The subtitle of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers alluded to the supernatural aspect of the franchise's iconic killer, but also to the troubled production the crew had to face while making the sequel, making it into a clever inside joke. Like many other popular horror franchises, the plot of each Halloween sequel struggled to match the success of previous installments in the series. Although not as unintentionally comedic, Halloween 6 suffered some of the same issues as Jason X and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, as it introduced blunt twists on the Halloween mythos with the sole purpose of extending Michael Myers' killing spree.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers reveals the existence of "Thorn," an ancient Druidic curse where one child from each tribe was chosen to sacrifice its closest living blood relative during Halloween. Now allied with the Cult of Thorn, Michale Myers goes on another grisly rampage. This time, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has allied with Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd), a survivor from the vents of the first Halloween, to defeat the cult and Michael Myers for good.
The Curse of Michael Myers sounds like a straightforward subtitle for Halloween 6's contrived plot. However, it also references the real-life curse that followed the movie on every stage of production. The Curse of Michael Myers was born out of legal and logistical problems. At the time, the franchise was changing hands after Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and facing legal battles that prevented the sixth installment from being produced in time. Desperate to meet deadlines, Miramax sought top-of-the-line creatives to develop the sequel, including Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel, original Halloween director John Carpenter, and legendary director Quentin Tarantino. However, none of their scripts made sense within continuity, until Halloween 6 finally struck gold with long-time fan Daniel Farrands.
With Farrands' love for the franchise, Halloween 6 was on track to become a faithful continuation to the previous movies. Danielle Harris wanted to reprise her role as Jamie Lloyd and Brian Andrews was set to reprise his role as Tommy Doyle, but a lack of executive flexibility quickly shut down their negotiations. Similarly, the movie lost Howard Stern as DJ Barry Sims and horror legend Christopher Lee as Dr. Terence Wynn — and the "curse" was just starting. Miramax executives tried to replace Kara Strode actor Marianne Hagan for her appearance. Farrands defended her, but Michael Myers actor George P. Wilbur didn't count with the same luck, as he was replaced after reshoots for being "too bulky", according to director Joe Chappelle. This, in turn, caused multiple continuity errors in the final product.
The start of principal photography only made the curse more evident. For starters, a winter snowstorm aggravated the already tight deadlines. In an effort to prevent further complications, producer Paul Freeman made drastic changes to the script that eventually snowballed into Halloween 6's last-minute reshoots. He rewrote large portions of the movie, scrapped entire scenes, removed characters with the actors still on-set, and took over a major part of the production. The writer, director, and producers fought to develop their respective ideas, and if it wasn't enough, the movie was rushed into reshoot treatment after a single negative test screening. The reshoots aimed to tweak the focus on Loomis, but Donald Pleasence, unfortunately, passed away at the time.
The real-life curse of The Curse of Michael Myers came to an end with the loss of part of the footage (which has since been recovered and compiled as "The Producer's Cut"), and negative reviews. Writer Daniel Farrands gave his last contribution to the film when he joked about naming it Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers — perhaps the only idea that didn't meet any obstacle. The most disheartening part of the curse is that the movie didn't fail because the filmmakers didn't try, but because they were constantly tormented and ultimately defeated by a better curse than the one they created for Michael Myers.
