountain tunnel. Molly dies in a surprise attack just before police arrive on the scene. The Shape slashes through the responding officers one by one as they approach the overturned bus. Keri eventually uses another rescue helicopter’s whirling blades to slice her brother in half, severing him at the midsection. Mick and Keri reunite as mother and son.
By that summary, you can easily see that Williamson’s treatment told a much different story than Halloween H20. Beyond the opening, the school setting, and the Keri Tate character, this crack at the sequel had little else in common with the final film. There are several teen characters who share names with those in H20, but their roles and personalities are different. This treatment portrays the Shape as superhuman until he becomes virtually inhuman. At one point, Williamson writes that Mick “kills the Shape,” though he inexplicably refuses to die and comes back swinging. The slasher’s ultimate death is also the most finite we’ve seen yet – chopped in half by helicopter blades. It’s extremely difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Shape might somehow recover from that. It’s not as though he managed to swap outfits with someone else before sending them shuffling into the rotating blades. (On a humorous note, this treatment marks the first time in a Halloween that Michael Myers is outdone. Jake manages a higher body count by accidentally crashing a rescue helicopter into the mountain.)
One standout moment in the Williamson treatment that would’ve done very nicely in the eventual film occurs near story’s end. Keri and the Shape face off for what promises to be a fight to the death. Before their battle can begin, they hear Mick screaming from a nearby building. The Shape looks to Mick, then back to Keri, and finally marches off in the direction of her son. Here we get a chilling glimpse into the mind of Halloween’s boogeyman. It wouldn’t be enough to kill Keri in that moment. No, the Shape goes after the person she loves the most – her only remaining child. He wants to kill Mick just as he did Jamie and he wants Keri to be there for it. From this, it’s no wonder that Williamson titled the treatment’s final act, “A Mother’s Wrath.”
One of the more controversial aspects of the later-produced Halloween H20 was its decision to jettison the previous three sequels from its continuity, but this wasn’t always the case. As mentioned in the summary, this treatment planned to incorporate the events of the Return/Revenge/Curse trilogy rather than ignore them. (Note: While Williamson likes this idea, he denies having come up with it.) In fact, the decision to have Laurie Strode fake her death was originally conceived in response to Halloween 4’s assertion that she had died in a car accident. Williamson was also an admitted fan of the Jamie Lloyd character from Halloweens 4 and 5.
Speaking of Laurie Strode’s ill-fated daughter, actress Danielle Harris vied unsuccessfully for a surprise appearance in H20. “I had my manager call the producer and ask if I could play a cameo,” Harris told Fangoria. “Maybe they were a little mad that I didn’t do Halloween 6. I hadn’t asked to play one of the leads - that would have been dumb. But even a walk-by or little scene behind the counter serving soda - just something simple. All of the people who‘d seen the Halloween’s would have said, ‘Hey, there she is!’ But they didn’t want to do it.”
THE ZAPPIA/WILLIAMSON DRAFT
By his own account, Robert Zappia wrote the first draft of Halloween: Blood Ties without having read Kevin Williamson’s story outline. This soon changed as Zappia’s second draft drew heavily from the treatment, enough for Williamson to receive story credit. Dated December 3, 1997, this sophomore pass at the story also incorporates several elements from the abandoned Two Faces of Evil script. By this point, the project was being referred to by its official working title: Halloween 7: The Revenge of Laurie Strode.
This first Zappia/Williamson draft opens just as the previous treatment did, albeit with Nurse Marion Whittington of the first two Halloween movies in place of Rachel Loomis. (She’s erroneously called Pamela Whittington, but it’s the same character.) Her home is also moved across state from Chicago to Langley. In the final film, the Shape attacks Marion with a kitchen knife and she defends herself with an iron poker. In this draft, their weapons are reversed. The Shape jams the poker into Marion’s nose, which punctures through the top of her skull, killing her instantly. Police respond and Detective Toni Blake of Langley is assigned the case. Assuming this to be Michael’s handiwork, Haddonfield PD sends Detective Richard Carter to assist Blake. These two will be the focus of a detective subplot that runs throughout the story. Together they dig into Myers family history, sorting through old photos and home movies along the way. (This is extremely similar to a plotline from Zappia’s Two Faces of Evil.)
The story then switches to Hillcrest Academy in Ferndale, Wisconsin (previously Tyler Prep School in Briarcliff, Maine) where we meet school administrator Keri Tate and her teenage son John. Unlike in the treatment, John doesn’t hate his mother here, though her overprotective parenting remains a strain on their relationship. Similar to the treatment, John is unaware of his family history. Keri is once again romantically linked to nice guy Will Brennan, now a chemistry teacher. And she still struggles with alcoholism as she copes with old demons.
This version of the story features a larger batch of teenage victims by way of John’s friends. Former ugly duckling Molly has been upgraded to John’s girlfriend, hueing more closely to how she appears in the final film. Also included are the spunky Linda Kang, dim Amy Kramer, and their respective boyfriends, Shane and Eddie. Prior to Halloween, the kids sneak off to visit a drug store. Amy stays behind for some alone time with her beau. Upon arrival in Ferndale, the Shape kills the promiscuous youths, embedding a meat cleaver in Eddie’s face and impaling Amy on the glass shards of a cracked door. The store’s Halloween section contains a Michael Myers mannequin that the real Michael impersonates in order to sneak up on them. While Amy’s body is immediately discovered, Eddie’s is not. As such, cops initially suspect that Eddie may be the culprit behind Amy’s murder. This doesn’t ease Keri’s fears, however.
The Shape proceeds to Hillcrest in a stolen car, which he abandons outside the front gates as in the Williamson treatment. Security guard Hattie investigates and finds Eddie’s corpse sitting in the front seat. The Shape sneaks onto campus and murders Hattie shortly after.
On Halloween morning, Detectives Carter and Blake learn that Laurie Strode’s headstone has been stolen from her final resting place. (The script notes that Jamie Lloyd is buried next to her mother’s false grave.) Rummaging through Dr. Loomis’ old files, they find a phone number for Hillcrest Academy and discern that Keri Tate is actually Laurie Strode. They visit her at Hillcrest the following day, though she is hostile to their presence and unwilling to speak with them. (Blake: “Has anyone ever told you, you bear a striking resemblance to Laurie Strode?” Keri: “Never heard of her.”)
Halloween day finds the school prepping for their holiday dance in the gymnasium. Hillcrest’s gym is unique in that its floor retracts to reveal a swimming pool underneath. The Shape murders a student in the pool, holding her underwater with one hand while stabbing with the other. He then covers the pool with the gym floor to hide her body. Angry over his mother’s overbearing nature, John dresses up as Michael Myers and sneaks into the girl’s locker room to fake an attack on a peer. Keri is mortified by the prank, which John mocks her for. She then reveals that she is, in fact, Laurie Strode from Haddonfield. John doesn’t take the news of his slasher ancestry very well. (“Wait a minute. Slow down. You’re telling me Michael Myers is my uncle? Any other psychotic relatives I should know about? Jason? Freddy Krueger?”)
Meanwhile, the Shape slashes through the student population as night falls. He murders Molly’s friends, asphyxiating Shane with the boy’s condom costume and cutting Linda’s face into quarter-inch slices with an electric meat slicer. He later targets Molly by hiding in her dorm room. Believing her dog to be under
neath her bed, Molly reaches down to pet him. In actuality, she’s stroking the hair atop the Shape’s mask. Molly realizes her error when the dog enters the room and begins growling at the intruder beneath the bed. Molly is attacked and badly wounded, but gets away and attempts to warn everyone at the dance. Unfortunately, her screams are lost in the collective noise of the party. Molly instead climbs the bell tower, which she rings repeatedly. This alerts Keri that something is wrong. She goes outside just in time to see the Shape throw Molly from the tower with a rope around her neck, killing her instantly.
Back at the dance, a mischievous freshman decides to retract the gym floor in hopes that partygoers will fall into the pool below. The floor retracts to reveal the swimmer’s corpse floating in crimson water. Pandemonium ensues inside the gym. Keri rushes home to get her gun, which is missing. She instead finds the mutilated corpse of Detective Blake in her bed with the missing Laurie Strode tombstone against the headboard. After evacuating the school, Keri locks the front gates, grabs a fire axe, and heads into the gym to confront her brother, who attacks her first. John shoots the Shape multiple times with his mother’s gun, knocking his uncle into the pool. He rushes to close the gym floor as the injured slasher struggles to exit the pool. Desperate, the Shape calls out a single word - “Laurie!” After a moment of stunned silence, she responds: “Michael... go to hell!” Keri then stabs a javelin through her brother’s heart as the gym floor closes overtop him, trapping the Shape in a watery grave.
With this Zappia/Williamson draft, the Halloween 7 script starts to resemble the Halloween H20 we know just a little more, particularly the ending. Whereas the Williamson treatment saw Keri attacked while trying to escape the school, this draft finds Keri confronting her brother with an axe after disabling the front gate (hence, The Revenge of Laurie Strode). This hits at the essence of what the eventual Halloween H20 is all about. After two decades of living in fear, the hunted becomes the hunter. Keri is leaving victimhood behind and empowering herself to face down her longtime tormentor. As for the Shape, Zappia’s characterization is a little more grounded in reality than previous drafts. Most importantly, he is no longer superhuman. His demise is also far less permanent here than getting chopped in half. The slasher’s sole line of dialogue in the finale, while a bold choice, would’ve surely proven controversial amongst fans.
Taking Shape Page 24
