Resurrection’s original ending contained some much-needed gravitas with Busta Rhymes reaching deep for his character’s apology to Sara. After all, Freddie is ultimately responsible for everything terrible that has happened this evening. No, he didn’t know people would die, but it was clearly a poor idea to exploit a serial killer’s homestead for financial gain.
ALTERNATE ENDINGS
In total, the filmmakers captured three different endings during the winter reshoots, all of which were screened for test audiences. The first was the aforementioned morgue conclusion in which the Shape somehow springs back to life before the film cuts to credits. The second ending saw CSI technicians rummaging through the smoking ashes of the Myers house. (Fun fact: Shape actor Brad Loree appears in CSI duds and even delivers a line of dialogue.) As a female technician shines a light into the tunnel beneath the Myers house, the Shape jumps put to grab her – cut to credits as she screams. The third and final ending expanded the moment where Freddie and Sara view the Shape’s charred corpse. After being called a “chicken-fried motherfucker,” the Shape jolts back to life and begins to choke Freddie. Sara steps in to deliver a fire axe to the Shape’s face, seemingly killing him once again.
Of these new endings, the third is the most problematic. For starters, Freddie’s left arm is nonsensically bandaged. The tourniquet is actually tied directly on the spot where he was twice stabbed. Both this and the morgue ending also mark the second time in consecutive sequels that first-responders have body-bagged a not quite dead Shape. (Pulse and respirations are not that difficult to detect.) Lastly, this ending sorely lacks some desperately needed dramatic weight. Eight people were just murdered inside the Myers house and yet Freddie still manages a toothy grin when complimenting Sara’s axe skills: “You big, ass-kicking, ball busting chick!” You might think Freddie would dial it back a bit since he had friends among the eight people just murdered, his business is likely ruined, and he could be somehow liable, but no. There does exist a deleted scene from the reshoots wherein Freddie apologizes to Sara similar to how he did in the original ending. “I would give back every single dollar I ever made to take this all back.” It’s a genuine moment, something that was sorely missing in the actual ending.
Rick Rosenthal originally wanted to send Resurrection out with all three finales attached. Per his plan, theaters would receive a different ending at random. The hope was that audiences would go see the film multiple times to experience all three endings, not unlike how Paramount sent 1985’s Clue out with three randomized endings. (Fun fact: Clue was produced by Debra Hill.) The studio rejected this idea, however, and went with the morgue ending on all prints.
DELETED SCENES
Resurrection boasts a slew of deleted scenes, some of which are glimpsed in trailers, others on home video, and additionally in a pair of leaked workprints. Theatrically, the sequel opens at Grace Andersen Sanitarium. The originally-filmed opening consisted of grainy home video of the Myers family set to Shelley Fabares’ “Johnny Angel.” The footage includes both parents, young Judith, and baby Laurie. An adolescent Michael can be seen off to the side, signaling that he doesn’t wish to be filmed. He eventually turns around and delivers a chilling stare into the camera. (Another fun fact: Young Michael was played by Gary J. Clayton, son of Donna Keegan, longtime stunt double of Jamie Lee Curtis.)
Theatrically, we first meet Freddie and Nora during contestant interviews at the motel. An earlier cut saw them introduced while appearing on a talk show to promote Dangertainment. The Nora character appeared in two other cut scenes – one setting up the control room inside the Myers’ garage and another depicting her strangulation by the Shape. The filmmakers later removed her death scene to enhance the shock of Sara finding her corpse near film’s end.
One of Resurrection’s more infamous deleted scenes revealed how the Shape made it back to Haddonfield. Stalking through a forest, he comes across a couple having sex in a tent. Outside their campsite sits a red 1967 Pontiac Firebird, which the Shape steals. The couple rush out to discover the theft with the girl remarking, “My boyfriend is going to be so pissed. He really loves that car!” In a small but humorous detail, the couple’s clothes can be seen still on the hood as the Shape speeds away.
“This scene was eventually cut because it was deemed too sexually explicit for the tastes of executive producer Moustapha Akkad,” Sean Hood tells. “Frankly, the scene was a bit too humorous for the tone of a Halloween film. However, as a practical joke, Rick Rosenthal told Mr. Akkad that they had re-cut the scene to tone down the sexuality. Then, with an earnest expression, he showed him the revised sequence in which he had inserted a short clip from the hardcore movie Caligula. Mr. Akkad nearly fell out of his chair!”
This was to be followed by another deleted scene wherein Michael returns home after having killed Laurie. Parking the Firebird outside the Myers house, he would pause ominously to look upon his rundown abode. The scene is played straight until we hear the high-pitched ‘click-click’ of the Shape locking the car using the key remote – spoiling what might’ve been an eerie moment for comedy. While scenes involving the Firebird were ultimately cut, there remains a brief reference to it in the final film. Nora to Freddie: “There was this Firebird parked in front of the house. It was totally about to ruin the establishing shot, but I called a tow truck.”
Theatrically, Resurrection moves quickly in order to reach the start of the webcast. This meant losing some smaller moments. One cutscene followed the female participants shopping for new clothes to wear during the webcast. Another would’ve introduced Daisy McCrackin’s Donna earlier with an homage to Psycho: “It was supposed to be like somebody playing a prank on me while I’m taking a shower,” the actress told the Halloween Daily News site. “I’m getting ready to get in the shower and I’m being watched through the window, so it seems ominous and scary, but it turns out to be just like a college kid and not Michael Myers, but that got cut out.”
One of longer deleted scenes included a nearly four-minute montage of contestant interviews prior to the webcast. These were played for comedic effect and established most of the participants as slasher fodder. (Sara is the only one not to come off as a complete caricature.) By scene’s end, Freddie is deeply concerned over the quality of their contestants, telling Nora, “This is not good. You rounded up a bunch of airheads.” She then defends her choices. This sequence still appears in the final film, albeit heavily trimmed down for pacing reasons.
This was to be followed by a brief scene at the hotel where Sara regrets getting involved with the webcast, citing an unspecified fear. A self-absorbed Jen barely listens and write’s off Sara’s concerns as mere stage fright. This moment was replaced in the final film with the reshoot scene in which Sara knocks on Freddie’s door to announce her departure from the webcast.
As previously mentioned, Resurrection’s original ending saw Deckard showing up at the Myers house to pull Sara from the garage fire. This begs the question – how did he manage to find and travel to the Myers house so quickly? This detail was addressed in a deleted scene set just before the webcast began. Deckard and his friend bike to the Myers house together and scope out the Dangertainment crew unloading their equipment.
In a later cutscene, Sara, Jen, and Rudy discover an alarming photo album inside the Myers house. Contained within are vintage photos of Michael’s childhood – including disturbing images of him chained up as a boy. For those tuned into the Dangertainment broadcast, this ties into Freddie’s hook to find “clues that might explain why Michael Myers went bad.” Like most everything else in the house, however, this photo album is patently fake. In actuality, there is no reason why Michael “went bad” other than that he is the ultimate boogeyman. The filmmakers nixed this scene over concerns that it might somehow humanize the Shape despite being revealed as fake later on. Speaking on the film’s DVD, Rosenthal notes: “There was a strong feeling that to humanize the boogeyman was to rob the dark malevolent side of him and take away his
power.”
WRITTEN BUT NOT FILMED
One of Larry Brand’s earliest visual concepts for Halloween: Resurrection ventured into the meta and, unfortunately, never made it to the big screen. While headed home from Grace Andersen Sanitarium, the Shape was to pass beneath a large advertisement promoting the Dangertainment webcast. The billboard depicts a giant white mask alongside the words, ‘Secrets of the Myers House Revealed. Tomorrow Night. Live.’ The Shape pauses beneath the display, “seemingly frozen,” while doing the famous head-tilt from the original film. This moment recalls a similar scene with fellow slasher Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Had it been included, this moment would have changed the story quite a bit. Theatrically, the Shape has no prior knowledge of his uninvited houseguests before they barge into his family home. As first written, he would have been anticipating their arrival thanks to the aforementioned billboard. Brand further envisioned the Shape tracking the participants to their hotel in the stolen Firebird the night before Halloween. Of the six contestants, only Sara would have the vaguest sense that they were being watched by some unseen force.
If you’ve ever wondered why Sara only ever uses her Palm Pilot to text Deckard for help and not her phone to, say, call the police, there was originally an in-story reason for that. In an attempt to keep ringtones from “blowing the atmospherics,” Freddie forces everyone to leave their cell phones in the Dangertainment van outside the Myers house, himself included. The idea was to depict the webcasters as truly helpless, locked inside the Shape’s home with Deckard as their only hope. This important detail was left out of the final film.
Prior to the casting of Busta Rhymes, the Freddie Harris character was not intended to survive the film. His death came with a twist, however, in that he wasn’t offed by the Shape. Freddie was instead killed by Jim, who mistook him for the real slasher and bashed in his skull with a baseball bat. A stunned Jim would have little time to reflect on his actions as the real Michael Myers was to appear a moment later. Per this early script, the Shape was to jam the baseball bat into Jim’s mouth - handle first - and out through the back of his head in what would surely rate as the sequel’s goriest kill.
Noticeably absent from both H20 and Resurrection was Donald Pleasence’s doom-prophesizing psychiatrist. H20 originally featured a detective subplot to fill this void, though it was cut mere weeks before filming began. Resurrection also featured a detective subplot as first written, though this too was cut early in the development process. The original story saw Detective Jeb Donaldson (named in tribute to Pleasence) assigned to investigate Laurie Strode’s suspicious death at the sanitarium. The obvious suspect appears to be fellow patient Harold due to his penchant for escaping the facility and obsession with serial killers, but Donaldson isn’t convinced of his guilt. He travels to Haddonfield, arriving at the Myers house during the webcast, and hears screams coming from within. Drawing his firearm, Donaldson breaks into the house and comes face to face with the Shape, momentarily stunning him. Michael quickly grabs his gun hand, turns the weapon around, and fires it into Donaldson’s chest. This sends the detective flying back against the wall. We later learn that he survived this attack thanks to a bullet-proof vest.
Detective Donaldson also figured into the first ending considered for Halloween: Resurrection. Speaking with Sara and Deckard as firemen extinguish the flames, he’s concerned that they have yet to find Michael’s charred corpse. He turns around to find the Shape behind him, blade raised in the air. This turns out to be a kid with a rubber knife that snuck past police and whose father immediately grabs him away. Donaldson breathes a sigh of relief, but then notices another Shape standing off in the distance. Drawing his gun, he notices yet another Shape. And another. Per the script: “Suddenly the Shape is everywhere. We see Michael Myers all around us, a sea of masks, white faces and dark jumpsuits in the crowd, on the street. Is one of them real? Is he escaping in a sea of imitators?” The filmmakers would jettison this ambiguous ending for the surprise shocker finish at the morgue.
“Donald Pleasence added gravity and class to the Halloween films,” Sean Hood says. “Rick Rosenthal suggested that some lost footage of Loomis from the original Halloween be incorporated into Resurrection. I believe the footage showed Loomis speaking about Michael Myers, arguing that the boy be kept locked away forever. Unfortunately, the footage never quite fit into the movie and was ultimately left out. One of the reasons we cut Donaldson was that the character came across as a pale imitation of Loomis. I can assure you that both Pleasence and Loomis were present in our minds while making Halloween 8.”
INTERVIEW: Larry Brand
(Larry Brand: Writer - H8)
How did you come to write Halloween: Resurrection?
I shared an agent with Paul Freeman, who had produced some of the Halloweens beginning with Halloween 4. I had written a little indie art film that was all dialogue. It was probably one of the least commercial scripts I’ve ever done. My agent showed it to Paul and he showed it to Malek Akkad, who loved it. Malek then showed it to his father. I’m not sure how much of it Moustapha really got since English was his second language and my script was this intensely overwritten poetic exercise, but he brought me in to discuss it. He was very flattering. For me, this is an example of why you should always write about what is meaningful to you. Don’t try to anticipate what’s going to wind up getting made, just write something meaningful. I basically wrote that script just for me and it wound up leading to the biggest job I ever had.
So Moustapha had called me in to see if I had any ideas for Halloween 8 and I did. I had been working on this concept about the role of media in blurring the line between what’s real and not real. There were these shows like Big Brother and The Real World where they’d put cameras in a house or apartment and record the people inside. That’s a fairly conventional thing. But what if a killer came to one of these houses? The people watching at home wouldn’t know if the murders were real or not. My idea was a play on reality television.
My first job in show business was being a driver for the great Orson Welles. I was always a huge fan of his War of the Worlds broadcast, this massive prank he pulled at Halloween in 1938. He convinced the listening audience that something fake was actually real. With Halloween 8, I wanted to do a reversal on that. What if we now took something real and people thought it was fake? I didn’t originally think of this as a Halloween movie or even a slasher. I thought it might’ve been a cool thriller. I pitched this to Moustapha using Michael Myers instead of some random killer. Out of that idea, I suggested we possibly set it inside Michael’s home in Haddonfield. It all evolved from there. So originally, the idea had nothing to do with Michael. It was just going to be about a killer inside a house with cameras.
If nothing else, that’s a clever concept.
Thanks. This may sound weird coming from the guy who wrote Halloween: Resurrection, but I have standards when I write. To make movies that are exactly the same as other movies is boring to me. The other thing I don’t like is making movies that aren’t about something. And that something isn’t the plot. Movies need to make a statement about something social or cultural or personal. Take my first movie from 1987, The Drifter. It’s not just about a guy stalking women. That’s the plot, sure, but the movie is about something else. It’s really about what we consider normal and sane within personal interactions of that period. Plot is just a device that sells your script and gets asses into seats, but in some ways it’s the least interesting part of a movie.
What’s Halloween: Resurrection really about? I’d like to think it was about how we deal with reality that is mediated through some platform whether it’s television or the internet. It’s about the sometimes-narrow dividing line between what’s real and what’s fake. I can’t claim any great originality in that, though. Orson Welles did F for Fake, which preceded Resurrection with a lot of these themes. Of course, Resurrection still had to work as a horror film and as a Halloween film. I co
uldn’t expect an audience on 42nd Street to be sitting there thinking about how our lives are mediated through media. They can still enjoy it as a slasher film, but there’s also something else there for people to look at a little more closely.
How much did your original vision for Resurrection change throughout development?
A lot. It changed a lot. The final film is quite different from my original concept. It had already evolved so much before Sean Hood got involved. Once he took over, it evolved even more. Some of my plot threads are still there, but they’re not the same. My original vision was a little more deconstructive. Sean would call it postmodern, but I consider myself philosophically post-postmodern. How much latitude do you have to be artistic on a film like Halloween: Resurrection? Not much. I guess I was overly optimistic or outright deluded to think that more of my original draft might reach the big screen. But this was a studio movie, which meant the things I find interesting typically don’t survive that long.
Whitney Ransick was originally attached to direct. Do you recall his involvement?
I do, but I don’t want to say anything bad about him. I will say that there was a point where he asked me to have a cat jump out and startle someone. Needless to say, I was not going to be doing that because it’s the most obvious cliché in the history of the horror film. If someone was going to write that into Halloween: Resurrection, it wasn’t going to be me. But it led to an interesting concept. I had a scene of a cat walking down an alley and a person emerges from the dark to scare the cat. Now that was kind of cool and about as deconstructionist as you get. That’s where you take a cliché and turn it around 180 degrees. The person startles the cat rather than the cat startling the person. But the concept didn’t survive, which was no surprise given the studio involved. The reputation of Bob Weinstein, who was running Dimension at the time, was not that of a high brow intellectual. His reputation is that of a moron. I guess I’m actually referring to his underlings that read stuff and give him notes because I’m not sure he can actually read, let alone sit through a hundred-odd page script.
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