When Trancas International Films, director Dwight H. Little and producer Moustapha Akkad made Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers in 1988, I’m sure they had no idea that fourteen years later, another, lesser known Halloween 4 would be made, along with a Halloween 5 and, a year later, Halloween 9.
The creator of these pieces of film history?
Me.
Because, in the case of 4 and 5, I had no idea that they already existed.
I don’t deride fan fiction.
It is what it is, and I used to do it. But rather than focus on typical fan fiction concepts like shipping two cartoon characters together or having Picard meet Han Solo, I put my efforts into horror movie fan fiction, most specifically the Halloween franchise.
I’d first seen John Carpenter’s Halloween in 4th grade, and it was my favorite film for the next three years.
However, after viewing the first, I only got around the seeing the next two, Halloween 2 and the entry entirely unrelated to the rest of the series, Halloween: Season of the Witch. I didn’t know that there were Halloween films after that.
Halloween 2 ended with Michael Myers burning on a hospital floor.
The bogeyman couldn’t end there though.
How unfitting of a death for a supernatural killing machine. There had to be something that could top being destroyed when your former psychiatrist/current hunter sacrifices himself and shoots nearby gas canisters.
And I knew exactly what that was.
Michael Myers would stalk….
a prom.
Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 4
Tagline: Drink. Dance. Die.
I don’t remember a lot of what went on in this one.
I do remember the cover I drew on college-ruled paper in a notebook full of ideas that failed on the same caliber as this. It featured four things: the title, a champagne glass, a disco ball and a large knife.
I’d tried to draw the title in the same font as the one used on the Halloween VHS and it worked about as well as not at all.
I used a champagne glass because, at thirteen, I made the correct premonition of assuming that everyone would be wasted at prom.
I used a disco ball, because, hell, I’d seen movies before.
And I used a giant knife, because I’d seen Halloween movies before.
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| I had no idea this movie existed either. |
Despite how great of an ending this would’ve provided for the iconic franchise, box office results were too good to pass up the chance for another sequel.
How could I top the prom?
The answer was simple. Michael Myers was going to attack the Haddonfield Town Fair.
Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 5
There are a few standout moments in Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 5.
The first is a character, Tom, whose nickname is Freddy Krueger. He has this nickname because he’s so good looking that he’s got a tendency to show up in girl’s dreams.
To let you know how damn good looking he is, at one point in the book, an unnamed girl gives him a handjob, showing that, at thirteen, I knew all there as to know about sex and what girls liked to do to guys from their fantasies.
Some real meta art going on there.
Tom ends up dying when Michael uses Tom’s necklace to choke him to death.
Other inspired sequences included a guy getting his face pushed onto a grill and then getting impaled on a rotisserie chicken spit, and a girl who gets beaten to death with a small palm tree.
Don’t ask me how palm trees manage to grow in Haddonfield, Illinois, but, at thirteen, that was pretty cool. Michael Myers was uprooting a tree and then beating someone to death with it.
I’m surprised that Michael Myers didn’t get a killer guitar solo at some point.
The film ended with Michael getting hit by a car.
That’s it.
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| Or this one. |
A car hits him, he gets kind of crushed and the “novel” was over.
Fan and critical reaction to Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 5 wasn’t as strong as with his previous entry to the franchise and I hesitated in creating another.
In that time of hesitation, I saw the five Halloween films that I’d missed out on – the true Halloweens 4 and 5, Halloween 6, Halloween H20 and Halloween “Busta Rhymes” Resurrection.
I tried to delete my pieces of the Halloween mythos from memory.
I was almost ashamed. How could I have not known? How could I call myself a horror fan?
Was I plagiarizing my favorite movie series or simply a misunderstood genius?
I opted for the latter, because I decided that I had to redeem myself in the eyes of the Halloween fandom.
He’d sliced his way through a prom and lifted a tree at a fair. Now, it was time for Michael Myer’s last round, where he’d simply go to some mansion and kill people.
Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 9: The Tomb of Michael Myers
Tagline: The End of Evil
In Daniel Dockery’s Halloween 9: The Tomb of Michael Myers, Michael Myers goes to a mansion and murders some teens.
I made sure that the mansion was beside a rock quarry, so that when Michael was shotgun’d off the balcony, he had something deadly to fall into. I remember thinking for a long time about whether or not this was a good death for Michael. It was either this or having him get set on fire again, and I’d be damned before I copied something else in my illustrious Halloween-related career. So I had him fall into the pit. So much for a dramatic conclusion.
I remember a few of the deaths for this one as well.
There was another stabbing to the wall death – a Michael Myers staple, and Michael knocked someone’s head off with a shotgun barrel. Also, at one point, he crushes someone’s face with a stone pillar. I don’t remember the specifics, but considering how technical my earlier kills got, I assume that Michael just picked up a stone pillar and beat someone’s skull in with it.
Overall, I’d say that I made an important contribution to the Halloween series.
Not as big as, say, John Carpenter or Akkad or Donald Pleasance, but then again, none of those people ever had Michael Myers stab a prom king and queen.
And, in the end, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
