Geeking Out About Cinema #4: Halloween 4-6 Alternate Death Cult Storyline

Following the Shout Factory Blu-ray release of Halloween 5, fans of the franchise were offered the chance to gaze upon some peculiar “lost footage”. Said footage included an alternate opening scene featuring a character by the name of Dr. Death who aided Michael’s injuries and tattooed a mysterious symbol on his wrist. This symbol of course was later nudged into becoming the "Thorn symbol" in the following sequel but this was never the original intent. Before the Thorn storyline became official for Halloween 6, there lived this interesting Dr. Death figure and mysterious man in black showing up with a matching tattoo following Michael around. So what was some ideas that may have been floating around with these ambiguous visuals established years prior to Halloween 6's fandom splitting explanation dump?

With so many doors opening up for speculation on what Halloween 5's concepts may have been at the time now comes a follow up list of new ideas that would've connected back Halloween 4 in an interesting way. This of course would also simultaneously make some new alterations to what Halloween 6 would’ve become. Dr. Death represented a piece to a larger puzzle that we’ll now, in this article, breakdown via some rough concept bullet points regarding that particular corner of the series.

Halloween 4 Teases The Foundation of The Death Cult Trilogy

• In the officially released Halloween 4 movie, there's a scene where Loomis and Sheriff Meeker find themselves surrounded by various Michael Myers look-a-likes only to realize that the whole set up is just a stupid prank made by town residents. However, in the Death Cult Trilogy, the alternate version of this showcases a small group of guys wearing Michael Myers masks and outfits who chases after and kills people that we all just assumed was Michael all along. The scene at the school for example with Michael popping up attacking Loomis and chasing Jamie is actually some of the cult members (the glaringly different looking masks in that scene actually serves a purpose). You see them more prominently as a group when they surround Loomis and the sherif messing with them knowing that Michael wouldn’t be too far behind. Their behavior revolves around the desire to act as both harbingers  and co-conspirators to Michael's killings (performing murders themselves to be a part of his trail of blood) which we learn more about in Halloween 6). 

There’s a couple other scenes like after Rachael and Jamie barely escapes Michael off of the roof. The Michael figure that just pops up on the ground level watching Jamie look over Rachael’s unconscious body is a cult member. They’re also responsible for the police department slaughter when the sheriff and Loomis sees the mutilated dead deputy at the station (all of this is referenced in Halloween 6 connecting the dots to these scenes).

• Brady is actually revealed to have been a member of the cult who had a change of heart after getting too close to Rachael and knowing that Michael was coming to eventually kill her. This was Brady’s dark secret in the movie. It wasn’t just a story about a cheating boyfriend (as seen in the actual movie) but a guy who was tasked to infiltrate the lives of anyone close to Michael only to have had conflicting thoughts too late at the end of the day. So with given this context now, Brady could’ve warned Rachael and Jamie to leave Haddonfield earlier on so that the two would’ve never encountered Michael adding new layers to his character. The scene where Michael starts chasing Rachael, Jamie, and Brady in the house, Brady actually says in his final breath “Forgive me” before Michael crushes his neck. However, this quick piece of dialogue got muted in the final released film. Brady never gets to tell his secret but instead tried to hold off Michael long enough to allow their escape as redemption.

Another surprising angle introduced to his character is that he only decided to cheat with the sheriff’s daughter as a means to emotionally disconnect from Rachael to make his task mentally easier to handle. Clearly this didn’t work and only made things more complicated. Also, solidifying his connection to the cult, is a scene of him earlier in the movie where he's shown talking to a group of shady looking strangers outside of the store. Rachael takes notice of them and questions him on who his friends were. Brady just turns around and tells her not to worry about it and the movie just continues on never showing them with Brady ever again. What makes this scene the most intriguing is the fact that Rachael looks at the the group briefly noticing matching tattoos on their wrists. It gives the audience something to feel a little off about during and after the movie to where Halloween 5-6 would later start shedding some light on. 

Halloween 5 Teases The Death Cult More Directly

• In Halloween 5, you meet one of the pivotal members of the cult known as Dr. Death who aids in both healing Michael and the cult being able to track and hopefully influence him in the future (hence the mysterious tattoo). However, Michael kills this Dr. Death and continues on his killing spree. There’s a scene where the other members (Brady's "friends" from Halloween 4) discover Dr. Death’s corpse and calls someone saying “The harbinger is released, but the doctor didn’t make it” to which a dark sinister voice is heard responding “Take care of the body and don’t lose sight of him. I’ll be on my way shortly”. This is where the mysterious man in black figure eventually shows up continuing Dr. Death's work in Haddonfield. We never learn more beyond this with H5’s story and the film plays out just about the same except with the ending and perhaps a few changes here and there throughout. 

Instead of the theatrical cut where we see just the mysterious man showing up at the police station, it’s a group of men with machine guns (same guys from before) appearing in a creepy fashion dressed in black suits and slaughtering everyone. The man in black is shown only standing outside during the massacre and then walks in once the gunfire stops. The final scene in Halloween 5 is of Jamie fearfully walking through the smoky hallways passing by dead officers. As Jamie approaches Michael's cell which has now been broken into, you can clearly see the cult symbol written on the wall behind her in blood as she cries in distress.

Halloween 6 Fully Introduces The Cult

• You learn later on in Halloween 6 that this mysterious organization (who isn’t some druid cult creating Michael and altering stars as was the case with the actual movie) is a death cult who worships the god of death and have studied various cultures, plagues, and massacres for ages. They thought that the closer they came to death and the underworld through science and witchcraft, the closer they were to unlocking some way to evade it and become eternally free of God’s judgement. Michael’s killings in Haddonfield was merely a small blip on their radar until they were informed by one of their members of a doctor named Sam Loomis shooting Michael 6 times while having no effect on the killer. This coupled with all of the other legend growing rumors circling Michael after that iconic night (Halloween 1-2) is what caught their attention more. Because of this, they began slowly planting more of their members in Haddonfield to observe this phenomenon more closely which is where their mysterious untold presence in Halloween 4 begins.

• It’s in Halloween 6 where we get the eye opening reveal that Brady was part of the cult as a fresh recruit that failed his mission due to “getting too close to the target”. Wynn is revealed to be the cult’s Haddonfield informer as someone who secretly studied on patients for the organization as a researcher and someone who can give them an endless supply of “recruits” without Loomis or the board finding out. Wynn is actually the one who alerted the cult of Michael’s feats after studying his “friend” Loomis’s reports on him. What's chilling about this reveal is that Haddonfield didn't just have Michael killing people as the town's monster but a cultist doctor exploiting mentally disturbed patients in the shadows. This results in Haddonfield being even more unsettling than one might've thought. 

• The man in black seen in Halloween 5 is a separate character altogether in this version of the movie and is one of the cult’s leading figures that Wynn works under directly (also we never fully see his face). In the Death Cult trilogy, there’s no plot of the cult using Michael to impregnate his niece for some familial curse which is what Thorn was heavily implied to have done in Halloween 6's Producer's Cut. They also don’t have Michael in some captive trance like state, but instead has left Michael to his own murderous vices since they realized that they couldn’t control him. There’s a brief flashback scene where we see them trying to capture Michael after breaking him out of the police station only for him to overpower them brutally killing several of them before they barely escaped. Michael is still out in Haddonfield killing people (which many of Halloween 6’s kill scenes are kept intact with a few more residential murders).

• We learn that the cult’s goal is to find a way to exploit Michael as their own plague bringer of sorts amongst mass communities beyond Haddonfield from their belief that Michael is a beacon sent by their God. However, they haven’t been able to fully understand Michael’s power despite their efforts. This is why they try to recruit Loomis to help them fill in any details not stated in his reports (which is where we get our big scene with Wynn explaining all of this to Loomis after kidnapping him). The man in black uses Wynn as a familiar face to hopefully bring Loomis into the fold with more cooperation.

All of the big exposition stuff with the cult that we get regarding their ambitions, time in Haddonfield, and Brady’s involvement comes from Wynn’s explanation and offer to Loomis. Everything regarding the cult's murderous and creepy historical influence comes from Tommy’s research of their symbols which has shown up in Haddonfield more frequently by this point. The man in black thinks that since Loomis has been in closest contact with Michael, he has somehow been elevated to a level of existence that is of worthy value to their organization. Though this is never fully spelled out, it's heavily implied as there’s even a scene where Wynn questions Loomis’s survival from the hospital explosion in Halloween 2 as some miraculous shielding by the God of Death. Loomis rejects the notion as just psychological mind games by Wynn and the movie never gets into it further. 

After Wynn decides that Loomis’s unwillingness to comply would mean “drastic measures”, the mysterious man in black takes out a blade in an attempt to force Loomis. However before anything can happen, gun shots are heard outside of the room distracting them. Tommy slams open the door with a gun shooting the man in black and before Wynn could pull out his gun to shoot Tommy, Loomis knocks it away with his cane allowing Tommy to shoot Wyn in the head. The man in black is heard laughing while coughing up blood. Loomis looks down at him saying “Michael Myers may be evil, but you’re the monster that allowed his murderous rampage to continue. But not anymore. Because I’m putting an end to him...to...to all of this”. The man stares at Loomis with a deranged expression (the only shot of his face that we see which is a zoomed in look at a corner of his head being kept in shadow where we briefly see symbols carved in his skin). The man ominously tells Loomis “You can’t stop this. There will always be another. His work is not yet finished”. The man succumbs to his gun shot injury and dies staring at Loomis leaving a very eerie and unsettling atmosphere for the rest of the film to follow.

• In this version of the movie, Tommy and Kara are the ones who finds the cult’s hideout to rescue a kidnapped Loomis after barely escaping Michael who has been pursuing them. However, Michael tracks them down and starts chasing them through the building during their search for Loomis. It’s during this heart racing rescue that the trio finds a young lady in one of the rooms alone staring out of her window with various symbols carved on her body. Tommy and Kara looks in utter shock at the lady’s mutilated body and as she turns around to them, Loomis emotionally utters the name “Jamie?”. Jamie breaks down crying when she sees Loomis, but as the trio tries to free her from her room, she immediately stops them and starts to yell ”No! I can’t! I can’t leave!" She then starts to repeat the phrase “They made me do it” in an almost traumatic childlike fashion. Loomis questions her ominous statements but Michael pops up in the hallway causing them to have to rush her out despite her warnings.

Once they encounter Michael, we get this climactic final act as Michael slaughters through a few cult members on his way to them (similar to the actual movie but we get more brutal kill scenes here solidifying Michael's disunion from the group). There’s a few close calls where Michael almost grabs and kills Kara or Tommy during this chase escalating the tension further and further. The team soon makes it to the exit but Loomis then stops and says “He won’t stop. He'll hunt us down to our last days. We have to kill it now.” This is where Tommy decides to split off from the group to lure Michael away from them while they find a car that Kara can hot wire (a skill that she reveals she has earlier in the movie). The movie then focuses solely on Tommy luring Michael to him and we get a scene similar to the actual movie where Tommy manages to ambush him.

However, instead of distracting him with a baby and beating him with a pipe like the theatrical cut or using magical stones like the producer's Cut, we get something a little more dramatically potent. Tommy lures him into a room and shows up behind him from a distance pointing his gun at him. We get quite a bit of dialogue here with Tommy allowing the audience to soak in that this is indeed the same little boy from the first movie all grown up. Tommy, while pointing his gun at Michael, says “Do you remember me, Michael? Do you remember that night? I’ve lived that night over and over in fear...all because you wanted to kill your sister.” Michael walks towards Tommy with a knife as if completely disregarding him until Tommy mentions Laurie’s name which causes him to briefly stop. 

Tommy says “It’s her right? Her, Jamie…Judith? But everyone else around them means nothing to you. All of those lives destroyed all in the name of what?! Murdering your own family?! Why?! Please…please tell me”. Tommy begins to shake holding the gun as if finally letting out something that’s been emotionally eating away at him for years. It's our big reveal of truly how psychologically affected Tommy was from that first film. Michael lowers his knife and tilts his head to the side which catches Tommy off guard resulting in him lowering his gun. Without any dialogue being said, it’s implied through Tommy's facial expression that he believes Michael might be finally showing some sign of humanity. He then starts to walk towards Michael, continuing to tremble, saying “Maybe…maybe you don’t know. Maybe…maybe you’re just confused...a lost child”. Tommy starts to slowly and cautiously walk towards Michael who is completely still at this point. And as he eventually reaches about arm’s length to Michael, Tommy looks up at him and says “Maybe under that mask…you’re just as scared as I am”. 

He then begins to cautiously reach towards Michael's mask and the camera cuts to Michael’s hand quickly gripping the knife more tightly to which Tommy notices causing him to stumble back as Michael slash through his arm deeply. Tommy fearfully looks at his bleeding hand then back up to Michael who begins aggressively pacing towards him. Tommy then fires his gun at Michael’s chest which appears to do nothing until he finally shoots him in the head. As blood begins gushing down the mask, Michael just stops in his tracks, stares at him, begins to slowly lift his knife up towards Tommy and then drops to his knees before falling flat on his back. Tommy, both cautiously and fearfully, walks towards Michael’s lifeless body, looks down at him and says “You’ve plagued this town for the last time Michael” aiming his gun at Michael’s head only to hear that the gun is now empty.

With a look of anguish in his eyes, as he glances at the empty gun (as if seeing Michael's seemingly lifeless body wasn't enough for him), he is distracted by the sound of Kara screaming from outside followed by tires screeching away. He abandons Michael’s body and the camera slowly zooms in on it as Tommy is shown running out of the room in the background. However, Michael never moves in this scene (though fans watching would draw their own speculations and debates to claiming that they saw him slightly budge). We cut to Tommy running outside seeing Loomis on the floor bleeding out from his side and Kara crying over him. In the background of the shot, you can see the tail lights of a car speeding away into the distance (an homage to Carpenter's original movie's scene with Michael stealing the nurse's car). Tommy runs up to them in a panic asking what happened. Loomis looks up to him and repeats while struggling from his loss of blood “The evil is gone. The evil is gone”. Tommy looks up at Kara and fearfully asks, “What have we done?”. 

The Halloween theme then kicks in and the camera slowly begins to pan away from them showing the two kneeling over Loomis’s body and Tommy eventually looking out into the distance. The sound of the howling wind picks up giving off an eerie unsettling atmosphere and then…fade to black.

• The Death Cult Trilogy version of Halloween 6’s story centers around Tommy and Loomis trying to stop Michael while uncovering a terrifying and dark conspiracy brewing within Haddonfield. Kara’s story and character is a bit different here as she isn’t a mother (there’s no Danny in the story), but everything revolving around her having family issues with her parents as well as going to Haddonfield University remains intact.

The Mysterious Tragedy of Jamie

• Jamie Lloyd only gets fully revealed towards the final act as described, but there are references to her throughout the movie known ominously as “the missing child during Michael's prison escape”. There are also clues hinted during Wyn’s conversation with Loomis about them failing to control Michael but "finding promise in another subject”. There are no heavy implications of rape in this version as the theatrical and producer's cut movie had regarding Jamie, but the Death Cult version also never really spells out what they did to her. It's all left to the audience’s imagination. Jamie’s shocking ending here is actually a storyline that comes full circle with Halloween 4’s cliffhanger scene when we saw her killing someone in the same vain as her uncle. It’s implied that the death cult’s experimentation on her allowed for whatever force of evil inside of her to fully come out instead of being pushed down by Loomis and everyone else. So the ending scene with the car driving off is Halloween 6’s big cliffhanger to set up a new villain for the franchise.

 

What’s great about this version of the story is that Michael’s origins and inhuman nature is still kept a mystery and Jamie’s turn in part 4 is brought back in a shocking fashion. Michael being finally dead or not is left a little ambiguous while there’s a new “evil” on the loose. How Halloween 7 would’ve followed this up would’ve been interesting to see considering the general idea was for this trilogy to act as sort of a gentle springboard to step away from Myers. It's essentially the same approach to what Season of the Witch tried to do, but instead this alternate trilogy would've kept things in the same continuity as opposed to doing an anthology.

So we get quite a bit explained revolving this mysterious cult in part 6 but we don't necessarily get all of the details. There are still other aspects left intentionally open ended to get audiences fully invested in what this new franchise direction would be. There’s a series of very rough sketches of what Halloween’s new killer would look like. One is an image of adult Jamie with a freaky looking clown mask and black jester-like outfit (which might be a bit much but it is at the very least unique and different separating her from Myers). There’s also a sketch of Jamie wearing her hospital gown where you can see all of her body carvings while wearing a bizarre plastered on mask that looks similar to that of the classic film “Eyes Without A Face” with a splash of “Alice, Sweet Alice”. The idea of the hospital gown being part of her slasher attire acts as a subtle connection to Michael Myers during one of his earlier kill scenes in Halloween 4 where he kills the mechanic. 

The Alice, Sweet Alice influence doesn't just stop at the mask as the films moving forward would've adopted a more eerie and atmospheric presentation much like the classic 70's slasher. Even the score would shift a little to include more creepy and disturbing dream-like melodies to invoke Jamie's underdeveloped maturity as a woman still being a child at heart and mind yet completely unstable. There's also a peculiarly disturbing detail that makes her stand out as a new slasher villain in that, unlike Michael Myers' traditionally silent demeanor, Jamie can be heard occasionally groaning as if insinuating that she's suffering from an unseen pain. Think the scary cries of the ghostly mother from the 2013 supernatural horror film "Mama" or the shrieks of Abigail from the final possession scene in The Fourth Kind. 

Throughout the theoretical Halloween 7, occasionally victims can hear what sounds like a young woman groaning in agonizing pain before Jamie appears to attack them. It's a very freaky angle to what audiences would come to expect from a Halloween film surrounding its central antagonist and certainly takes things into a refreshing and mysteriously unsettling avenue. What makes this a chilling character trait, aside from how terrifying the sound is on its own, is that the audience never is made aware of what exactly is happening. Is Jamie in some physical pain due to what she experienced as an experimented upon prisoner of the cult? Is this a spiritual fight happening inside of her that we're not able to see where the real Jamie is struggling against som unseen evil force?

Or...is this all a malicious trick from the new killer. It allows the audience to speculate, but I'll leave you with one frightening little anecdote. In a comic book panel concept art showcasing a moment from what could be the new Halloween 7, a school counselor from Jamie's old school who barely escaped Jamie's assault (implying that Halloween 7 would've shown Jamie going on a killing spree to familiar places of her childhood) recounts his encounter to Tommy (Paul Rudd) who's trying to track her down. This recount leads to a flashback panel of his traumatizing encounter. The man is shown hiding behind a desk as Jamie stalks him from a distance and a couple dead bodies of school staff members are shown in the background amongst a chaotic mess of papers and supplies.

As Jamie's painful groans are heard, the man recounts in his narration that he was both scared and yet felt pity due to the sounds of Jamie's pain. He felt that he could perhaps talk with her, but before he was going to stand up and attempt to calm her down...one of her groans very briefly slipped into a creepy sinister giggle before she silently walks out of the room. This caused the man to literally piss himself in utter fear (and yes the comic book narration actually adds that detail). It's the only time in the entirety of Halloween 7 where this behavior is displayed and it's nuanced enough that the film never spends too much focus on it leaving it for the audience to catch themselves. This makes the Jamie character all the more creepy and a worthy addition to the Halloween legacy. 

Bonus Thoughts

So, You've Made It This Far...

Author: Saleem E. Frazer

I'm delighted to have seen such positive feedback from various Halloween fans on Facebook (where this movie rewrite concept originally was posted). Something that I'd like to link as a disclaimer here however is where all of these ideas come from. No, these weren't actual behind the scenes ideas floating around. The idea for this whole project of mines was to rewrite the Thorn trilogy to fit my own created narrative, but to present it in a pseudo-behind the scenes "lost ideas now uncovered" type of article. All of the ideas listed above literally stemmed from me taking a shower one morning pondering about how conflicted I was (and still am) about the various Michael Myers mask designs of the franchise. No kidding. This whole thing started from that general thought which randomly transitioned towards how I felt about Halloween 5’s "lost footage" released by Shout Factory. 

And then…extensive fan fiction was created. Either way, I hope you guys enjoyed this geeky creative venture of mines, and who knows, maybe some ambitious filmmaker out there will take my ideas and make something out of it. Even better, get Danielle Harris to star in my version of Halloween 7. Would be a dream come true game changer moment for me.