If you've read any of my reviews for slasher movies or horror movies in general, I've probably mentioned that John Carpenter's Halloween is my favorite movie. Given that, I'm highly critical of sequels. Truthfully, I think that Halloween is perfect the way that it is and no sequels were necessary. If pressed, I will tell you that the only two which I acknowledge are Halloween II and Halloween: H20. Despite my views, there are millions of Halloween fans out there, or should I say, Michael Myers fans, who clamor for sequels or, God forbid, remakes, and the Akkad family keeps cranking them out. While it would be tough to decide which one of the sequels is the worst, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers would certainly be at the top (or is it bottom?) of that list.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (which is technically Halloween 6) takes place six years after the events of Halloween 5. Michael Myers (here played by George P. Wilbur) and his niece, Jamie Lloyd (previously played by Danielle Harris) disappeared six years ago, assisted by a mysterious man in black. As the story opens, we see that Jamie (now played by J.C. Brandy) is pregnant and held captive by some sort of cult. She delivers the baby, but then escapes, only to be hunted down by Michael Myers. Before she is caught, she is able to call a local radio station. Tommy Doyle (played by Paul Rudd, who is "introduced" in the film as Paul Stephen Rudd), the young boy who was terrorized by Michael Myers in 1978, hears the broadcast. Tommy is a recluse who has dedicated his life to studying Michael Myers. He lives across the street from relatives of Laurie Strode, the lone survivor of the first film. When Michael Myers comes calling, Tommy convinces Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan) that she and her son (Devin Gardner) and that he can help them. Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance), the psychiatrist who originally treated Michael Myers, also come into the picture. But, how can this force of evil be stopped?

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is one of those movies which has a pretty muddy history. As the legend goes, Director Joe Chapelle diverged from the original script and delivered a cut which didn't please Producer Paul Freeman. Still, it was Chapelle's cut which went out to theaters. A "Producer's Cut" (as opposed to the usual "Director's Cut") of the movie does exist and has been available via bootleg for years. (Editor's Note: DVDSleuth.com does not condone the viewing, purchasing, or discussion of bootleg movies.) However, this story doesn't excuse the fact that this is a horrible mess of a movie.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers has so many problems, I don't know where to start. The movie makes the mistake of continuing every stupid plot idea from Halloween 5, namely the man in black and the Thorn cult. Michael Myers was born to be part of this cult (he bears the mark on his arm) and they can control him. Do what? Michael Myers is the puppet of some shadowy organization? Does that make any sense? Yet, in the film, the man in black can seemingly dispatch Michael Myers from their secret lair like some sort of hitman. I'm more of a fan of Halloween than I am of the Michael Myers character, but I don't know how any of the Michael Myers' devotees put up with that junk. So, in this movie, Michael Myers isn't so much stalking and slashing people, as he's disposing of them.

The rest of the movie doesn't make much sense either. Now, credit where credit is due -- the idea of bringing back Tommy Doyle from the first film, and having him be a damaged Michael Myers expert is genius. Too bad they don't do much with him, although young ingénue Paul Rudd is clearly giving it his all. Donald Pleasance was apparently very ill during filming -- he died not long after the movie wrapped -- so his scenes are few and far between and very erratic. Dr. Loomis just seems to show up from time to time, say something weird and disappear. Kara’s son is visited by the man in black and often has a blank stare, as if he’s in a trance, but this is never explained or pays off. The final act of the movie really goes off the rails, as everyone ends up in the basement of a mental hospital. There is a long chase scene through rooms which are apparently supposed to mean something to us, and then the movie simply ends. Rumor has it that the Producer’s Cut clears up some of the issues in the finale, but as it is, it has the feeling of a heavily edited European movie from the 80s.

Halloween 4, Halloween 5, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers have the unfortunate reputation of being sort of cheap looking movies, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is the cheapest of them all. There’s little gore here and the murders are very boring. Other than being brain-dead and non-sensical, the movie’s biggest sin is that, as usual, they didn’t get the Michael Myers mask right. It’s no wonder that all of these storylines were abandoned and the series was given a fresh re-start with Halloween: H20. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is a movie which not only scrapes the bottom of the barrel, but needlessly so.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers makes you glad that “shock jocks” aren’t as popular as they used to be on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Miramax/Echo Bridge Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 20 Mbps. Unlike most of the Halloween films, which were shot at 1.85:1, this one was shot at 1.85:1. The aspect ratio presented on this Disc isn’t the original aspect ratio, but there is no sense of pan ‘n scan or a “smushed” look. The image is relatively sharp and clear, but there is a visible grain on the picture. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. Still, the image doesn’t show a great amount of detail and it certainly shimmers at times. According to the Blu-ray Disc box, the Disc contains a DTS-HD stereo track, and according to my player, it’s a DTS-HD Master Audio 2 channel track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 1.8 Mbps. But, I was clearly getting surround sound effects from this track. The rear speakers didn’t seem to be merely mirroring the front channels, these sounded like true, independent surround effects. Whatever the case, they certainly added to the viewing experience, which was desperately needed. Along with that, we get clear dialogue and music.

The Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Blu-ray Disc contains no extras.

On November 6, 2012, Echo Bridge Entertainment released a triple-feature Blu-ray Disc which featured Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween: H20, and Halloween: Resurrection all on one disc.

Following Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, it appeared that the Halloween franchise was dead, and given the lackluster quality of that film, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. But, just three shorts years later, Michael Myers was back, but this time, he was in decidedly more reliable hands.

Halloween: H20 takes place in 1998, 20 years after the events portrayed on Halloween. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), one of the few survivors of Michael Myers rampage through Haddonfield, Illinois that night, has faked her own death and changed her named to Keri Tate. She runs an elite boarding school in northern California, where she lives with her son, John (Josh Hartnett). Keri is still haunted by that night (and the knowledge that Michael Myers is her brothers), and she's very hyper-vigilant and over-protective of John. The students are scheduled to go on an overnight field-trip, but Keri won't let John go. His girlfriend, Molly (Michelle), and their friends, Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and Sarah (Jodi Lynn O'Keefe), decide to stay behind with him. Then, at the urging of school counselor and boyfriend, Will (Adam Arkin), Keri changes her mind. However, as they had plans to have a party in the school, John and his friends pretend to go on the trip and then stay behind. Little does anyone know that Michael Myers (played here by Chris Durand) has finally found Laurie and he's entered the school, determined the finish the job which he started twenty years ago.

In 1996, the movie Scream had done several things, among them making Writer Kevin Williamson an overnight sensation and prominently featuring scenes from Halloween within the movie. Williamson also didn't hide the fact that Halloween was one of his favorite movies. Looking to jump-start the franchise, the Weinsteins asked Williamson to do something with Halloween. He served as executive producer and wrote an outline for the script, which was eventually written by Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg. Veteran horror director Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2, Friday the 13th Part 3, House) was brought in to helm the film, and obviously it was a coup to get Jamie Lee Curtis back after she'd last appeared in 1981's Halloween II.

The result is a movie which is slick-looking, but ultimately very hollow. Considering that at least three people were involved in writing the script, there's not much too it. We never learn where Michael Myers has been for the last 20 years, but we are shown in a pre-credit sequence how he learns where Laurie is. We aren't told how Laurie was able to get the credentials to run a school and the details how/why/with whom she had a child in 1981 are left for us to guess. The story simply sets up the characters in the school and then has Michael Myers show up. To his credit, Miner does a noble job creating some tension and there are some nice shots here (especially the one where Michael comes down from the ceiling...despite the fact that it makes no sense). The movie works well as a high-brow slasher film, but after a 20 year wait, fans of the series deserved something better than this. So, Halloween: H20 plays as a competent thriller and as it ignores Halloween 4 & 5, it brings in some interesting plot points, but as a movie which was meant to end the series once and for all, it's weak. And, of course, the mask is all wrong. The eye holes are way too big and it looks like a cheap Michael Myers Halloween mask instead of anything resembling the mask from the original.

Halloween: H20 gets way too much mileage out of a dumb waiter on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Echo Bridge Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 (despite the fact that it's been letterboxed at 2.35:1 in other releases) and the Disc contains a 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 25 Mbps. There's no obvious pan-and-scan here and this never has the feeling that the image doesn't fit in the screen, but it does look like zooming in on the image has created a loss of detail and some softness to the image. The picture is sharp and clear, with only a hint of grain and on obvious defects from the source material. Unlike some other Echo Bridge releases, this doesn't have a shoddy look, but the loss of a true widescreen framing hurts it. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 2-channel track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 1.6 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. This track has very little presence when compared to a 5.1 track. There are some OK stereo effects here and the familiar John Carpenter Halloween theme sounds fine, but a surround track would have really helped this movie.

As noted above, Halloween: H20 was meant to be the end of the Michael Myers saga, but money talks in Hollywood, so the Halloween machine marched on with 2002's Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween: Resurrection opens with the saga between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers (here played by Brad Loree) coming to an end. We are then introduced by online reality show Dangertainment, which is run by Freddie (Busta Rhymes) and Nora (Tyra Banks). They have recruited six strangers -- Sara (Bianca Kajlich), Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), Donna (Daisy McCrackin), Jen (Katee Sackhoff), Jim (Luke Kirby), and Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas) -- to spend the night in one of the scariest houses in America -- the house where Michael Myers lived as a child and killed his sister, Judith. The house is rigged with many webcams and each participant wears a webcam and a microphone. All they have to do is explore the house and search for any clues which point to why Michael Myers became a mass-murderer. Little do they know that Michael has come home...again...and is stalking the explorers.

If the powers that be behind Halloween: Resurrection had to make yet another Halloween movie, dragging it into the present was probably a good idea. And in 2002, webcams and internet broadcasts were cutting edge (weren't they?). However, beyond that, the movie has little going on. OK, let's begin with the explanation for how Michael Myers survived the finale of Halloween: H20. Did they pull that out of their ass or what? And I hate to keep being a stickler for details, but how did he get from California to Illinois, and why are we expected to believe that he keeps coming back to that house? Because it was in Halloween? Once the characters are in the house, the movie simply becomes an exercise in picking them off one at a time. Sara uses the broadcast to ask for help from a hacker from the outside (Ryan Merriman), but this doesn't really add to the story. The film was directed by Rick Rosenthal, who directed Halloween II and many episodes of TV shows, but, at times, this looks like a very amateurish production. (To his credit, the movie contains one cool shot, but that's certainly not enough for a veteran director.) The weakest link here (amongst many) is Busta Rhymes, who uses "motherfucker" as a replacement for nearly every noun in his dialogue. I don't know who thought that audiences wanted to see Busta Rhymes use interpretive martial arts against Michael Myers, but they were wrong. It's a tough call between which is worse, Halloween 5 or Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween: Resurrection comes home on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Echo Bridge Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the Disc carries an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 19 Mbps. I don't have another copy of this movie handy, but according to research, it's been framed at 2.35:1 in the past, so we have another transfer which doesn't use the correct aspect ratio. The image doesn't look as good here as on H20, as the source print here wasn't as clean. We get some mild spots during the opening credits. There is slight grain to the image as well. The transfer here is a bit hard to judge, as so much of the movie takes place through webcams. The non-webcam shots look OK, but the colors are muted and the image is dark at times. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 2.4 Mbps. This movie gets a 5.1 track? The arrival of a 5.1 track really stands out when compared to the sound on the other films. While this isn't a reference quality DTS track, it offers palpable bass and some notable stereo and surround effects. The issue here is that they aren't very detailed and we don't get distinct, isolated effects coming from the front or rear.

There are no extra features on the Halloween Triple Feature Blu-ray Disc.

Review by Mike Long. Copyright 2012.