Halloween 4 could have been a very different movie. At one point, Michael Myers was envisioned as a sometimes 12-foot-tall, regenerative monster hunting his victims at a drive-in. And after the movie we actually got, there was an idea that Michael’s own niece could take over the mantle of mayhem. So how did Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers become the movie we know today? Why bring the Boogeyman back after seemingly killing him off seven years earlier? And how did a sequel with that mask, those shoulder pads, and plenty of other shortcomings somehow become arguably the best Halloween follow-up of them all?
Thirty-eight years later, we’re heading back to Haddonfield. This is Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers isn’t a perfect sequel, but it’s one of the franchise’s most entertaining entries. Donald Pleasence gives Dr. Loomis a wonderfully unhinged new intensity, Danielle Harris makes Jamie Lloyd’s ordeal genuinely heartbreaking, and the film builds toward one of the series’ boldest endings. Its infamous mask remains a major flaw, but the atmosphere, action, and final twist make this a sequel worth celebrating.
The Making of Halloween 4
After the confusion of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the franchise needed a course correction. Halloween III rocked in its own way, but NOT if you were expecting an appearance from Michael Myers. The backlash led the studio to return to the white-masked a-hole in overalls.
Imagine a world where the anthology idea went gangbusters and we never saw Michael again after the explosion at the end of Halloween II. Sure, the franchise would have ended in a cleaner, less cash-grabby way. But we’d have no “Evil Dies Tonight,” no “comb yo hair” Josh Hartnett, and no Paul Rudd pipe attack. I don’t want to live in a perfect world where I don’t feel my soul leave my body in cringe watching Busta Rhymes punk out Michael Myers. Give me the scars.
Anyway, plans for a Michael-led Halloween 4 were in play almost immediately, but nothing would come to fruition for six years. In the meantime, John Carpenter and Debra Hill approached Dennis Etchison, who had written the novelizations of Halloween II and Halloween III under the name Jack Martin, about writing the fourth movie.
Etchison’s script has become something of a Halloween legend over the years. It features Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace as teenagers in a town that has banned Halloween. Michael returns as an overtly supernatural force, seemingly driven by the town’s attempt to repress its own fear. It’s a little less hoity-toity than what David Gordon Green tried to accomplish with Halloween Ends, though. There’s an amazing kill at a pumpkin patch that no doubt oozed Halloween atmosphere and may even have partly inspired some of the atmosphere in the movie we eventually received. The climax of Etchison’s Halloween 4 takes place at a drive-in showing one of the Friday the 13th movies. Michael regrows dismembered limbs and eventually grows to 12 feet tall while being shot by police. It’s one of those things you want to see but are scared to actually have exist. Because that idea was going to go one of two ways: to the moon or to the gutter.
Eventually, Carpenter and Hill sold their interest in the franchise, and Etchison received a call informing him that his script had not been included in the deal. So that was that. There are multiple other accounts of possible versions of Halloween 4, but Etchison’s is by far the most famous.
Director Dwight H. Little would eventually bring the Halloween 4 we know and love into focus. His manager had submitted his directing reel to producer Moustapha Akkad, who liked his work. Little brought on his frequent collaborator, writer Alan B. McElroy, to help develop the script.
Akkad wanted a straight-up Michael Myers return without any overtly cerebral hijinks. He clearly felt they had toyed with audience expectations too much with the anthology idea, and McElroy and Little would deliver. Hell, it’s in the title: the RETURN of Michael Myers. Although, let’s be honest. They still messed with our expectations on the movie poster, acting like the mask was going to look like the original and not the loose-fitting buckethead Michael Myers from Party City we received. But more on that later.
With a Writers Guild strike approaching, McElroy faced an extraordinary ten-day deadline. Hell, John Carpenter wrote Halloween II over a few hours and a six-pack of beer, right? I think we can all agree Carpenter has a “don’t give a f*ck” bone that allows him to do things like that. The rest of us are human.
McElroy did, in fact, complete the script in about eleven days, though, and it was great. He even calls it one of the best writing experiences of his career. It returned the franchise to the simplicity it needed while upping the ante across the board. Loomis was a little crazier. Michael was a little stronger. The kills were more brutal, and there was so much more action. You can argue that Halloween isn’t supposed to be about the bloodshed, and that’s fine. To each their own. But even crazier, Loomis is one of the greatest gifts this franchise hath ever bestowed upon us.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Let’s get into the movie.
The Halloween Atmosphere Is Immaculate
For starters, has there ever been a stronger Halloween vibe than the opening of Halloween 4? It’s so simple, and yet it fills your soul with so much Halloween glee that you feel like you’re shot-gunning a can of 100% pure, uncut Samhain right into your liver. It’s amazing how a few shots of barns, mailboxes, and Halloween decorations, mixed with the orange Halloween font and the name Donald Pleasence, can take over your mind and soul. You can practically feel the crisp hoodie-weather chill touch your skin and see the sun start to go down on a Halloween night that’s going to be an all-timer.
But not for Haddonfield. Which, in all fairness, might be their own fault. I mean, why? SOMEONE TELL ME WHY these geniuses have decided that, of all 364 other days in the year, it’s prudent to transfer Michael Myers to Smith’s Grove anywhere near Halloween? It’s not the only time the franchise does this, either. Mind-boggling.
Here, we’re introduced to the mental ward unit by the unforgettable Raymond O’Connor, who you may remember played an equally scene-stealing role in 1996’s The Rock as Park Ranger Bob. His character explains that you never get used to the faces at Smith’s Grove, then delivers a wonderfully creepy reminder that “Jesus ain’t got nothing to do with this place.” He also serves as a placeholder for where we are in the franchise, explaining that a decade ago Michael killed 16 people, maybe more, before his own doctor shot him six times and eventually set him on fire in an explosion where they both nearly burned to death. Any mention of Halloween III remains as absent from the movie as Dr. Challis is from his kids’ baseball games and school plays.
We learn that Loomis’ current position with the hospital is more ceremonial than medical. They hate him there and likely never even told him they were transferring Michael. Cue the music! And believe me, it hits hard. The table has been set, and I have to tell you, it feels great.
Now, I’m no medical professional like the aforementioned Dr. Challis, though I do like my bourbon and taking naps on the job, but don’t you find it weird that, a decade later, Michael STILL has his face draped in bandages? Oh well. Whatever. It looks freaky and provides a nice change of pace. Fun fact: stunt actor Tom Morga plays the bandaged Michael Myers.
These two chuckleheads don’t understand Michael’s deep-seated family issues and mention his niece living in his hometown right in front of him. That causes him to snap back to reality, promptly smash one guy’s face into the wall, and deliver his finishing wrestling move: one of the most underrated cool kills in the franchise, in which he sticks his literal thumb through the guy’s forehead. This scene, alongside the nasty throat rip later in the film, was actually added during reshoots because the producers decided the movie wasn’t nearly gory enough.
Jamie Lloyd and the Return of Dr. Loomis
Now we meet Michael’s niece, Jamie, whose name I only hear in Loomis’ voice to this day. She has been cared for by the Carruthers family for the past eleven months. This is where the timeline gets hairy. We learn that Jamie is Laurie Strode’s daughter and that Laurie has unceremoniously died in a car accident off-screen. Later, Halloween H20 would completely forget Jamie’s existence and ignore the events of Halloween 4, Halloween 5, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. But there was an earlier draft of the Halloween H20 script in which Laurie, now living under the alias Keri Tate, listens to a student give a book report on the Halloween murders. The student mentions that Laurie faked her death and gave up her daughter to protect her from Michael. Laurie then throws up in the bathroom, overcome by grief. Or guilt.
For now, though, in this timeline, Laurie Strode simply died in a car accident, and her daughter Jamie is in the foster care of the Carruthers family.
There’s an obvious connection between Jamie and Michael, psychic or otherwise, as this poor little girl is having nightmares about him.
Her nightmare gives us the first glimpse of the atrocious mask. Today, with all the fanfare around Michael’s masks, from Trick or Treat Studios recreations to unofficial touch-ups and everything else, it’s unfathomable that the studio just slapped something together and thought, “Welp, that’s close enough.” But this Data-from-Star Trek-looking travesty exists, and we’re stuck with it for the rest of the movie. Perhaps it’s not as bad as Halloween 5’s untucked farmer’s mask or even some of the Halloween H20 masks with WAY too-big eye holes and CGI fixings. But damn. It’s hard to get invested from the get-go when Michael Myers looks this ridiculous. Not to mention the shoulder pads that look like someone stole them from their mom’s 1980 JCPenney blazer. It’s tough to overcome, but believe me, Halloween 4 makes a hell of an effort.
The Carruthers family aren’t bad people, even if Papa Carruthers, for some reason, thinks it’s his wife’s fault that the dumbass dipped his tie in his coffee before work. But they aren’t without their faults, either. As if Jamie isn’t going through enough, she now has to feel like she “ruins everything” when she overhears Rachel complaining that she has to babysit instead of going out with her douchey boyfriend, Brady, on Halloween night.
Enter the return of the legendary Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis. But he’s not the man you remember. This is Dr. Loomis on steroids. With a face full of scars from the events of Halloween II, Loomis returns amped up on every level. From his loudness to his scars, his attitude, and even the cannon he carries, everything is bigger. Writer Alan B. McElroy, whose other credits include Rapid Fire and Spawn, did that on purpose. Hell, it’s the fourth sequel in a horror franchise. Might as well amp up everything you can.
And why wouldn’t Loomis be a little bit, or a lot, more extreme? The man has watched all his predictions come true. He’s shot a man six times and burned him alive just to watch him survive it all. Now these same suits are trying to tell him he’s wrong.
Even after the ambulance is found in the river, one body short of the guest list, nobody wants to listen.
Loomis and Michael Myers Reunite
As Loomis heads on the four-hour drive to Haddonfield, he comes across what is now one of the most legendary locations in Halloween history: Penney’s gas station and café. We learn that Michael has already been there and killed anything breathing, including in a rare “out of mask” kill. He impales a mechanic and steals his clothes while dressed like a mummy that escaped a mental asylum.
Loomis then discovers Michael’s latest arts-and-crafts project, which he has left on display for him. Loomis knows that it’s on.
Finally, horror fans are treated to the start of the main event as Michael and Loomis meet in the café after all these years. I can’t emphasize enough what a badass moment this is. For my money, it’s far more legendary than any reunion between Michael and Laurie, whether in Halloween H20 or Halloween (2018). Loomis always felt like the true counterpart to Michael Myers. Anyone could have been the victim of Michael’s stalking. These two had something far deeper and more interesting between them.
One amazing shot captures the moment as Loomis sees Michael looking like Slender Man and drops the all-time “Leave those poor people alone” quote. This proves once again that Loomis has hit “f*ck it” as he says, “Goddamn you,” and starts firing off a couple of rounds from his now much bigger gun.
Cue the music again, and the chase is on. We go full John Woo as Michael hijacks a tow truck and sends the gas station into smithereens while Loomis dives away from the explosion like he’s Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Back in Haddonfield, poor Jamie, played by Danielle Harris in what is, for my money, one of the most heartbreaking child performances in all of film, is also dealing with being bullied by some evil-ass kids. Everything this kid goes through across these two movies is seriously heart-wrenching.
Finally, it’s time to meet some of the new Haddonfieldians, including the voluptuous Kelly Meeker, played by Kathleen Kinmont, Wade, and the kinda-douchey Brady, who ironically looks a lot like 2000s Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn.
At the discount mart, Jamie finds the perfect costume: a look-alike of Michael’s original murder drapes. Michael eventually finds his ugly-ass mask on the discount shelf where it belongs.
Meanwhile, Loomis gets rope-a-doped by some asshole teenagers and is picked up by one of the most pointless but badass character actors in Halloween franchise lore: the boozing Reverend Jackson P. Sayer. They are both hunting something, and, funnily enough, Alan B. McElroy even reached out to the producers at one point about a possible prequel involving the character hunting some version of Samhain. That never came to fruition, but this moment is at least a charming look into Loomis’ personality. Having a swig and a smile with a fellow pilgrim.
When Loomis finally reaches Haddonfield, we meet the new Sheriff Ben Meeker, played by Beau Starr. At first, he seems as ignorant as everyone else Loomis tries to speak sense into. However, in a refreshing twist, he isn’t. He’s annoyed with Loomis’ screaming, of course, and probably his whiskey breath, but he believes him and asks how they can avoid the bloodshed of a decade ago.
Haddonfield Goes to War
Meanwhile, the plot keeps moving as Rachel discovers Brady at “Little Miss Hot Pants,” a “cops do it by the book” house, and loses Jamie in the process.
We meet the local watering-hole crowd of Haddonfield, who see Michael escape on the news and decide to take matters into their own hands. This is a subplot David Gordon Green would try to replicate years later in Halloween Kills, with a much more watered-down and strange result. Seriously, there’s something far more believable about a bunch of liquored-up blue-collar folks going on the offensive than an entire town screaming “Evil Dies Tonight!” and hunting down a guy half the size of the one who escaped. Long story short? The town is in a frenzy because of its haunted past, without all the over-the-top and stretched-out exposition about “trauma.”
Michael kills the local electrician WCW-Nitro style while the town heeds the news warning to return home. Meeker and Loomis find Jamie and Rachel, while Loomis shows off an understated example of his own trauma as several people dressed as Michael Myers provide a false alarm.
Back at the station, we learn that Michael has torn through the POLICE FORCE! That’s a scene we still wish we could have witnessed in all its gory glory.
The newly formed militia accidentally kills Ted Hollister while Brady and Kelly get it on in front of the fireplace, Euphoria-style. Nothing worse than Dr. Loomis, your dad, and a scorned lover showing up with a supernatural serial killer trailing them right when you’re about to get laid.
Despite an excellent plan to board up all the windows and doors and station officers at every entry point, Michael shows up for his niece anyway.
There’s something cool and western-movie-like about all these cops manning the house, waiting for an unstoppable force to show up. There’s also something very Night of the Living Dead about the whole scenario.
While Loomis departs to hopefully find Michael at the Carruthers house and Meeker leaves to stop the militia from killing another Ted Hollister, Michael makes his move. After sneaking in and turning a deputy into a man pretzel, he impales Kelly to the doorframe with a shotgun. Just because Michael doesn’t use guns doesn’t mean Michael can’t use guns. Even if it makes no sense from a physics standpoint, it’s still one of the gnarlier deaths in the franchise.
The remaining members of the house realize they’re trapped there with Michael, and the moment is intense, even though Michael moves like a drunk NBA center. This isn’t a shot at stunt actor George P. Wilbur so much as the god-awful mask and shoulder-blade fit he’s dealing with.
Michael makes his appearance and makes Brady his bitch before saying no to guns and instead cracking his face like a can of Busch Light.
Then Michael finds his favorite tool of death, and a harrowing rooftop chase ensues. The sequence continues to add to Rachel’s protector lore, despite the franchise unceremoniously scissor-deathing her in the opening of Halloween 5. Sure, she was annoyingly obsessed with boys for most of the running time, but what high school girl wasn’t in these movies? She proves to be a great heroine and final girl in the remaining scenes, rising above and beyond to protect her foster sister. She deserved better.
The Final Showdown and Jamie’s Terrifying Transformation
As Rachel recovers from the rooftop fallout, Loomis rescues Jamie for the moment and tries to find refuge in the school. This is where the continued negligence around the importance of Michael Myers’ mask becomes impossible to ignore. An inexplicably pink-masked Michael Myers shows up and throws Loomis through a wall.
The redneck militia arrives and tries to take Rachel and Jamie to safety when Michael shows up on the back of the tailgate. Despite my extreme love for this movie, you have to admit this is dumb as hell. Still, Michael and his shoulder pads tear through the militia. The sequence even throws in a callback to the original “hand wrench” scene, as Michael rips a guy’s throat out.
Rachel takes control and runs him over, like the nuke ran over John Travolta at the end of Broken Arrow, and the cavalry shows up to finish him off.
But not before poor Jamie wanders over and touches that smelly bastard’s hand. Meeker and the boys fill Michael full of lead as he and his baggy overalls do a TikTok dance into his supposed grave.
Back at the Carruthers house, everyone thinks the evil has left. Hell, even Dr. Loomis is convinced Michael Myers is in Hell, where he belongs. Loomis poignantly says the kids will be all right and that “they’ve survived this ordeal, they’ll survive its memory.” It’s spoken like someone who was spared the endless trauma-speak of the David Gordon Green movies.
Then Jamie’s foster mother runs her a bath while everyone else enjoys refreshments in the lobby. She is promptly stabbed by the child with a pair of scissors.
Loomis finds a blood-covered Jamie in the stairwell and screams “No!” before Sheriff Meeker stops him from killing the child in a fit of panic.
And we’re right back to where we began in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic: with a poor child overcome by a force of evil that causes them to murder their own family member in an inexplicable way. Cue the Halloween score one last time.
The Problem With Michael Myers’ Mask
Before we even get into that wild ending, we need to discuss Michael’s mask. For a movie that is so fun, full of action, wild performances, and Halloween atmosphere, the only thing that truly holds it back is that mask. It’s not the worst one in the franchise, mind you, but a lot of the other Halloween movies featuring bad masks weren’t all that great from top to bottom. This one is a bit more painful because the movie around it is so good.
Unable to use the original Myers mask or even the secondhand-smoke version from Halloween II, the production had to create its own. And, well, this is the result. It was clear that the producers at this point in the franchise were somehow unaware of how important Michael Myers’ mask was to a Halloween film.
Thank God for crew members. Makeup technician Ken Horn, who had worked at Don Post Studios, where the original mask was created, knew there was big trouble in little Haddonfield when he was shown the masks the producers had sent to the set. For starters, the thing was pink with white hair. That’s like ordering a taco and getting spaghetti. Horn told the producers it had to be changed and was given the responsibility of doing so. Yet he didn’t get around to changing ALL of them.
And what happened next is still one of the most confounding things you’ll ever hear in your life. During the previously discussed school scene, there’s a moment when the Boogeyman pops out and, for a few quick moments, wears the pink mask with the white hair. Somehow. Someway.
As Dwight Little has explained, it was a late-night shoot, everyone was tired, and there was no money to fix the problem in post-production. Wild.
I mean, this is Hollywood. Things were different in the ’80s, man. Many of them were better. This is not one of those things.
The Ending: Could Jamie Have Replaced Michael Myers?
The ending of Halloween 4 is wildly divisive. It’s provocative, shocking, and super ballsy, to be honest. But when it sinks in that Michael might actually be dead and the new killer in the Halloween franchise is a little girl in a clown costume, things go from okay to oh no pretty quickly. At least for me.
What did it all mean? I had the pleasure of talking to Alan McElroy about this, and he said he saw Samhain as an evil passed from person to person, perhaps through familial lineage. When Jamie took Michael’s hand after he was hit by the car, the evil was passed to her. McElroy fully expected the filmmakers to bring Michael back in some way. But in this story, at least, Jamie was in fact the new vessel of evil.
And he was right. They worked their way around it in Halloween 5, which, in turn, drove Michael off a bridge and into a pit of lava. But that’s another story for another day.
The Legacy of Halloween 4
Halloween 4 was released in the glorious month of October in 1988 and raked in $17 million domestically on a budget of around $5 million. And that’s not accounting for the VHS rentals, which were CONSTANT around these parts. It may vary from person to person, and everyone has passionate opinions about the Halloween franchise. But I implore you one last time: imagine this movie with the mask and jumpsuit of the original. It’s totally different.
Hell, I still love it even with all that’s wrong with it. Scarred up and strange, just like Dr. Loomis. But we love it deeply anyway.
Halloween 4 may not have the perfect mask, and it certainly isn’t without its flaws. But it brings Michael Myers back in a big way, gives Donald Pleasence one of his greatest performances as Loomis, and introduces Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd in a story that ends on one of the franchise’s most haunting notes.
It also understands something that later entries sometimes forgot: you don’t need to explain every aspect of evil to make it frightening. Sometimes, you just need a quiet town, a dark Halloween night, and a man in a white mask who refuses to die.
So happy anniversary, Halloween 4. Goddamn you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why was Michael Myers brought back for Halloween 4?
After Halloween III: Season of the Witch departed from Michael Myers’ story, the franchise returned to its most recognizable character for the fourth film. The subtitle, The Return of Michael Myers, made that intention clear.
Why does Michael Myers have a different mask in Halloween 4?
The production couldn’t reuse the original mask, so the crew had to create a replacement. The resulting mask became one of the movie’s most criticized features, particularly because it looks so different from Michael’s iconic appearance in the first two films.
What happens at the end of Halloween 4?
After Michael appears to be defeated, Jamie Lloyd stabs her foster mother with a pair of scissors. The shocking finale suggests that the evil associated with Michael may have passed to his young niece.
Is Halloween 4 one of the best Halloween sequels?
That’s subjective, but the film has a strong case. Its Halloween atmosphere, Donald Pleasence’s heightened performance as Dr. Loomis, Danielle Harris’s portrayal of Jamie, and its daring ending help make it a fan favorite, despite the notorious mask.
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