‘Halloween’: 40 years of the Boogeyman

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Reception to the Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch was lukewarm, at best, from critics and ticket-buyers alike. After two films solely focused on the murderous plot of The Shape, it’s no wonder audiences were thirsty for more ⏤ and ultimately left disenfranchised. As you can guess, executive producer Moustapha Akkad wanted to take the series back to its roots and resurrect his favorite masked killer.

John Carpenter was once again approached to helm the project, with Debra Hill set to produce. Along with Dennis Etchison, Carpenter wrote a story that tapped into the spirit of Michael Myers as a long-dead legend but explored the lingering effects of the 1978 massacre on the town of Haddonfield itself. The town had officially banned celebrating the holiday of Halloween, but through those cracks, the visage of a ghostly Shape seeps through the story. Akkad allegedly deemed it “too cerebral” and wanted Myers back as a physical presence to pick up where he had left off.

Meanwhile, once it was clear Etchison’s script was canned, Hill and Carpenter sold away their rights of the franchise to the studio. Now the sole owner, Akkad was then able to fulfill his desire to see Myers return to the silver screen, turning to Dwight H. Little (Bloodstone, Freddy’s Nightmares) to direct and Alan B. McElroy to draft the screenplay. With the infamous writer’s strike looming, McElroy wrote the story in just 11 days.

“Our job was to reposition the series after ‘Halloween III’ and to dig our way out of the ending of ‘Halloween II’ in a way that was both coherent but not too much a slave to that movie,” says Little, who also assisted later in helping finetune certain story elements.

Considering the likelihood of Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role of Laurie Strode to be slim, McElroy turned to continuing the character’s legacy in another way. Halloween 4 centers around Laurie’s daughter Jamie Lloyd (played by Danielle Harris) and her foster sister Rachel Caruthers (Ellie Cornell), who must face off against the Boogeyman. Through a quick bit of dialogue between Rachel and Jamie, it is revealed that Laurie and her unnamed husband had died in a car crash 11 months prior to the film’s opening scene.

“I do think the character of Jamie put that sequel back in business. The relationship between the sisters, Jamie and Rachel, was at the core of it. I thought we came up with a very believable way to get Michael out of his coma and set him loose,” Little sasy. “That took a lot of thinking to make it not seem too hokey or too obvious ⏤ that there’s a prison transfer. He’s in a place with those guards where they’re vulnerable. Once we set all those things in motion, we had to make sure we got the telephone lines down and the power grid down. That was usually through a Michael kill or attack. When he comes out of the gas station, that’s the incident where the telephone lines go down. Then, when he throws [Bucky] into the electric grid, that’s how they lose the actual power.”

With filming taking place in Salt Lake City during the spring of 1988, the crew had their work cut out for them. Bags of leaves had to be imported, and squash were painted to appear like oddly-shaped pumpkins. Additionally, the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains are rarely scene on camera, framed just out of view, but what Little manages to accomplish is evoke the magic of the Halloween season in much the same way as the original.

“Dwight should be really proud of ‘Halloween 4.’ It’s a genre that can be notoriously lousy and he did something well,” says Ellie Cornell. “It’s always a crap shoot. I really liked the script when I read it. For the genre, it was well-written, and they were smart to hire a good director. I was proud of how it came out. It was such a treat all around. I was really glad that I got the part. It was really fun, and I felt well taken care of.”

Stuntman George P. Wilbur donned a new iteration of the Myers mask, for better or for worse, as well as hockey pads to bulk up his physique. The cast was rounded out by Beau Starr (as the new Sheriff, Ben Meeker), Donald Pleasence (in his then-third turn as Dr. Loomis), Kathnleen Kinmont (as the Sheriff’s daughter, Kelly Meeker), Sasha Jenson (Brady), Michael Pataki (as the aggrieved Dr. Hoffman) and Carmen Filpi (as the venge-seeking, booze-hounding Reverend Jackson P. Sayer), among others.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers opened October 21, 1988 with just under $7 million in total ticket sales. The slasher went on to gross nearly $18 million and earn quite a cult following and a 29 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. To celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary this year, Universal designed a Halloween 4-inspired haunted maze for its Halloween Horrors Nights.

Below, director Dwight H. Little, film editor Curtiss Clayton and actors Ellie Cornell and Erik Peterson, who portrays a young Michael Myers, reflect on their contributions to horror history and favorite filming moments.

Signing On

Clayton: Like everybody who goes to film school, my thought was I wanted to be a director myself and make my own films. At the time, the program at University of Southern California was really geared toward graduate students, so it was a lot more difficult as an undergrad to get the opportunities to do productions of your own. I got involved in all the different aspects on other people’s productions, like doing sound, camera work and editing. As I got the experience, I gravitated naturally toward editing. I felt like it was the most creatively satisfying of the different parts of filmmaking that I sampled during that period.

If I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to do stuff of my own, editing was the closest thing that was satisfying to me. Camerawork, for example, is more technical, and the payoff, emotionally, wasn’t satisfying. Also, if you’re a cameraman and once you’re finished shooting a film, you’re done. Then, several months later, you come and see the final film, and in many cases, it’s very different from what you thought you were doing. Editing lies on a very unusual creative plane that’s almost like a secret society. Most people don’t understand it or are unaware of it and realize the key role it plays.

‘Halloween 4’ was one of the first pictures I did, professionally. It certainly was a major step for me, in terms of legitimacy. I had done four feature-length projects prior to that. When I say legitimate, at least one of those has some reputation [1984’s On the Line stars Scott Wilson, Victoria Abril and David Carradine]. But at the time, all of the things were pretty sketchy in terms of profile and certainly the money they had to work with. This was ‘80s-era of indie films, and I had just graduated from USC with a lot of ambition.

I was just trying to get any kind of work I could and trying to move forward as an editor without having to go through a period as an assistant. That seemed like a trap you could fall into when you’re first starting out. Some projects were, in some cases, not even finished or certainly not seen very widely or fell through the cracks in many ways.

I don’t remember the specific call I got about doing this movie. I had my first agent at the time, and she was on the same level and didn’t have a whole lot of contacts. I’m not even sure it was through her. But Dwight Little had gone to USC film school, as well, and he was a few years ahead of me. I think we may have overlapped by a year or two. I was an undergrad, and Dwight was something of a superstar at the school. He never knew me in school. In fact, when I went in to the interview, I had to tell him I went to USC. He went, “Oh, my god, that’s fantastic!” [laughs] Maybe, it helped me get a little edge on the competition.

I was basically looking for anything I could get at the time. I have to say, I’m not a horror film fan. I really had very little familiarity with ‘Halloween.’ If anything, I sort of looked down on the whole genre, but I was very anxious to get any kind of job. So, that led me to, of course, check out the original film. This was the age of VHS rentals, so I had to go out and check it out, so I wouldn’t appear like a total idiot when I went to meet Dwight. I really acquired an appreciation of what John Carpenter did.

It was a very good, positive experience. It was much better than I expected. I think it still might be the highest box office film I’ve ever done. [laughs] I have a lot of good memories of the whole experience. When I got the call, I was sent the script. It would have had to been pretty awful for me not to take the meeting. I couldn’t afford to turn down any possibilities.

Dwight was very respectful of the whole tradition. It was a big opportunity for him, too. It was certainly the highest profile assignment he had had at that point, so he was very aware of the responsibilities and the fans. He stressed that, even in our first interview, of what Michael Myers was, being an iconic character.

Original Story Idea

Before Alan B. McElroy put his imprint on the franchise with his back-to-basics storyline, the studio had actually pitched Little another idea altogether.

Little: I don’t remember it all. My memory of it is that there were so many teenagers being set up as possible victims that it lost the tone of being scary. It just didn’t appeal to me. It’s not that it wouldn’t have made an interesting movie. When you get into that teen-romp stuff, I don’t think it’s scary. I really wanted to bear down on these two sisters.

Opening Title Sequence

Halloween 4 is most famous for its atmospheric opening credit sequence. Shot about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, images of farm equipment and spooky Halloween decorations blowing in the breeze are pieced together to set the tone for one of the series’ best, most beloved entries.

Little: I had done a lot of trick or treating when I was a kid. I knew Halloween as a holiday. But I realized when we were starting the movie and thinking about how I wanted to open it, I didn’t really know what Halloween was. I just didn’t know. What is it? It’s such a fundamental, stupid question, but sometimes, the most obvious questions are the ones you don’t ask. So, I went to a library as you did then. [laughs]

I pulled out books on Halloween and realized it was all based on Agrarian folklore from New England. In the late autumn, the crops would die, and the harvest was done. People had a real dread about the coming of winter and of going into the darkness that would be with them well into April. I looked at these pictures from the turn of the century. I had never seen them before, especially in light of Halloween.

I saw the scarecrow with the gloves on its hands, and I thought, “That is the most stunning image I ever saw.” So, I literally recreated that one. The others, we went out and found ⏤ the barns, the farm implements, the barren fields. Even though it was April, we went out and found that kind of moody farmlife. We built the sequence around that, and it gave a sense of foreboding to the whole thing. It made me understand Halloween better, rather than just as a kid’s holiday for candy.

Clayton: I know Dwight was concerned about putting his stamp on the material.  He took a lot of care, as you see with the opening sequence. He said that was one of the things he wanted to do as his signature on the movie, in a modest way. He talked about how in ‘Halloween II’ they had used the song “Mr. Sandman” [by The Chordettes], and he said, “This opening montage is my Sandman.” The film has a very direct, almost naturalistic feeling to it that’s very efficient and workmanlike. He delivers what it’s supposed to deliver without a lot of frills. We kept all that in mind, of going for that style of delivering the punches and not getting sidetracked with a lot of frilly stuff.

Casting Rachel

Many Hollywood starlets were considered for the homely but endearing Rachel Caruthers, including Rebecca Schaeffer, known for roles in the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam and black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. But it was Ellie Cornell who embodied a very real quality of a small-town and who struck Little as undeniable for the role. Producers, however, didn’t want to cast Cornell.

Little: There was a back and forth about it. My feeling about Ellie was that she really looked and felt like she was from Haddonfield. She’s very mid-Western. There were a lot of girls who had come in to read for the part, and they were all a little bit glamor girls. They were all too Hollywood and self-aware. I needed someone who was from that town and was sincere. She had to bond with her little foster sister. You just believed Ellie and fell for her. She wasn’t a duplicitous person.

Cornell: That just kills me. Nobody ever told me. I don’t mean that in an egotistical way. I’m grateful Dwight went to bat for me. It didn’t change my life in any positive and negative way, but it was such a cool experience. When I could have a family, I could have a family. I was really lucky. It wasn’t like having a hit TV show where it really derails you. Very rarely will I do a convention, but when I do, people are so respectful because they like the character.

I was really new to film and TV when I read for it. I didn’t really have a sense of what my type was going to be like. I knew I wasn’t Kathleen Kinmont. [laughs] I liked her because she was a fighter, not a victim, and she was smart. She was the girl next door but better. She was the same type as Laurie Strode in the original. They don’t always get the guys, but they’re tough.

I had heard of ‘Halloween’ because it was well-known. But I hadn’t seen it when I took the part. I had seen the third one. [laughs] So, I knew they were doing something really smart by going back to the original storyline. On one hand, the whole thing is so implausible, but on the other, the frights were there. It wasn’t always on screen, just the implication was there, like the long chases. It was pre-’Saw’ and major gore.

The Audition

Cornell: Oh my god. You absolutely don’t forget stuff like that. Pretty recently before that audition, I had just done a really intensive summer program at The Mount for Shakespeare & Company. We did an amateur production during the day and lived the stables at Edith Wharton’s house. At night, we did an equity production outside. We lived, ate and breathed Shakespeare all summer. It was incredible.

Shortly thereafter, my agent sent me to LA for pilot season. When I got the ‘Halloween 4’ callback, it was on a Friday, and they put me on tape. The writer [Alan B. McElroy] was there, and Dwight was there. The other finalists were there, too. Then, on Monday, I got the part. It was huge. You’re excited, but it’s also really daunting. I don’t think any of us had any sense of how much work it was. Danielle and I worked almost every day of the shoot, 39 out the 40 days. Two weeks of that were night shoots, which is a whole other series of weirdness. It’s really strange to be working all night and sleeping during the day. Talk about a training ground.

Preston: I was a local actor in Salt Lake City. The production contacted my agency to book the local roles. I went in and auditioned for the Frankenstein kid ⏤ I believe his name is Kyle in the credits. I feel like it was only a few days later that they cast me as young Michael, instead. I do remember parts of the audition. I remember being at the hotel where they cast it. I wish I still had my audition sides, as I know her name wasn’t Jamie in the audition. I have been told that there was a script where her name was Britty. However, I am 99% sure that my audition had Jamie’s character name as Lindsay at that time.

High Body Count

Throughout the film, Myers kills 17 people in cold blood. That’s a considerably higher body count than the original 1978 classic but falls in line with the carnage of the follow-up, 1981’s Halloween II, amidst the ongoing slasher phase.

Little: I think with every kill, we had to earn it. There was almost always a reason for it. We had to kill the garage mechanic because we needed to get the phone lines down; we had to kill Bucky because of the power. We made sure Michael’s attacks had a certain momentum or logic.

Obviously, the two attendants in the ambulance were just in his way. Logically, they had to be taken out. We tried to make the kills organic to what the story needed. The girlfriend [Kelly Meeker] had to go, because Michael was in the house and coming after Jamie. She was in the way. Then, the rednecks had to die, of course. [laughs] I tried to keep it with an internal logic, at least.

First Days of Filming

One of the most unforgettable sequences is Dr. Loomis hitchhiking back to Haddonfield along a dusty back road. During his travels, a convertible with a crew of jocks and cheerleaders speads by, and later, a not-quite-right reverend in a beat-up pick-up truck gives him a ride.

Little: We didn’t need the town to be ready yet. For the girls, the makeup and wardrobe weren’t ready yet. But we knew we had Donald Pleasence and [Carmen] Filpi. We had the truck, too. There was a lot of pre-production that was going on to get us ready to shoot. We hadn’t had a lot of prep time because we had to go so quickly.

Donald was there already, and we didn’t want to waste a day with him. The teenagers in the car were easy. They were just local extras. And we had that empty road. It was really not a big creative decision, just a production thing. It gave the art department more time to work on other things.

“You can’t kill damnation, mister.”

Reverend Jackson P. Sayer is a larger-than-life character, not unlike Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers. He’s on a hunt for evil and strikes up a rather prophetic conversation, situating the film as a conversation piece on destiny.

Little: [laughs] Yeah, that was a line Alan came up with. He’s particularly good with that kind of dialogue that really lands. Carmen really brought a crazy, but a grounded kind of crazy, to that character. Alan has an interest in and a quite good understanding of Biblical scholarship. He’s well-versed in that. I think he was able to really bring that intuitively to the material. It’s part of who he is.

Loomis is on a quest to avenge the devil. There’s a real sense of a longer journey that Dr. Loomis was on. When you have an actor of that caliber, there’s no point not to write for him.

Michael’s Incarceration

The first scene of the film opens on Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium. It’s a seemingly cold and rainy night, mirroring that of the original film, and Michael Myers is being transferred back to Smith’s Grove. Two medical attendants arrive to see to the transfer, and they unknowingly become pawns in Myers’ escape.

Little: Initially, when the two medial attendants go down the hallway with the guard, there were shots inside those padded cells. You could see these crazy people who were locked up and in the straight jackets. The idea was supposed to scare the attendants and also the audience. After it was all sampled in the editing process, it was…fine. But it wasn’t really adding anything we didn’t already know. Once we come down the elevator and go into that lower section, it’s already creepy. We added some sounds. That’s almost scarier to hear. You hear people off on the side screaming and moaning.

The elevator ride was creepy. But it was also our device to take care of all of ‘Halloween II’ in an elevator ride. We were like, “Ok, we’re not going to run away from this. We’re just going to do it and get it out of the way.” The audience is just settling in, and so, the guard tells the story like it was a myth. The way he tells it, it gives us a chance to skip over the explosion, the burning and all that business. By the time we get to the bottom of the elevator ride, we’ve done all the heavy lifting. We can then start our movie.

Thumbs Up!

During the transfer, one of the medical attendants lets it slip that Michael Myers’ now has a niece living in his hometown. That sends a trigger warning, and Myers immediately snaps, bashing the male attendants head against the side of the ambulance and pushing his thumb into his skull. It’s a simple trick of cinema magic, but a brutal act that sets the tone of the whole movie.

Little: We actually did the death scene at the time. We went and did some clean up and some reaction shots. We had had a problem with the retractable thumb, originally. It’s a really simple movie trick, very low-tech. [laughs] But it’s very effective. It tricks the eye. I hadn’t remembered seeing that done before. It was pretty shocking. He just puts his thumb through the guy’s forehead.

In order to do something like that, you need to create a hand with the retractable thumb. So, as you drive the thumb into the forehead, it just collapses on itself. Then, you add a little blood to it. What the eye sees, you completely buy it. You don’t cut away. You actually show it. I think that’s what makes it so alarming.

Today, they’d come up with some CGI solution, and it wouldn’t be as good. The reason this is so convincing is that it’s a mechanical solution. It’s a trick that’s been used in movies since the beginning ⏤ retractable swords, knives, all that kind of stuff.

Mr. Sandman, Give Me a Dream

The stage set with Myers’ expected escape, the movie cuts to his niece Jamie Lloyd unable to sleep and peering out the big bay window of her foster parents’ suburban home. Rachel Caruthers enters to console her young foster sister, and at first, it is unclear if the audience is experiencing a dream, a nightmare or one of Jamie’s many hallucinations.

Little: It’s set up even earlier when she’s sitting on the couch with Rachel and looking outside. The ambulance is out there. We were playing with the idea of…did Michael, in fact, pull up to the house? Is he there? Or is she just imagining him? We were playing with that not knowing either way.

Maybe it’s in her mind. By the time we get upstairs in her bedroom and she’s saying her prayers, it’s kind of a trick. We needed a Michael Myers scare early in the movie to keep the tension high, but it was obviously too soon to have him attack somebody, especially the lead character. When they find her in the closet, she’s clearly had a nightmare. That’s how I see it.

The mask is shot in silhouette, so it gives you a chance to see it and not see it. That’s why we made such an effort to take the power out. It’s so much scarier when you can’t quite make everything out perfectly. I had no worries in showing the mask that early. There is the issue in the school hallway at the end of the movie where there was a mistake made. [laughs] Other than that, I think the mask went along pretty well.

Bonds of Sisterhood

Evidenced in their natural onscreen chemistry, Ellie Cornell and Danielle Harris instantly connected. Their working relationship flourished given the script’s barebone outlines of sisterhood and Jamie’s past and connection to the Boogeyman.

Cornell: It was one of those things where it’s all in the backstory. The fact that she had lost her parents, and we took her in, it was already there for us. It was instantaneous how well we got along, and it was nice that Danielle’s mom was there the whole time. So, I think Danielle felt supported. She was super young but also super bright. We were all very protective of making sure she was OK with everything.

There was a lot of cuteness in that movie, but I didn’t feel like Alan or Dwight dumbed it down. There was just real kindness to those characters.

That’s the other thing with making movies. When you’re on location for five or six weeks together, you get close. You just do. There are a lot of movies where people don’t get along, but by and large, you can tell sometimes when there’s not chemistry. I’ve run into Danielle numerous times over the years in completely random places. It’s a little bit uncanny. She’s so great. We’re always really supportive of each other.

Little: That’s what makes things scary. If people are just targets or victims, it doesn’t matter that it’s “scary.” What’s scary is when you care about somebody. When you get invested in their lives and they get into danger, that’s what’s scary. Like Jodie Foster in ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ by the time she’s right down to it, you’re just so involved with her as a person.

Establishing Shots of New Haddonfield

With the characters of Jamie Lloyd and Rachel Caruthers in place, the audience is then introduced to the 1988 version of Haddonfield, which is a living, breathing character in itself. Establishing shots of the streets and the blood-red Caruthers household, as a group of kids scurry past, which includes Erik Preston, pin down exactly where and when the new story takes place.

Preston: The establishing shot was fairly easy to shoot. We got there in the morning, and our instructions were basically “when you see the bus pass you, chase after it.” We shot it a few times until the sun came out a little more and was no longer “morning.” After that, they drove me down the street to a local school, put me in the clown outfit, and took pictures of me. These were the pics that you see in the shoe box.

I’m also one of the kids running in front of Vincent’s before the costume scene, too. We also shot a deleted scene the morning before we shot outside of Vincent. I wasn’t in that scene but I had to be on set for it. I don’t remember much other than Jamie and Rachel are eating ice cream and talking about something ⏤ maybe about how the kids teased her at school…

The Siege at the Diner

Dr. Loomis’ trek back to Haddonfield calls back to his similar journey in the original, but here, Little and McElroy take it up a few notches. Loomis follows his target to a diner-mechanic shop out on a lonesome strip of highway. He soon uncovers more bodies of a waitress and a mechanic, who were simply in The Shape’s path of destruction.

Little: That was all written as a diner. When we found the location, we made production adjustments to take advantage of what we had. We needed a diner next to the garage, because we had to establish that Michael had been there and killed the mechanic.

Then, we were also able to have that tow truck nextdoor. The waitress has been killed, too. When the tow truck comes out of the garage, then we had something that we could use not only for Michael to escape in, but we could get the telephone pole on fire and get the phone lines down.

The Vertigo Shot

Loomis and Myers come face-to-face early on in one unforgettable camera shot. Through the break in the country space and down the galleyway into the diner’s kitchen, a bandaged Myers stands firmly planted. The camera zooms in at the precise time it pulls out, creating a burst of visual energy.

Little: That’s called the ‘Vertigo’ shot. Or some people call it the ‘Jaws’ shot. It depends on what your reference is. The way that’s done is you put a camera on a dolly, and you take all these very careful measurements. You push the dolly backwards away from the subject very quickly. But while the camera’s moving backward on the dolly quickly, the assistant has a power zoom on the lens. So, in fact, he’s zooming in at the same time.

You get the sense of the image ⏤ Michael standing there ⏤ that stays the same, but the world around him shifts. There’s a famous shot in ‘Jaws’ where Roy Snider is looking out to sea, and he sees what he thinks is the shark. So, Spielberg does that trick there. But it goes back to ‘Vertigo’ where Hitchcock did it when Jimmy Stewart falls down the tower at the end of the movie.

Bandaged Myers

Originally, stuntman Tom Morga was enlisted to play Michael Myers throughout the entire film. In the final product, he is credited with his portrayal only in the transfer sequence and at the diner. It was early on in filming, and George P. Wilbur was soon sought out to replace Morga.

Little: Honestly, my particular problem [with Tom] is that I felt he was too thin. He was a tall man ⏤ very nice but quite thin. I didn’t feel like he filled out the gas station scene. He needed more hulkiness. I know Moustapha had his own ideas. When we got George, he was tall but a stocky man. He moved a little more slowly. It seems like with the weight and size, he was more intimidating. It’s funny how those details are important, but he was more filled out.

There is a little reference to ‘Friday the 13th: Part 2’ with the bandages. But also, that made sense, of him having been in the coma. We had to get him his mask, though. We had an elaborate sequence of Jamie looking for her clown outfit and him coming to steal the mask later on.

The Big Boom

Moments after the Vertigo shot, Myers vanishes into thin air and steals away in a tow truck. He pulls away into the dust and takes out the powerlines with him, which subsequently set the gas pumps on fire. The resulting explosion lets the audience know that Myers means business, and moves the plot forward, casting Loomis back behind some empty fuel barrels.

Little: Fortunately, we had a reason for the explosion. We had the gas pumps there. Then, the explosion was a trigger to catch the telephone poles on fire. Interestingly, the telephone looked like a cross that was burning. I thought that was a cool image, a burning cross. What you do is work with the special effects team. All those pumps are movie pumps, set pieces. They’re not real gas pumps.

They put explosives behind them, hidden from the camera, and then a stuntman drives the tow truck on the away side so you can’t see it. As he drives by each pump, there’s a trigger system where the explosive guys can let off each one in sequence as the car passes. Then, you get three or four cameras to record as best as you can. It was a practical explosion. In today’s world, they probably wouldn’t even do that anymore.

The Drugstore

The audience is given more insight into the budding romance of Rachel and Brady, who seems like a nice guy but often wants to prove he’s a man’s man. They have a fleeting makeout session before Rachel drops the bombshell that she has to babysit Jamie on Halloween night. Meanwhile, Jamie scours the shelves for the best costume, picking up a clown costume that harkens back to the original. In another hallucination, she imagines seeing a young Michael Myers staring back at her in the full-length mirror, spooking her and causing her bump into the very real and very dangerous adult Michael Myers behind her.

Cornell: Dwight was like, “Ok, you two, go behind the trailer to practice kissing. Do whatever you have to to make it plausible.” We were like, “Dwight, for god’s sake, we’re actors.” The thing that was so cool about Sasha is that we got a film together immediately after that. He’s so sweet.

Preston: Well…standing in front of a mirror for hours is definitely memorable. What I recall most about the drugstore scene was when I met Danielle. I got there in the morning and was sitting on a grip truck just waiting for the shoot to begin. Danielle came out of the pharmacy, saw me sitting on the truck and tried to talk to me. She said hi and asked if I was the boy that was going to be scaring her. I shyly said yes and kind of kept my head down. What can I say other than I was a shy 8-year-old? But her and I have become friends over the past decade, and I have worked with her a couple times since.

As far as that scene, Danielle and I both worked together during that shot. However, we didn’t really have a chance to talk to each other besides earlier that day when she attempted to talk to me. They would have me stand in front of the mirror so they could adjust the lights and camera while Danielle stood to the side. Then they would send me to the side and pull Danielle in front of the mirror and adjust the lights and camera to her. We broke for lunch, came back, they put me in the costume, and we began again. I don’t remember if Danielle had to hold the costume up at that time. I did briefly meet the actor playing adult Michael. I believe I also met Kathleen Kinmont that same day.

It was fun being put into a clown outfit, having them put blood on me, then having them hand me a giant butcher knife to hold ⏤ ‘cause kids aren’t supposed to play with knives, and I was being paid to play with one.

Erik Preston is among five child actors to portray a young Michael Myers in the franchise’s storied history, a legacy in its own right.

Preston: Growing up, [I didn’t think about that] so much. I did the movie when I was eight, so my childhood friends weren’t watching that film (or any of the earlier ones). Once I got closer to high school, I began to understand what that role was as far as being Michael as a kid. However, once people actually started finding me on the Internet is when it really hit me how big of an opportunity that the role was.

Trick or Treat

A focus on tension and mood becomes increasingly prevalent in the film as the darkness wears on Halloween night. When Rachel takes Jamie trick or treatin’ in her recently-acquired clown costume, they eventually become separated. Rachel wonders the damp, abandoned streets of Haddonfield and witnesses her first encounter with the Boogeyman ⏤ or so we think.

Little: As far as the streets go, that was right from my childhood…getting cut off from friends….being isolated…shadows, wind, noises….they suddenly become threatening. That is really a good use of cinema because the music, lighting, lenses, (long) sound effects can really all work together. All I remember is that it was cold! Also, Ellie had a hard time getting up and over that fence even though the stunt team and special effects people had tried to help her.

Cornell: It wasn’t hard to be creeped out by the whole thing. I mean, yes, you’ve got a big crew standing there, but the whole area is cleared. It’s not hard to imagine how scary that would be, especially with such a giant threat. Even without Michael Myers lurking about, it’s still terrifying to think about losing track of someone you’re responsible for. That scene was smart. You don’t have to make it super obvious to an audience member to make it scary. Our own imaginations take it from there.

The Police Slaughter

Little raised the stakes even more in killing off the entire police force. Sheriff Meeker and Dr. Loomis arrive at the police station to find blood, guts and bodies everywhere. This plot device, in turn, fuels the town of beer-belly, scruffy-haired rednecks to take matters into their own hands.

Little; Well, all of the story beats are us trying to be logical. So, if he laid waste to the police station. Then, they would have to take the law into their own hands. We wanted to get these locals out of the bar and into their trucks and get them going crazy in the town. The Sheriff loses control of them.

It’s a very creepy scene when Donald Pleasence comes into that police station, and you’ll notice that I let that dialogue (“Evil on two legs”) play in the distance. It wasn’t covered with a big closeup. The camera stayed way back. I let the police station be a character in that scene. He says one of the most important lines in the movie, but he says it in a full-body shot in the distance. That shot worked out in an interesting way.

“We’re trapped in this house…”

The final act of this film begins in the claustrophobic framework of Sheriff Meeker’s homestead. With Myers sneaking through the backdoor, a plot point left vague enough for the audience, the story is as tense as it has ever been. The cast of characters slowly find themselves at the mercy of Myers and his cat-like pounce.

Little: There’s a shot way back when Deputy Logan is leaving the Caruthers House. He gets in the car. Without an edit, the camera just goes into the backseat, and you see Michael is there. Then, it goes back to him, and he pulls out of the driveway. By not making an edit, you get a much stronger sense of “oh my gosh, he’s in. the. car.” Intentional film-making, if you can do it without editing, can be very effective.

In the house, we wanted to resolve the relationship between Rachel and Kelly where she warns Rachel that if she doesn’t start paying more attention to her boyfriend, other girls are going to come after him. There’s a wonderful scene down in the basement where they realize that they do have the short-wave radio, and they better reach out and tell somebody in the town how much trouble they’re in.

You couldn’t get away with that now because we have cell phones and email. You can’t shutdown communication now the way you could then. A short-wave was still an option of getting the word out. That put them in a very scary place. Then, we had Rachel up in the bedroom. It was a spooky house. When we finally realized that Michael is there, it’s like, “Oh my god.”

Cornell: It just worked. It was like a giant maze. There were so many ways you could get into trouble. That’s a funny scene, too, when I go down into the basement and get on the radio. Man, Rachel knows how to use the radio! [laughs]

That’s a classic scene with Kelly. Kelly finally gets her due. Rachel finally comes into her own and believes in her own strength. It’s a fascinating thing. That scene does show a shift for her. She can either be a doormat, or she can speak her mind. Maybe that did give her the courage to run.

Clayton: It’s inherent in how they structured it. Dwight and Alan designed the script to work that way. Once you got into the third act, it would be full throttle. There is a funny thing that happened. Moustapha was very involved, and he was very concerned about the whole production, as he obviously would be, about this being Michael Myers’ return and for it to work well.

He was a great guy, and I really enjoyed just his presence. He was a very witty man and very easy to work with. He was a filmmaker himself, so he had that understanding of it. He was concerned for it not to be perceived as cheap or going for easy thrills. He wanted this real feeling of dread and fear.

One of the most memorable shots is when Rachel comes down to talk to Deputy Logan. In the background, Michael Myers steps into the light for a fleeting moment. All we see is the glow of his mask in the moonlight.

Little: That was done with a very simple light and a rack focus on the lens. It’s scary, but it’s very simple. You’re just aware at that moment how bad things are. They think they’ve locked him out, but what they’ve done is lock themselves in.

Kelly Meeker’s shotgun-to-the-stomach death serves as an updated version of Bob’s death from the original movie. Actor Kathleen Kinmont was strapped into a harness and pulled back onto a bicycle seat, a sequence of shots later pieced together to allude to a pretty gnarly fate. A few moments later, Rachel stumbles upon the bodies of Kelly and Deputy Logan, which propels the story forward into the final act of the film.

Little: The cuts are fairly straightforward. We had the before with the actress and the after. The harness pull is all with a stunt person, of course, and I remember we had to shoot a special shot of the rifle coming through the backside of the door. In order for the audience to really understand what had happened, we were missing a shot, and we had to go out and get that rifle shot. When you see it on screen, it makes the whole thing make more sense. In terms of editing design, it’s not really a difficult sequence to pull off.

Cornell: Actors have different ways of getting to where they need to go. My thing is I work on it ahead of time and draw from my own imagination. Our imaginations are boundless. I never bring my own life to the part. It’s just not fun to do. So, for that scene [of finding the bodies], I don’t draw from my own life.

I think about what that would really feel like to be in that house. The thing that’s so clever about that house sequence is that the stakes just get higher and higher and higher. She doesn’t find a room full of bodies. She finds one at a time. It’s great. You know by the time the rooftop comes, all bets are off.

An Explosive Ending

The final chapter of Halloween 4 features some of the franchise’s most tense and suspenseful sequences, exploding at the seams after Michael Myers has killed everyone in his way. Rachel and Jamie are left to fend for themselves, mostly, and they don’t go down without a fight. The two are forced out on the rooftop of the Meeker residence, and Myers quickly follows, dousing the sequence with even more mood-splitting tension.

Little: Oh, yeah, it’s intense, especially from that rooftop scene going forward. Her boyfriend [Brady] dies pretty heroically on the stairs, too. He really tried to make a difference. From the end of that rooftop scene to the way she drives the truck and runs Michael over, Rachel gets her back up. She sets her teeth and digs in. Seeing that from that kind of character is even more interesting ⏤ than from someone who is maybe already self-aware.

Clayton: There were some very nice scenes that were really a lot of fun to work on. The one in particular is the scene when Michael Myers chases Rachel and Jamie over the rooftop. It’s a very tight scene that I really enjoyed working on. I still think it’s a standout sequence from all the movies I’ve done. I remember when we even started showing the picture in our internal screenings, the producers would look at each other and go, “That rooftop scene really works well.”

Cornell: Obviously for liability reasons, they wouldn’t let us do the stunts. All of that rooftop stuff was us except when I actually fall off the roof. That was a stunt woman. We just had a whole lot of adrenaline. You know, at the time, you show up and do your job and come prepared. I have such a deep appreciation for how much choreography was involved on Dwight’s part. Who would even come up with that whole notion of being chased all the way up in your house until you can’t go any higher? Of course, you go out on the roof. There’s just something so cool about it.

I think we shot it maybe over a couple nights. They went to a whole lot of effort to make this roof look real. When we finished that whole sequence, that was actually my last night on the job. It was poignant for so many reasons. How do people shoot out of sequence and have it make sense? But people do, and it does. That’s the magic of movie-making!

What kind of training did Rachel have? She was a smart cookie. The thing that cracks me up is that when I fall, I get back up. It’s still fun to watch.

House on Fire

Originally, script writer Alan B. McElroy had the idea that Sheriff Meeker would come head-to-head with Michael Myers in the basement, leading to the house catching on fire. It was an ambitious idea to give the iconic rooftop chase scene even more urgency.

Little: Well, in retrospect, no, it wouldn’t have worked. It worked even better than we’d hoped, honestly. When we were going to do the rooftop scene, we didn’t know quite how that was going to go. The fact that it was so wet on the tile and moisture in the air, it looked slippery and dangerous. I’m glad we had Sheriff Meeker there at the end with the shotgun. That made it a little more convincing when we got Michael into the construction hole.

The fire would have been over the top, I think. Simpler was more in character with ‘Halloween.’ It’s a very low-tech franchise. It isn’t about big prosthetics or events. What is scary about the roof is he’s just so relentless. He comes across the roof, and you can’t stop him. It’s terrifying and it’s the jeopardy of nighttime, of height. It would be a scary situation in any case, let alone adding Michael Myers.

Rock the Schoolhouse

After Rachel falls from the rooftop, Jamie runs into Dr. Loomis, and they head for safety at the schoolhouse and assume Rachel to be dead. They, of course, run into a bit of trouble, but in a satisfying twist, Rachel comes through in the knick of time.

Cornell: That whole fire extinguisher scene was really fun. Dwight had to give me a lot of coaching. How are we going to believe she’s that fierce? I really had to commit to it. That to me is probably my worst line in the movie when I come out. All the rednecks and the sheriff are there. They say, “Where is he?” I say, “He’s in there.” “Where?” “In the school…”

I don’t know. We get that. You’re standing in front of it. [laughs] I’m one of those actors that firmly believes in sticking to the script because I’m not the writer. Unless there’s something that’s vehemently against what I think what my character would say, I do my part, show up and say my lines. You get into trouble when you start messing with the bones of the story.

Pick-Up Showdown

The film culminates in a blood-soaked pick-up scene, during which Michael Myers slays the entire group of rednecks, who are cast off the back of the dented truck onto the highway. Rachel is left at the wheel, to drive both her and Jamie to safety and defeat The Boogeyman, once and for all.

Little: We shot that scene toward the end of the schedule. We had a pretty good feeling on how Michael would move and how he should do things. We had it worked out pretty well. It was very dangerous throwing the stuntmen off the truck on to the pavement. We were going very slowly and sped it up to film a little bit. Even then, one of the stuntmen did get really banged up. You can pad them up, but he still has to leave a moving vehicle.

You couldn’t put pads down. You had to hit that pavement in reality. The one thing you have to make sure of is that he protects his head. You can hit your elbow, your arm, your knee, your feet…but whatever you do, make sure you don’t hit your head. I’m not sure if we’d be allowed to do that scene today. That would be solved in the composite, CGI way. You’d take the stuntman and throw him onto a carpet mat in a blue or green screen. Then, you’d shoot a plate of the truck and pavement and comp them together. Back then, was it not only enormously expensive to do any kind of computer work, it just wasn’t done.

That scene is terrifying. I thought Ellie was really good in those shots of driving. It was really just a great performance, all the way up to her hitting Michael and throwing him down into the ravine.

Cornell: The grossest thing we did was probably in the truck scene. I was not sitting in the truck when the guy got his head ripped off. That was added after the fact. Danielle and I were reacting to absolutely nothing. That was the grossest gags. ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ really turned the corner.

How fun is the truck sequence? A lot of sequence in the cab itself was actually prop guys with giant slabs of wood under the truck, and they were jumping on it to make it look like we were bouncing along. When Michael got hit, they wouldn’t have allowed me to do that. That’s some serious stunt work. Man, that was a long sequence to shoot.

The music, the editing, I hadn’t seen it until it was with an audience. I was just so blown away at how it came together. The audience went bonkers. Talk about an out of body experience.

Clayton: In the final mix, it had gone really smoothly, and we got to the final scene where Rachel is in the pickup truck. I’m normally always present for the mix, and I don’t remember why, but on the day they were mixing that scene, I wasn’t present. Dwight called me up and said, “Well, we’re really in trouble because we’re mixing the pickup truck scene, and Moustapha wouldn’t let us use the music.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “He felt like the scene was really intense and putting the music was just wilting the lilly. So, we argued with him, and he wouldn’t let us.” I said, “So, the scene plays with natural sound?”

He said, “Yeah, I don’t know. It’s going to be a disaster.” I said, “Let me talk to him.” Fortunately, Moustapha had come to the cutting room a lot, and I had gotten to know him pretty well. Maybe I had a little more credibility. I said, “I think you should have second thoughts about that.” Moustapha said, “Well, maybe you’re right. Let’s look at it again tomorrow…” I also said, “All the fans are looking for the big payoff with the music. Don’t want to disappoint them.”

Of course, it was obvious to everyone that you couldn’t have a climactic scene like that without that great music playing. It’s not to say he was unaware of that, but when you’re doing a film, you’re looking at it from every possible way to figure out how it’ll work or if it can work better.

Michael Myers is Dead

In the final face-off, Sheriff Meeker and the state police arrive with an artillery and blast Michael Myers down into a rustic mineshift. It’s certainly an explosive way for The Shape to finally, perhaps, meet his maker.

Little: Well, Alan and I went over and over it. We felt like it would have to be multiple assaults to kill him. So, version one was smashing him with the truck. But then we had to really shoot him every which way, and that wasn’t even enough. So, we had to make sure he fell into this well. We felt like that would give us a pretty good idea that he was finally taken out.

Evil Lives On

The final few minutes bring the film full circle and connect it back, once again, to the original’s opening. Shot POV-style, the camera weaves through the upstairs hallway of the Caruthers’ house. An unseen figure picks up a pair of scissors and proceeds to stab the stepmother, who is drawing Jamie a hot bath after her ordeal. We all know the ending now: it’s Jamie and the evil has been seemingly passed on to her.

Cornell: I was a little surprised. But then not, because it makes sense. If Michael Myers goes after his own family, then, maybe it’s conceivable she could, too. I had no absolutely zero idea of what was going to happen next.

Clayton: When you see the POV shot through the eyeholes, you think, “OK, here Michael comes once again.” And that’s the twist that it’s Jamie. That was Dwight’s idea of wanting to put a twist on it. Moustapha had the feeling that there was more than usual riding on this sequel.  Once you see her with the bloody knife, you’re like, “Oh my god, here we go!” Danielle was tremendous in the film.

Preston: I really wish that Dwight and Alan would have had the ability to come back and do ‘Halloween 5,’ so that we could see how Jamie’s ‘Halloween 4’ ending would have gone. I believe they were already attached to and/or filming ‘Phantom of the Opera’ when ‘Halloween 5’ got greenlit and went into production. I think the importance of that scene was to show that the evil that inhabits Michael will be passed on and that ‘Evil Never Dies.’ Even though we didn’t get to see Jamie’s story of this play out in ‘Halloween 5,’ I think it was the inspiration of the Thorn curse.

Editing the Film

Clayton, whose credits include the James Franco-directed Child of God, Sherrybaby and Unlawful entry, digs into his role as an editor, the pressures to get a first cut locked into place and lessons he took away from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

Clayton: Typically, an editor is not on set. The usual thing is once or twice you may visit the set. In this case, they were shooting in Salt Lake City, and we were working here in LA. I did travel there once to visit them on the set. You know, the editor doesn’t have a role on set, and honestly, after you’ve hung out for an hour or two, it’s kind of boring, and we feel like, “Boy, I really need to get back. The pressure is coming down on me to get these scenes cut.” [laughs] It’s fun and all that, but you have no function on set other than to stand there with your hands in your pockets and get in the way.

Normally, on first day of shooting and as soon as there is something to cut, you’re in there cutting scenes. You can have a first cut of the picture not long after they finish shooting, so the director can jump in and start doing their director’s cut. That equation doesn’t work so well in the modern era of indie filmmaking because the schedules are so short. The shorter the schedule, the longer it takes to get a first cut together. It certainly wasn’t a lengthy schedule for this film, but in those days, it feels like things were so much easier than it is now.

Just the process of editing involves a lot of creativity and decision-making and judgement calls that are intangible. Everybody who is looking at a collection of footage is going to respond to it differently and make different decisions about what needs to be emphasized and what kind of order of the images is going to be most effective ⏤ even to the minutiae of when to make the cut, at what frame you make the cut. It may appear to be just a technical part of the process, but it’s actually highly creative. Editors develop a very proprietary sense about the material they’re working on. It becomes very personal.

Uncovering Actors’ Best Performances

Clayton: Actors, in general, are usually very conscientious. It’s just their nature. Even if they haven’t rehearsed or done a lot of conscience work, they are attuned to their characters when they take on a role. There are aspects of the character that speak to them, and it emerges in the performance. You can definitely see that, and the choices they’re making and their understanding of it is quite apparent when you look at the dailies. You see patterns over days and weeks of the work.

You’ll often go back to the first few days worth of material and rework it because you see how something has been emerging over the course of filming that you weren’t sensitive to at first. It’s amazing how right from the start actors have intuitive ways of coming to know their characters. As an editor, you have to be sensitive to that. Of course, you’re making choices based on the meat of the story. A lot of it is mundane, so many choices are made for you, like if a line is flubbed or an actor doesn’t hit their mark and goes out of focus. At the level that you’re making choices about the performance, it becomes fairly easy to pinpoint what take to go with.

When you start combing shots, it becomes even clearer. It’s not at all unusual for a particular take to seem like the best take. You might even have a note from a director saying, “I like take two for that shot.” But once you start working with take two and you combine it with another angle, somehow, it doesn’t really work as well. You discover that take one actually works much better in the context of the entire film. It’s very malleable like that.

You have to have the flexibility and the confidence to go with that. What everybody wants is a scene that works, a movie that works. They tend to forget that it’s not take number two that they told you to use if the scene is working well. If you put it together strictly following those orders and the scene doesn’t work, they’re not going to be happy that you followed their orders. They’ll be unhappy about it. You have to take a lot of initiative.

Little’s Lean & Mean Approach

Clayton: Dwight’s a very good director from that standpoint. He gives you footage that works the way it’s supposed to work. I do have that problem on many pictures where the sene might be very good when you watch the dailies, but they’re very difficult to put together because the director hasn’t been observing the techniques of how you cut something together in a two-dimensional space so there’s a seamlessness to it and doesn’t cause momentary disorientation that takes you out of just being able to get into the flow of the film.

Dwight’s very good in that way as far as being able to shoot a scene so that you can cut it together and it works. I don’t recall any particular difficulties editing, in that regard. Well, actually there was one interesting thing that almost never happens. When you cut the picture together for the first cut as it’s supposed to be in the script, the movie was already only about 100 minutes.

Typically, you are looking to cut out scenes that don’t work or trim all the scenes to make it really tight, and we had a bit of a problem in maintaining a full length for this movie. As it’s finished, I think it’s only about 85 minutes. That’s because Dwight shoots so efficiently and doesn’t waste any time in his setups or the way he covered the action.

As an editor, that’s a great thing. You can focus on making the scenes play the best as possible. In almost every movie, the length is a big issue. Directors often start off with scripts that are too long to begin with, and then, they tend to shoot so things drag out even longer. Then, you have a problem of getting the film down to a decent running time. If you’re dealing with something over two hours, that’s just not viable in most cases, commercially. You end up having to cut things, and then you have story problems. It was a nice problem to have on ‘Halloween 4’ to not have to be worried about that.

The film came together pretty fast. They shot it in the spring of ‘88, and I think we were mixing it in August. Even then, it was pretty unusual for something to be shot and put together that fast. With a picture like this, you’re up against it. If you’re not ready and there are problems, you have to wait a whole year. You’re not going to release ‘Halloween’ in March. [laughs]

An Average Day Editing Halloween 4

Clayton: Every editor has their standards of what they feel is acceptable. You tend to start putting in long hours just for yourself. You’ve always got a deadline and this expectation from directors, producers and everybody else. If you want it to be a certain way and it’s not that way yet, you just keep working. That’s when you’re just working on your own. When the director comes in, it’s double. The director has that mentality, too, and he puts the pressure on you to stay. The days are almost always pretty long. You have to be willing to accept that as part of the whole craft of it. It’s the kind of thing that’ll drive you crazy if you’re not.

For ‘Halloween 4,’ it wasn’t too bad. A lot of times, you get into long hours because of problems with the footage. Dwight’s material was far less problematic than a lot of directors. I do remember that there were weeks of pressure, and we had to hang in there and just get it done. There are always those times when you’re sitting there and having lunch and think, “My god, how are we going to get this done?” It feels to be more than can be accomplished in four days. But you get it done somehow.

It’s not assembly line work. Every day, you’re working on a different part of the picture, so there’s a different challenge. There’s a lot of variety at the same time. I don’t find it gruelling. You can get sick of working on a particular scene after several days, but there’s always something to move on to.

Lessons Learned

Clayton: Going into it, I had a bit of an attitude. It turned out to be a very positive experience. I had an appreciation for just being able to deliver something like that that plays to an audience. That really stayed with me. It’s not so easy to make something that works on that level, as much as it may seem obvious. It involves its own craft. Doing it well is very satisfying. The mindset the film required and the approach to the material really stayed with me through all the other things I’ve done.

First Reaction to the Movie

Clayton: It’s always a great feeling to witness the reactions of a full house. Even in the preliminary screenings, it was great fun to be there and get the reactions you were going for ⏤ or sometimes, not getting them and realizing you had to tweak something to get it there. That’s always a big part of the fun of a picture like that.

Preston: I grew up on horror movies and saw them in the theater all the time, so seeing an R-rated movie wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for me at that time. When I was watching it in the theater, I was engaged with the movie just like the rest of the audience. However, when my close up popped up on the screen, it took me out of the moment because it as no longer a “film” at that point ⏤ but it was now me on the screen. I began laughing, and the people sitting in front of me turned around and told me to be quiet, which only made me laugh even more.

Mementos from Set

Cornell: Oh, heck yeah! The makeup lady gave me this fantastically cool oilcloth jacket. The prop man would draw pictures on the set, and he gave me those. I have a ‘Halloween’ jacket and a whole box of stuff with letters and headshots from people on the set. Even the drivers were phenomenal onset. It was like going to camp, but you’re working really, really hard.

Preston: I have a piece of the broken mirror. I didn’t actually take it from set, but I got it years later from a friend who got it directly from the pharmacy where we shot the interior of the scene.

Little: I think I have the slate with the clapper board. I don’t have the mask or anything.