After missing out on Halloween III, iconic slasher Michael Myers made his triumphant return to the screen in 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – and you can here all about that in the video found HERE. Halloween 4 had a shocking cliffhanger ending. Our little heroine Jamie Lloyd picked up a pair of scissors and attacked her adoptive mother, seeming to have inherited the evil killer instinct of her uncle Michael Myers. Some fans were disappointed that the following year’s Halloween 5 (get it HERE) brushed aside the idea of Jamie becoming a killer. Maybe they would have been satisfied with the alternative script for the sequel that was written by Shem Bitterman, Halloween 5: The Killer Inside Me. That’s the unmade Halloween sequel we’re digging into with the new episode of the WTF Happened to This Unmade Horror Movie video series, which you can check out in the embed above.
As mentioned in Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins’ book Taking Shape II: The Lost Halloween Sequels (buy it HERE), Bitterman’s Halloween 5: The Killer Inside Me, which would have been set on the same night as Halloween 4, was almost brought to the screen by director Jeff Burr, whose credits include The Stepfather 2, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, and Pumpkinhead 2. But then Dominique Othenin-Girard signed on to direct Halloween 5 and literally dropped Bitterman’s script in the trash… although Bitterman does still receive a writing credit on the finished film.
Directed by Othenin-Girard from a screenplay he crafted with Michael Jacobs (which features a couple leftover moments from Bitterman’s script), the Halloween 5 that was made has the following synopsis:
After lying in a coma for a year, Michael Myers awakens and stalks his way back to his small hometown in Illinois, intent on killing his niece, Jamie, who has been confined to a mental institution since Michael’s last attempt to slay her. Suspecting a psychic link between Michael and Jamie, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis joins forces with Sheriff Ben Meeker and attempts to stop Michael’s latest rampage.
The film stars Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Wendy Kaplan, Tamara Glynn, Jeffrey Landman, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Troy Evans, Frank Como, David Ursin, Max Robinson, and Betty Carvalho, with Don Shanks as Michael Myers.
The WTF Happened to This Unmade Horror Movie series focuses on
the various horror projects that could never seem to get things off the ground, be it for budgetary concerns, creative differences, or just an ever evolving Hollywood landscape. We dive into every aspect and see just how close these films had come to cameras rolling.
This episode was Written, Narrated, and Edited by Tyler Nichols, Produced by John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Unmade Horror Movie can be seen below. To see more, and to check out our other video series, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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