The Producer's Cut of The Curse of Michael Myers (with the Mark of Thorn serving as the A)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Producer's Cut) is the original workprint of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. This version, infamous among fans of Halloween, is often called Halloween 666, referring to the film's original title. Bootlegs of the workprint can be found on the Internet. Cover art varies in color and illustrations, and the "A" in "Halloween" is often replaced by the Mark of Thorn on many versions. Each copy is different, as some fans add music or other footage to the prints.
Background[]
The so-called Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was a workprint of the original film. It featured almost seventy minutes of alternate, unedited footage, most of its graphically violent shots edited down in post-production to avoid an NC-17 rating, which generally hurts box office totals.
Plot[]
Michael Myers has been missing for six years, and so has his niece, Jamie Lloyd. He and the now fifteen-year-old girl are both presumed dead, much to the relief of Michael's former psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, who has retired. Jamie has actually been kidnapped and has been impregnated by the "Cult of Thorn", a cult oriented around Michael, as Thorn's curse is the apparent reason for his evil. Their leader, Dr. Terence Wynn, a former colleague of Dr. Loomis, has been aiding in Michael's survival since 1978, and is planning on using Jamie's child along with in-virtro fertilization to create "the ultimate evil". Jamie gives birth then flees, and Tommy Doyle, the boy Laurie Strode was babysitting on Halloween 1978, has now grown up and is obsessed with finding out the source of Michael's evil. Michael chases Tommy, Jamie, her newborn child Stephen, Kara Strode (Laurie's cousin) and her son Danny to try and find the baby to aid the cult in harnessing evil.
Variant scenes[]
Jamie survives throughout most of the Producer's Cut before she is shot in the head by a pistol equipped by a silencer by Dr. Wynn; whereas, in the theatrical version, she is killed off within the first few minutes by Michael when she is shoved into a corn thresher in a barn. Another appearance is a flashback sequence in which Jamie is kidnapped by Dr. Wynn. All in all, over seventy minutes of footage were cut out and replaced with new footage which wound up in the theatrical version. The ending is significantly different, as the Producer's Cut ended with bringing Dr. Loomis into further films in the series as the cult's leader, but this was replaced with Loomis's scream in the background in the last scene when Donald Pleasence died, paying respect to the veteran Halloween actor with a dedication to him in the credits. The next two films were dedicated to him. In the Producer's Cut, Dr. Loomis prepared to kill Michael, only to discover that the man in Michael's coveralls and mask was actually Dr. Wynn, who had apparently allowed Michael to escape (or Michael attacked him and forcibly swapped clothes with Wynn). Loomis then looked on his arm to discover Thorn's symbol on his wrist, meaning he was the new cult leader. This was scrapped and a new ending was filmed, reworking the existing footage of Pleasence to better fit it.
Availability[]
Although Disney/Buena Vista, who owns the franchise, had previously stated that they could not locate the original negative for the Producer's Cut of the film, it was announced that the Producer's Cut would be included in the complete collection Blu-ray box set in September 2014. Prior to that, the source for the Producer's Cut in circulation was a screener that leaked out of Dimension in the early 2000s. Fans restored elements of this workprint, with the resulting bootlegs of varying quality found on the Internet, particularly eBay, generally ranging in price between sixty and one-hundred dollars, depending on the version, amount of discs, or seller.
Release date[]
On October 27, 2013, at midnight, the first official screening of the Producer's Cut took place at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The film's screenwriter, Daniel Farrands, was present for a short Q&A panel, in which he stressed that there was still a major push in the works to give their version a proper release. He also said that the studio's allowing this version to be screened in public for the first time, and the overwhelmingly positive response, were both huge steps in the right direction. Since then, an official release date was announced for September 23, 2014 as part of the Complete Collection Blu-ray Disc box set, yet this version would not be included in the DVD box set at that time. The film has since (as of October 2015) separately become available on Blu-ray Disc.