In the early 1990s, as one Hollywood phenom began to fall, another one was rising. And for a brief moment, they crossed paths.John Carpenter’sHalloweenis one of the most influential horror films ever made. It may not be the first slasher movie ever made, but it popularized the subgenre and gave way to the slasher boom of the 1980s. After five movies, each worse than the one before, the franchise started off the decade on life support. As Michael Myers fell,Quentin Tarantinowas on the rise as Hollywood’s new “it” boy. In 1992,Tarantino wrote and directed his first feature,Reservoir Dogs, and the following yearhe penned the screenplay forTony Scott’sTrue Romance. Around this time,Tarantino was turned to as a choice to bring back the Boogeyman forHalloween 6. Tarantino took a stab at it, with an idea so wild that it’s probably a good thing it never got made.
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
The firstHalloween, released in 1978, set the template of the classic slasher. Sure,there had been influential slashers before likePsycho,Black Christmas, andThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but John Carpenter’s vision is the blueprint for the subgenre as we know it today.Halloweenwas also a uniquely chilling horror experience because it felt too close to home. While you could survive those other movies if you just stayed away from roadside motels, sorority houses, and weird Texas hitchhikers,Halloweenwas terrifying because the Boogeyman was in the shadows of suburbia, right at your back door.Halloweenalso worked because its villain, Michael Myers, wasn’t some raving lunatic with mommy issues, but a faceless entity in a mask whomoved like a ghost without a single word or motivation.
Halloween’s success led to the 1980s being led by crazed men hacking up teenagers. To stay with the frenzied pace of theFriday the 13thand later theNightmare on Elm Streetfranchises,Halloweencouldn’t be a slow-burn horror film anymore, but something shocking with a high body count.InHalloween II, many more people die in bloodier ways, andJohn Carpenter made the fateful choice to give Michael Myers a reason for his madness. As it turned out, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) wasn’t just an unlucky young woman picked at random,but the sister sister of Michael. That stripped away the fear, because now, as long as you weren’t related to the Boogeyman or friends with someone who was, you were safe.
Many fans didn’t like the shocking twist, with even Quentin Tarantino tellingConsequencein 2019 that it was a horrible idea that ruined the franchise, adding, “I think they just yanked some idea out of their ass, alright, and they just talked themselves into ‘Hey, well, this is why…’ and now part two has a reason.” This choice left the Halloween franchise stuck creatively.AfterHalloween III: Season of the Witch, a sequel without The Shape, flopped, Myers had to return, but he spent two straight movies, 1988’sHalloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and 1989’sHalloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, stalking his young niece, Jamie (Danielle Harris). The plots were boring,the mask had become hilariously awful, and worst of all perhaps,the fifth film ends with a mysterious man in black breaking Myers out of jail, a character created without even knowing who he was, leaving it to be someone else’s problem to figure out forHalloween 6.
Quentin Tarantino Would Have Taken ‘Halloween 6’ in a Wild Direction
Halloween 5was a box office disaster,making just $11 million at cinemas. As the ’80s came to an end, the slasher fad was over, later to be reignited in 1996 withWes Craven’sScream, but one year earlier, the Boogeyman made a comeback with 1995’sHalloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.Notable only for being the first moviePaul Ruddever filmed, and the last performance ofDonald Pleasence, who passed away during reshoots, the sixthHalloweenfailed just as badly as the previous one,taking in only $15 million. You can blame much of that onthe bizarre plot of Michael being controlled by the man in black and a cult, with The Shape no longer being a boogeyman, but a force powered by a supernatural trigger. Part of this even meant Michael trying to kill his own infant son, who was birthed by a held hostage Jamie (yeah, don’t ask).Halloweenhad gotten so out of control that three years later, Jamie Lee Curtis came back forHalloween H20,a movie that erased all the bad sequels afterHalloween 2.
This Scrapped Halloween Sequel Turned Laurie Strode Into Michael Myers
Final girl gone bad?
If you thought that was an insane plot, when Quentin Tarantino was offered a chance to write the film, his idea was just as far out there. He told Consequence that it was his job to figure out who the man in black was,long before it was decided that he was the head of the Cult of Thorn. Tarantino said, “And so the only thing that I had in my mind — I still hadn’t figured out who that dude was — was like the first 20 minutes would have been theLee Van Cleefdude and Michael Myers on the highway, on the road, and they stop at coffee shops and shit and wherever Michael Myers stops, he kills everybody. So, they’re like leaving a trail of bodies on Route 66.” And if you’re wondering, yes, Michael Myers would have done all of thiswhile wearing his painted white William Shatner mask.
You Can See Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Halloween’ Ideas in ‘Natural Born Killers’
Quentin Tarantino told Consequence that theHalloweensequels andHalloween 2’s sibling reveal were “horrible,“saying, “He’s just The Shape. There’s something far more scary that he’s going through Haddonfield and it’s just her.” Not understanding whatHalloweenis really about is why nearly every sequel has failed.Rob Zombie’s reboots gave Michael a motive as well, with his madness created by being a bullied kid from the worst family ever.Halloween H20andHalloween(2018) were the only big successes because they went back to basics, stripping away nearly everything except a silent madman in the shadows stalking the ultimate final girl. It’s about the atmosphere, the realism, and the fear of the unknown, not the wild plots and gory kills.Michael Myers on a road trip killing people would have been insane to see, but it would also have gone against everything Michael Myers is. Could you ever see him with a friend, going on a buddy trip together killing people? As brilliant as Tarantino is, if this movie had been made, it would have been the worst idea yet and may have derailed his career before it even got started. Even cults are pretty normal compared to the Boogeyman seeing the country in his friend’s car.
If that plot sounds familiar, though, it’s because it’s very reminiscent of another film Tarantino wrote the initial story for,1994’sNatural Born Killers, directed byOliver Stone, about psychopaths Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis), who go on a cross-country killing spree, including at a diner.Stone’s film goes beyond the blood to deliver a message about the media’s glorification of violence, but we can only guess what the message of aHalloween 6with Michael Myers on a murder spree road trip would have been, other than to say that Hollywood will do anything to make a few bucks off an existing IP. Thankfully, we’ll never know. Instead,Michael Myers had himself a cloned baby with his niece and then tried to kill it. Who would have ever thought that it could have been worse?
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myersis available to watch on Paramount+ in the U.S.
