Halloween (film series)
Halloween is a commercially successful horror film series based on the 1978 film Halloween by John Carpenter . From 1981 to 2002 there were seven sequels , a remake (2007) and its sequel (2009). With the exception of one film in which Myers can only be seen as a cameo , all parts of the series accompany the serial killer Michael Myers in his story. 2018 saw the start of a new trilogy that takes place 40 years after the first part and ignores all other films.
Films in the series
| year | Movie | Director | script | Producers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Halloween - The night of horror | John Carpenter | Debra Hill & John Carpenter | Debra Hill & John Carpenter |
| 1981 | Halloween II - The horror returns | Rick Rosenthal | ||
| 1982 | Halloween III | Tommy Lee Wallace | ||
| 1988 | Halloween IV - Michael Myers returns | Dwight H. Little | Alan B. McElroy | Paul Freeman |
| 1989 | Halloween V - The Revenge of Michael Myers | Dominique Othenin-Girard | Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard & Shem Bitterman | Ramsey Thomas |
| 1995 | Halloween VI - The Curse of Michael Myers | Joe Chappelle | Daniel Farrands | Paul Freeman |
| 1998 | Halloween H20 | Steve Miner | Robert Zapia & Matt Greenberg | |
| 2002 | Halloween: Resurrection | Rick Rosenthal | Larry Brand & Sean Hood | Paul Freeman & Michael Leahy |
| 2007 | Halloween | Rob zombie | Malek Akkad, Andy Gould & Rob Zombie | |
| 2009 | Halloween II | |||
| 2018 | Halloween | David Gordon Green | David Gordon Green & Danny McBride | Jason Blum , Malek Akkad & John Carpenter |
| 2021 | Halloween kills | David Gordon Green, Danny McBride & Scott Teems | Jason Blum, Malek Akkad & Bill Block | |
| 2022 | Halloween Ends | David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Paul Brad Logan & Chris Bernier | ||
history
The first and second films deal with Michael Myers and focus on Halloween night of 1978. After the two commercially very successful parts, the decision was made to move away from the character of Michael Myers and to make a separate (horror) film every Halloween to produce with a closed end. Part 3 is a story with elements of science fiction film about a factory that makes deadly Halloween masks. The film flopped, however, and the character of Michael Myers was brought back into the series.
The director Dwight H. Little staged the return of Michael Myers with the fourth part of the Halloween series. Two films followed in which Myers tried to kill his niece Jamie Lloyd. She has a baby at the beginning of the sixth part. Myers kills his niece, but she has kept her baby safe for the time being. He then goes on a search for the child. These three films represent a kind of trilogy within the film series . John Carpenter and Debra Hill already sold their rights to producer Moustapha Akkad during the preproduction of part 4 , because he did not like their idea for a continuation of the series.
After the sixth film, which points in a new direction, and the death of Donald Pleasence , who played the leading role of Dr. Sam Loomis played if you wanted to go in a new direction again. The seventh part followed in 1998, ignoring the previous three sequels and building on the second film from 1981. Instead of a “7” in the title, “H20”, pronounced “Age-Twenty”, was chosen to represent Halloween: 20 years later , to underline the non-connection with the previous sequels.
At the time, H20 should be the last film in the series. But since it was a commercial success, it was decided to make another film. The very plausible end of the seventh part was explained with an unconvincing representation and Jamie Lee Curtis was once again able to slip into her star role of Laurie Strode . After the opening sequence with the flashback to the seventh film, the plot is moved to Myers' family house, where the mask killer begins to murder candidates on a reality show .
A remake of the first film entitled Halloween was released in American cinemas on August 31, 2007. The director , screenwriter and film composer for this project is Rob Zombie . The German theatrical release was on October 25, 2007.
On August 28, 2009, the sequel to Rob Zombies Halloween ran in American cinemas. Halloween II follows on from the end of the first part, but bears no resemblance to Halloween 2 from 1981, as it continues after only a few minutes in the following year.
Shortly after the sequel Halloween II hit theaters in the US, there were rumors about a 3D sequel to the series. a. Director Patrick Lussier has been linked. After discarding this idea, they first planned a new film called Halloween Returns , which was supposed to be a direct sequel to the original from 1978. All other films would have been ignored in terms of content. These plans also failed in this form.
In 2018, another part of the series was released with Halloween , which, like the script for Halloween Returns, only follows on from the original from 1978 and also ignores all other sequels, but its content differs significantly from the plot of the never-released sequel.
Michael Myers
Michael Myers always wears a white William Shatner mask and dark overalls ; he doesn't speak a single word. Its movement appears mysterious, as it approaches its victims very slowly and without haste, who should actually be able to escape easily. Outside of the camera or during a cut, however, he often changes his position superhumanely quickly and silently. He kills most of his victims with a long kitchen knife. His fictional story can be reconstructed as follows: Michael Audrey Myers was born on October 19, 1957 in the fictional town of Haddonfield, which, due to a few sparse references in the films, would have been about 5 km northeast of Pontiac (Illinois) . On a cold Halloween night in 1963, the six-year-old boy murdered his 17-year-old sister Judith Margaret Myers with a kitchen knife after she had sexual contact with her boyfriend. He is then banished to Smith's Grove Sanitarium , where he will spend the next 15 years of his life. He is silent the whole time, is listless and untreatable. On October 30, 1978, he managed to escape: he stole a car and escaped Smith's Grove . He returns to his idyllic hometown of Haddonfield and starts a bloody rampage on October 31, 1978 (Halloween).
Michael Myers and his deaths
Michael Myers escapes death in every Halloween film (with the exception of Part 3, the content of which is decoupled from the other films). Often it is fought or "killed" in a way that a normal mortal person would have no chance of survival. Myers isn't to be killed in terms of sequels. This is a crucial difference to Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees (the protagonists of other famous horror series that were inspired by Halloween), who only achieved their immortality after death. He is portrayed as " evil personified " that cannot be killed. This becomes particularly clear in the seventh film when his sister Laurie Strode does not stop at an attempt to kill Myers: She wants to make sure that he is dead and at the end of the film beheads him with an ax. In the sequel, Strode is in a mental hospital at his own request . The story was tweaked so that it wasn't Myers who was beheaded. Myers escaped by disguising a medic as himself and crushing his larynx, making it impossible for the medic to speak. But Laurie Strode is sure that her brother somehow managed to escape and that he is still after her. And she is right: he shows up again for Halloween and this time she faces him to kill him for good.
The following section lists all of Myers' deaths throughout the Halloween franchise:
- In the first film, Myers is attacked by Laurie Strode (a nanny targeted by the "Shadows") with a knitting needle in his neck, a clothes hanger in his eye and a kitchen knife in his chest. After he gets up again, Dr. Loomis put six bullets in the chest and he rushes from the balcony on the first floor into the front yard. When Loomis and Strode check to see if he's really dead, Myers' supposed corpse has disappeared.
- Laurie Strode, who turns out to be Myers' biological sister during the film, has been admitted to the local hospital after her brother's attacks. But Myers is not dead and manages to track her down. She manages to kill the mass murderer with Dr. Shoot Loomis - the Myers psychiatrist - in both eyes. Finally, Loomis succeeds in exposing himself and Myers to an alleged flame death through a gas explosion in the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital .
- Myers survived the explosion in the second film and is to be transported to another hospital. During the ambulance, however, he escapes and goes in search of his niece Jamie Lloyd, who is his last blood relative after the accidental death of Laurie Strode. Rachel Carruthers, Jamie's stepsister, injures Myers when she suddenly stops him and knocks him off the car he was holding onto. Myers gets up and Rachel drives over to ram him. He lies there motionless, but wakes up again and is shot by the "State Police". He falls backwards into a pit.
- Michael Myers did not die after his fall and the shooting and in the fifth film he can save himself by escaping through a river. He remains unconscious for a year, but on Halloween he regains his strength and goes to look for his niece again. Towards the end of the film, Myers is caught in a net and taken by Dr. Loomis shot at with stun ammunition (which turned out to be ineffective) and dealt with several blows with a thick wooden board. The "Black Man", another character in the film series who works with Myers, frees Michael Myers from the prison he was taken to. Jamie also disappears without a trace.
- The sixth part is characterized by its various cuts. In the normal theatrical version, which was also released on DVD in Germany , Michael Myers is also beaten numerous times on the head by Tommy Doyle until the mass murderer is apparently beaten. Dr. Loomis returns to the scene and is killed by Myers. All you can hear is the desperate screams of the psychiatrist off-screen. Other cuts, such as the “Producer's Cut”, which is more popular with fans, show what the theatrical version only hinted at: Loomis returns and sees Myers lying on the floor. He goes to him and takes the mask off, but there is no Myers under the mask. In one of the last scenes of the film, the mass murderer escapes in the disguise of the "black man".
- Laurie Strode only faked her fatal traffic accident and lives under a false name in California. Myers goes in search of her and finally finds her - despite her new identity. Towards the end of the seventh film, Michael Myers is apparently killed by Laurie Strode, but she suspects that he cannot be dead yet. She drives away with the hearse he is lying in, to kill him once and for all and to find out for herself. When he wakes up in the car, she maneuvers the car down a slope. Both survive this accident. Squeezed between a tree and the car, he gesticulates to Laurie Strode to rescue him. But she knows that he has to die and beheads him with an ax.
- Myers managed to escape by putting on a paramedic's clothes and crushing his larynx so he couldn't speak. Strode is now in a mental hospital. She knows her brother is still not dead. Myers manages to get to her. Strode, however, is waiting for him. When trying to finish him off for good, she fails. Towards the end of the film, a cable from a digital camera is put around his neck, then he is kicked through a window in his family house by the protagonist Freddy and hangs on the outside wall with the cable around his neck. When Freddy and his girlfriend Sarah look out the window, Myers is gone; he cut the cable and is already back in the house. He later becomes tangled up in a network of power cables while the garage he's in burns down. Myers is pronounced dead again at the end of the film, but opens his eyes in the pathology.
- In the remake , the history of Myers is examined in more detail. He kills the entire family and his other sister's boyfriend except for his mother (who later kills herself) and his little sister. He's going to a sanatorium . There he stops speaking and devotes himself entirely to the production of masks which, in his opinion, cover his ugly face. The psychiatrist Dr. Loomis takes care of him and tries - albeit unsuccessfully - to treat him. A good 15 years later, when he was to be transferred to a new mental hospital, he managed to escape. He is looking for his little sister in his hometown of Haddonfield, whom he can ultimately track down. He kills his little sister's girlfriends and stepparents. He kidnaps her and takes her to a basement. There he takes off the mask (probably in the expectation that she will recognize him). She tries to kill him, which she fails. She escapes and falls into an empty swimming pool. Dr. Loomis rushes to her aid and tries to shoot him. Myers apparently drops dead, and the two leave the scene. Later, when the two are sitting in a car, Myers comes back and pulls them out of the car. The psychiatrist intervenes and manages to get Myers to let go of his little sister. Michael seriously wounds the psychiatrist. In the end, Laurie apparently missed Michael a shot in the head.
- In the second part of the remake, Michael Myers is shot at by police forces in the last scene while trying to kill his sister. He is hit by several bullets. In the final sequence Michael lies motionless on the floor.
- In the 2018 film, which ignores all parts except the first from 1978, Laurie Strode and her and her daughter succeed in setting a trap for Michael Myers in the basement of Strode's house. Michael will be locked up in a kind of dungeon and possibly burned alive. His death is not shown in the picture.
actor
particularities
The Halloween “Main Title” piece of music is a creation by John Carpenter.
Books
In October 2013, the complete story about the franchise was published with the book Halloween: The Complete Authorized History .
Individual evidence
- ↑ hollywoodreporter.com, accessed September 15, 2017
- ↑ a b The Halloween Movies - An Unstoppable Force - Neon Zombie! In: Neon Zombie! July 9, 2018 ( neon-zombie.net [accessed July 9, 2018]).
- ↑ Bruce Fretts: 'Halloween' at 40: Their 'Horrible Idea' Became a Horror Classic. The New York Times , October 11, 2018, accessed August 10, 2019 .
- ↑ Halloween: The Complete History ... The Night He Came Home in Print October 2013!
Web links
- Official website
- Halloween on John Carpenter's official website