Editorials
‘Halloween: The Missing Years’ Would’ve Explored Where Michael Was During ‘Halloween III’ [Phantom Limbs]
phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm’lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.
Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.
For this entry, we’ll be looking at Halloween: The Missing Years, an unproduced entry in the Halloween franchise that was meant to follow up 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection before Rob Zombie ultimately rebooted the series with his 2007 remake. Returning to Phantom Limbs is Jake Wade Wall, the screenwriter who previously discussed his unproduced sequel When a Stranger Returns, who was kind enough to chat about his involvement with The Missing Years for us. During this talk, Mr. Wall outlines the origins of this project, details its story, and discusses why this outing for The Shape ultimately never happened.
So where exactly did this particular project begin? “I had been hired to do a draft of Resurrection. I was working with an exec over there, Nick Phillips. We were both incredibly enthusiastic about the franchise, and really excited by it. We were just nerds about it, and would talk about Halloween constantly. We knew every character, every death. It’s one of my favorite franchises. After turning in Resurrection, I was told that there was kind of an internal, ‘Let’s press pause on where the franchise goes next’ [approach]. So I had come up with the idea for The Missing Years, and basically said, ‘Hey, it’s a completely different direction, but maybe this is the shot in the arm it needs to keep the franchise going, but in a different direction.’ They responded to my take, they hired me, and I wrote it. I was really excited about the prospect of that one. A year or two after finishing that script, it was decided internally, ‘No, let’s hire Rob and just do a remake.’ The Missing Years would have been the last of that franchise before it was remade.”
‘Halloween III: Season of the Witch’ (1982)
Mr. Wall continues, noting that this is the most he’s ever discussed this project and its story. “Halloween III was my inspiration. We have Halloween and Halloween II, and it’s Mike Myers, and it’s Laurie. Halloween III comes out in the theatres, and it has nothing to do with any of them. So then the franchise picks back up [with Halloween 4]. For years, I thought ‘Where was [Michael] that year? When we saw Season of the Witch, where did he go?’ So the whole concept of Halloween: The Missing Years, was to fill in where he was during Season of the Witch. That was the concept of, ‘How can we, for the diehard fans, tie Season of the Witch into the franchise?’
“The concept was this: If Halloween is ‘The Night He Came Home’, I started to think – ‘Wait a minute. Yeah, okay, that’s the night he came home. But his real home was the asylum. That’s where he really grew up.’ So the concept of The Missing Years was to begin the film by exploring a bit of his childhood in the asylum, and kind of fill in some of the pieces we didn’t know about him. Like, ‘Why specifically that mask?’, and just kind of fill in some of the fun lore that came specifically from that institution. So then the concept would be – cut to the present (back then, of course) when Season of the Witch is unfolding. I never did address it specifically, that film, but I filled in that there was a missing year that he didn’t come home, so where did he go? He went to Smith’s Grove. He went to his real home. He was returning back to what was essentially the place he grew up during his formative years. It was basically going to be him wreaking havoc on this asylum. It was a lot of fun. I thought it was an interesting, fun way for the Halloween nerds like me, the crazy fans to tie it all in and still establish a new home for Mike, a new place for him to wreak havoc.”
Had The Missing Years been made and proved to be a success, would there have a plan for more direct follow-ups? More “Missing Years” to explore? “That was precisely what we continuously racked our brains over. One school of thought was, ‘Oh, okay, we can now get four movies out of Mike Myers wreaking havoc in Smith’s Grove.’ There was also talk of specifically ending Missing Years where it completely lays the way for Halloween 4. There was talk to do it both ways. Since the script never got made, there’s no way of knowing what would’ve been agreed upon.” Would there have been an explanation as to what happened to him after the fiery conclusion of Halloween II? Would he have gotten another Shatner mask, or would he have been walking around maskless and burnt to a crisp? While Mr. Wall doesn’t go into great detail as to the story specifics, he does note that Michael would have been The Shape that we all know and love. “He did get the same mask back. It was too iconic not to. [But Halloween II’s ending and its fallout] was addressed.
The fiery conclusion of ‘Halloween II’ (1981)
“I took pieces – little sub-characters, little beats, moments that never got addressed for those of us that are avid fans – and thought, ‘Here are the breadcrumbs.’ So for me, the breadcrumbs that we were going to explore in the asylum years were the loose ends in all of the Halloweens that had been made up until that point. I wanted it to be a thread. It wasn’t arbitrary – ‘Oh, now we’re going to do some some asylum kills.’ I wanted to have a compelling reason for Smith’s Grove to also be a home for him. At the end of II, when he’s burnt and in need of real care, that’s what switches the psyche off. He knows where he can actually get care, and that’s his real home.”
Would the Thorn mythology from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, and the idea from that film that the doctors of Smith’s Grove were part of a cult that protected Michael, have played any role in The Missing Years? “I left that alone. Look, I’ve enjoyed every single one of the Halloween films, but I know that some of them can be polarizing for fans. So I wanted to stick with the mythology and the backstory that I found that the general audience wouldn’t find polarizing. The concept of ‘He’s pure evil’, for me, was enough. That’s what I always thought was so frightening about those films in the beginning. That, ‘Could someone literally just be born bad?’ I think that’s why people love those movies. He’s literally the Boogeyman. So I didn’t want to address [the Halloween 6 mythology]. But I will say this – in the script, we did play around with still going back to Haddonfield, where everyone is like ‘Oh god, it’s going to happen again.’ And I also wanted to trick the audience into thinking ‘Oh yes, it is.’ But oh no, they actually get a Halloween off. Everyone is pleasantly surprised while hell is happening in Smith’s Grove.”
A bandaged Myers in the opening moments of ‘Halloween 4’ (1988)
So without benefit of a Thorn cult awaiting him at the asylum, why was it that an injured Michael felt compelled to return to Smith’s Grove? “There was a nurse there, an RN, that he was very, very fond of. In the script, she was the one person that, for whatever reason, didn’t treat him like a monster. She treated him like a human. I thought that would be interesting to play with, that there is something within him that can remember kindness. Like I said before, ‘Can someone be purely evil?’ That’s the whole debate of a good horror film, and of Myers. And I just thought, if we were going to take the opportunity to fill in the missing year, and fill in the other half of his psyche, I thought it would be very interesting to play with ‘Could there be a bit of compassion in [him]?’ Now, as a fan? No. But in the movie, I wanted to play with that for a moment, at least.”
Given the timeline, would Sam Loomis have figured into the story? Or perhaps any other familiar characters from the earlier films? Were there any planned Easter eggs for fans of the franchise? “Oh, absolutely. Like I was saying before about the breadcrumbs. Loomis was in there. The EMT [Jimmy] from Halloween II. I took any one of the films up until this point where there had been a survivor, where they played some part in these missing years. That maybe or maybe not led to how they survived or why they survived. Or it could have been arbitrary. But I wanted to play with that concept.”
Would the film have been more of an exercise in suspense like the Carpenter original, or more of a bloodier slasher film like some of the later sequels? “I love that first film, and the suspense of it. My thought was, if we’re taking Michael Myers into a realm that we haven’t seen before – we’re gonna see him in the asylum, we’re gonna fill in these missing years, we’re gonna fill in what else was important to him, what else shaped him – I thought that would give us the opportunity to make it more suspenseful. Sometimes in slasher films, they can get redundant and it just becomes about the new clever death. Although I love those, and I wanted a couple of those in here, I thought it would give us an opportunity to lean into that approach and make it more suspenseful.”
The Shape in Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween’ (2007)
Ultimately, why did Dimension go forward with remaking the original Carpenter movie, as opposed to doing the prequel? “I do remember, with the execs that I was working with, there was some talk that they were going to go out to Rob Zombie to direct. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not. But from there it became, from the higher ups, ‘Let’s do a remake.’”
In finishing up our chat, Mr. Wall gave his final thoughts on this sadly unproduced film. “I just had a blast with it. I loved being able to have the freedom to say ‘I’m going to honor everyone else’, but I want to tell a different version of this man’s psyche. It was such an interesting exploration. No one experience makes or breaks us. It’s a multitude of experiences. So I thought very firmly that there was more that made Michael Myers who he was, and I really wanted to get into that.”
Very special thanks to Jake Wade Wall for his time and insights.
Additional thanks to BD reader DaikaijuX for the heads up on this story.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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