In many ways
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995, sometimes known as
Halloween 666: The Origins of Michael Myers) and
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (released in 1996 but filmed in 1994, also known as
The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) are two films that could have only been made in the mid-, pre-
Scream
1990s. While some of my younger readers who did not experience those
dark days may find this hard to believe, but there was actually a time
(i.e., the above-mentioned era) when horror movies were the epitome of
geekdom and unhipness. Nobody (other than weird kids with a subscription
to
Fangoria, such as your humble author) watched such things, or at least wouldn't admit to it.
The
slasher craze
that had begun in the 1970s and had turned into a bona fide pop-culture
staple by the 1980s had run its course, with the bulk of the classic
franchises --i.e.
Halloween,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
A Nightmare on Elm Street,
Friday the 13th, etc --having largely become self parodies by this point in time (okay, the
Friday the 13th
series was always kind of a parody to begin with) while new would-be
franchises were largely lacking in fresh vision. There were exceptions,
of course.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare was arguably the strongest
Freddy Krueger film since the original and offered an almost
8 1/2-esque (or at least,
Cat in the Brain-esque) take on the popular series while the original
Candyman offered a compelling take on
Clive Barker's brand of horror working (very loosely) within the confines of American slasher film, for instance.
But these films were largely ignored, with American audiences focusing on such "highbrow" interpretations of
Gothic horror novels such as
Bram Stoker's Dracula,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the homoerotic-laden
Interview With the Vampire
adaptation when indulging in such things. As a result those filmmakers
still working in slasher flicks, especially the long-standing franchises
whose names alone could still sell tickets to geeks like me, began
incorporating increasingly grandiose plot lines into these films in a
bid to keep audiences interested. One such plot device, used by the
Halloween and
Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises respectively, was to incorporate Satanic cults into their mythologies.
Of course the subject of Satanic cults has been a longtime favorite of
horror films but when such elements were incorporated into these
franchises it came during a curious era. The 1980s had witnessed an
explosion of the so-called "
Satanic cult hysteria" fueled by numerous accounts of alleged Satanic cult survivors such as
Michelle Remembers and
Satan's Undedrground. More fuel was added to the fire in 1988 when Maury Terry published
The Ultimate Evil, a radical reinterpretation of the notorious "Son of Sam" killings in which the convicted perpetrator,
David Berkowitz,
was depicted as a member of a nationwide Satanic cult network
involved in a host of criminal activities and linked to other serial
killers, including
Charles Manson and his family.
While "Satanic cult hysteria" had begun to subside somewhat by the
mid-90s it was still a part of the national debate (especially in the
wake of the "
West Memphis Three"). Beyond that, conspiracy theories were beginning to gain a certain degree of mainstream acceptance in the wake of
Iran-Contra,
Ruby Ridge and
Waco: Talk radio was all the rage with conspiratorial personalities such as
Art Bell and even
William Milton Cooper gaining nation wide audiences;
Oliver Stone had recently released his big-budget and star-studded conspiratorial examination of the
Kennedy assassination,
JFK, while
The X-Files was one of the hottest (and certainly the coolest) shows on TV.
With all of these things converging at once it's understandable that the producers behind the
Halloween and
Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises
were willing to take some bold steps in terms of the mythology of
their respective series and run with the Satanic cult angle. Still, it
is a bit remarkable that the studios were willing to give them the
money for such ventures, and indeed, they seemed too ultimately regret
this decision --both
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generaion would face a host of problems throughout their respective productions (and beyond), as we shall see.
I shall begin first with the after mentioned
Halloween film, the sixth in the franchise. The cult element was not introduced in this film but rather in the one that preceded it (
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers)
and it was a brief introduction at that, consisting primarily of the
revelation that Michael and the mysterious Man in Black who rescues the
Shape from the sheriff's station at the end of the film both share an
identical tattoo on their wrists. Why this plot line was even
introduced into the franchise in the first place is something of a
mystery. Dan Farrands, who wrote the original screenplay for the sixth
Halloween film, had the following to say about the origins of this plot device in
an interview with Fright:
"When we filmed Halloween 6 in Salt Lake City, where they had done 4 &
5, some of our crew came from those earlier films. I got friendly with some of
them and I asked them questions. And I remember asking what had gone on with
Halloween 5? Why did certain things happen the way they did with that
film? What were the director or writer's intentions? And the response I'd always
get is... nobody knew. They were making things up as they went along. And the
director (of 5) from what I understand was very big into ancient superstitions
and the idea of introducing some kind of black magic. So, I think he would come
to the set with these ideas about bringing some of the black magic to the plot.
I had one conversation with one of the screenwriters, Michael Jacobs, and I
asked him while I was writing the script, 'Can you guys give me a hint here? I
want to be true to what you had set up.'
"And his take was, 'We didn't know what any of it
meant.' There was really no answer as to what all this stuff about runic symbols
and the man with the black coat and the strange cowboy boots was all about. This
all came from the director of Part 5. So since no one had any idea as to what
this mysterious man in black or about the symbol on his wrist was about, I was
free to go my own path with it."
 |
| Dan Farrands, scribe of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers |
I've been able to find little on the director of the fifth
Halloween film,
Dominique Othenin-Girard, and even less about his motivations for introducing the cultic elements into the
Halloween franchise. He seemed to indicate that longtime franchise producer
Moustapha Akkad had something to do with this plot device in
an interview with HalloweenMovies.com:
"The 'Man in Black' character was inspired by Mr. Akkad during the filming. His
concern was how to add an additional hook for the next sequel. So I created the
character without knowing his exact origin, created on-the-fly per se. I
considered him as a soul brother to Michael who came from far to get to Michael.
I was conscious enough to give freedom of interpretation to the next team of
creators (for H6) as to who he really is. I was attentive not to lock them in a
too tight position, so they could play that card as they wished. On the set, I
found the idea of the 'mark' (the Thorn tattoo) to link him to Michael and drew
on them and on the wall my own 'Rune'."
 |
| Dominique Othenin-Girard (top) and Moustapha Akkad (bottom) |
The rune, also known as
Thurisaz and Thurs, was a most curious addition indeed.
Runes were a major part of Germanic and Nordic paganism, having allegedly been given to man by the god
Odin (also known as Wotan), the "All Father" and chief deity of their pantheon.
"He won the knowledge of the Runes, too, by suffering. The Runes were
magical inscriptions, immensely powerful for him who could inscribe them
on anything -- wood, metal, stone. Odin learned them at the cost of
mysterious pain. He says in the Elder Edda that he hung
Nine whole nights on a wind-rocked tree,
Wounded with a spear.
I was offered to Odin, myself to myself,
On that tree of which no man knows.
He passed this hard-won knowledge on to men. They too were able to use the runes to protect themselves."
(Mythology, Eddith Hamilton, pg. 455)
Joseph Campbell offers a less fantastical origin for the runes:
"First of all, we have the evidence of the runic script, which appeared
among the northern tribes directly after Tacitus's time. It is now
thought to have been developed from the Greek alphabet and the
Hellenized Gothic provinces north and northwestward of the Black Sea.
Thence it passed -- possibly by the old trade route up the Danube and
down the Elbe --two southwestern Denmark, where it appears about 250
A.D. and whence the knowledge of it was soon carried to Norway, to
Sweden, and to England. The basic runic stave was of 24 (3×8) letters,
to each of which a magical -- as well as a mystical -- value was
attributed. In England the number of letters was increased to 33; in
Scandinavia, reduced to 16. Monuments and free objects throughout the
field of the German Volkerwanderung bear inscriptions in these various
runic scripts, some telling of malice, others of love. For instance, on a
late seventh century stone standing in Sweden: 'This is the secret
meaning of the runes: I hid here power-runes, undisturbed by evil
witchcraft. In exile shall he die by means of magic art who destroys
this monument.' And on a six-century metal brooch from Germany: 'Boso
wrote the runes -- to thee, Dallina, he gave the clasp.'
"The invention and diffusion of the runes mark a strain of influence
running independently into barbarous German north, from those same
Hellenistic centers out of which, during the same centuries, the
mysteries of Mithra were passing to the Roman armies on the Danube and
the Rhine. We did not know what 'wisdom' was carried with the runes at
that early date, but that in later times their mystic wisdom was of a
generally Neoplatonic, Gnostic-Buddhist order is hardly to be doubted.
Othin's (Wodan's) famous lines in the Icelandic Poetic Edda, telling of
his gaining of the knowledge of the runes through self-annihilation,
make this relationship perfectly clear..."
(The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, pgs. 481-482)
Runes would later be incorporated heavily into Nazi paganism, both for mystical as well as political reasons.
"Further, if runic inscriptions could be found on stones buried or
standing in such faraway places as Minsk or the Pyrenees, then the
assumption was that Minsk and the Pyrenees were once German territories.
"And, if the sounds represented by the runic symbols could be
discerned in place names from other parts of Europe, then it followed
that Germans had once colonized and settled in those places. This was
much more convenient than actually finding runic petroglyphs in situ,
for it meant that merely transliterating the name of a French town or a
Russian River into appropriate runic words (which a clever runic
scholar could do given virtually any cluster of native phonemes from
China to Chile) was equivalent to proclaiming that town or river a
dominion of the once -- and future --German Reich.
"The alphabet was therefore abandoned for mystical purposes by the
pan-German cults in favor of the runes. What was the alphabet, after
all, but some sort of Semetic invention? The runes, on the other hand,
were the pure expression of people of German blood. If a rune were
discovered carved into a stone found lying in a field in Tibet, for
instance, it was simply further proof of Teutoinic migration and
domination. And once the swastika -- a sacred symbol in many parts of
the world that never knew a rune --was identified as a 'rune,' the Nazis
were well on their way to proclaiming the entire globe German
territory."
(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pg. 51)
The Nazi obsession with runes makes the inclusion of one as a pivotal plot device in
Halloween 6 especially interesting to me.
My personal belief
(based upon my research on such topics) is that if some type of
underground cult network does in fact exist then it most likely derives
from Nazi rituals and "techniques" devised by the
Third Reich
rather than some type of centuries old Satanic conspiracy as is
commonly imagined by the conspiratorial right (though if there is a
centuries old conspiracy I suspect it traces back directly to the
Vatican
itself, a possibility the literature typically downplays if not out
right neglects). But such a topic goes far beyond the scope of this
series.
The sixth
Halloween film may well be the most controversial in
the series among fans. Many felt the series had totally jumped the shark
by making the cultic elements introduced in part five a crucial piece
of the series' mythology. Some fans, however, felt that
Halloween 6 did
a remarkable job of tying the whole series together and provided as
compelling an explanation for the immortal Michael Myers as anyone was
apt to come up with. Daniel Farrands' original script was filled with
allusions to prior films, and even brought back minor characters such
as Tommy Doyle and Dr. Terrance Wynn from the first
Halloween film as major characters. In many ways, the massively overhyped
Halloween: H20 that followed
Curse
after horror's return to hipdom in the late 90s rather blatantly
ripped off many of Farrands' crucial concepts but arguably did not best
its predecessor despite having a decent budget and star-studded cast
(at least by the standards of horror films) at its disposal.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was beset with problems throughout its production. On the one hand, there were the opposing visions of Farrands and director
Joe Chappelle, with the latter naturally winning out. Then there was the studio,
Dimension Films (a subsidiary of
Miramax Films back then), which had its own vision and seemed to regret greenlighting the sixth
Halloween film from the get-go. They apparently held many of Farrands' ideas, such as his desire to cast
Christopher Lee
in the role of Wynn (Dimensions reportedly believed that Lee was too
old and that modern audiences would not recognize him, a notion the
Lord of the Rings
films would soon disprove), in contempt. It nickeled and dimed the
filmmakers throughout, which ultimately led to scream queen
Danielle Harris (who made her theatrical debut in the fourth
Halloween
film and had become something of a child star for the series) dropping
out the day before filming was scheduled to start. Finally, it would
demand hasty re-shoots after an original cut of the film scored poorly
with test audiences. These re-shoots occurred after star
Donald Pleasence
had died and were set to a rigid schedule to meet the film's release
date that ultimately led to filming wrapping up before director
Chappelle had finished. As a result, the theatrical cut ends rather
suddenly with no clear-cut resolution and numerous storylines left
unresolved.
 |
| Harris (top, obviously), who briefly attended the same elementary school as Recluse, and Pleasence (bottom) |
Despite these things,
Halloween 6 would prove to be
surprisingly popular amongst the fan base, especially after a bootleg
known as the "Producer's Cut" (in fact, the original cut of the film
that was screened to the above-mentioned test audience) leaked to the
public.
Halloween 6 does a surprisingly effective job of
capturing the zeiteist of the 90s, especially the conspiracy meme.
Director Chappelle was apparently going for an
X-Files-type
feel for this film and it is very evident, especially in terms of the
visuals. The whole conspiracy radio broadcast subculture is also
referenced as well via the character of Barry Simms (
Leo Geter),
a shock jock who comes off as a cross between Art Bell and Howard
Stern, whose broadcast appears in the background of several early
moments in the film. Especially amusing is a caller who insists that the
CIA extracted Michael Myers so that he could be used as an
assassin. Apparently not even Langley could control Myers, the caller
proclaiming:
"They wanted the
ultimate assassin...He took out eight agents when they had him at
Langley. They couldn't control him so they packed him up in a rocket and
shipped him off to space."
As a result of the different versions there is not exactly a uniform
plot line so I will first focus on the theatrical cut and then discuss
the differences in the Producer's Cut as they are relevent to our
discussion.
The film picks up six years after the ending of the fifth
Halloween film, where Michael Myers and his niece Jamie (originally played by Harris, portrayed by
J.C. Brandy in
Halloween 6) were abducted by the above-mentioned Man in Black. As
Halloween 6
opens Jamie, now 15 years old, is giving birth in an abandoned
hospital before a Druidistic cult on October 30. Once this is completed
the Man in Black takes Jamie's baby from her, but a nurse later gives
it back to her and helps her escape. The cult presumably dispatches
Michael, who tracks her down to a farmhouse where he dispatches of her
via farm machinery.
 |
| Jamie |
Jamie hid her baby before heading to the farmhouse, however, and it is eventually discovered at a bus station by Tommy Doyle (
Paul Rudd), who was the child being babysat by
Laurie Strode (
Jamie Lee Curtis) in the original
Halloween
film. Tommy now resides in a house next door to the Strode house,
renting a room from a landlady who was Michael Myers' babysitter on the
night that he killed his sister as a child.
The Strode house is currently occupied by Kara Strode, her six-year-old
son Danny, and her parents and brother. Tommy soon deduces that they
are at risk and informs Dr. Loomis (Pleasence), Michael's nemesis since
the first film, of their presence in the Strode house as well as of
Jamie's baby. Both Loomis and Tommy work to extract the Strodes from
their home, but only Kara and Danny make it out, with the rest of the
family being picked off one by one.
 |
| Michael doing his thing in the Strode house |
Tommy takes Kara and Danny back to his room and lays out some startling
revelations concerning Michael's links to the rune of thorn.
Specifically, he
states:
"...Runes were a kind of early alphabet that originated in Northern Europe thousands
of years ago, around 500 B.C. Cults used Thorn carvings in blood and pagan
rituals to portend future events and invoke magic. Black magic. Of all the
runes, Thorn had the most negative influence. Thorn may be a reason to explain
Michael’s evil.
"In ancient times, the druid priests believed that Thorn caused sickness,
famine, and death to hundreds and thousands of people. It represented a demon.
Translated literally, it was the name of a demon spirit that delivered human
sacrifices... One child from each tribe was chosen to be inflicted with the
curse of Thorn to offer the blood sacrifices of its next of kin on the night of
Samhain.
"When applied directly to another person, Thorn could be used to call upon them
confusion and destruction -- to literally visit them with the Devil.' The
sacrifice of one family meant sparing the lives of an entire tribe. For years
I’ve been convinced that there’s some reason, some method behind Michael’s
madness, and the common link I’ve found is Thorn...
"Well then Michael’s power would end, and the curse would be passed on to another
child. That’s why I think these people, whoever they are, are after Jamie’s
baby. They must want to make Michael’s final sacrifice...
"The druids were also great mathematicians and astronomers. The Thorn symbol is
actually a constellation of stars that appears from time to time on Halloween
night. Whenever it has appeared, Michael has appeared. Coincidence? I’ve traced
it back to 1963 when Michael murdered his sister, Judith. He escaped from
Smith’s Grove sanitarium fifteen years after that in 1978. It happened three
years later in 1981 when he escaped from a routine transfer from Ridge Mont to
Smith's Grove. Seven years later in 1988, and the year after that in 1989. And
after six years, Thorn reappears. Tonight."
 |
| Michael's "thorn" tattoo (top) and the alleged constellation it represents (bottom) |
Based on what I've been able to ascertain about the rune of thorn, the
film's description is way off. 'Thorn' derives from the Old Norse word
'Thurs,' which means giant. While giants were certainly terrible
creatures in Norse mythology (as well as in most mythologies) there was
nothing especially cursed about this rune. Beyond that the
druids,
whose Celtic religion was slightly different from many of the pagan
practices of mainland Europe, had their own sacred alphabet and did not
employ runes, though there is some overlap between Celtic and Norse
mythology overall (Certainly the Nazis were most interested in the
overlap between Norse and Celtic mythology and incorporated both
elements into their own state religion). In general the chief holidays
of Celtic paganism, of which Halloween/
Samhain was the principal one, were celebrated at different times of the year than those on mainland Europe.
"From the foregoing survey we may infer that among the heathen
forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread
fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or
Midsummer day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice
can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan
ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with
the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky.
If that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites
had observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path
in the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to
some extent by astronomical considerations.
"But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call
the aboriginals throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not
to have been true for the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End
of Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch out into the
Atlantic ocean on the North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the
Celts... were seemingly timed without any reference to the position of
the sun in the heaven. They were two in number, and fell at an interval
of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other
on Allhallow Even or Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is,
on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saint's or
Allhallows' Day. These dates coincide with none of the four great hinges
on which the solar year revolved, to wit, the solstices and the
equinoxes. Nor do they agree with the principle seasons of the
agricultural year, the sowing in spring and the reaping in autumn.
For when May Day comes, the seed has long been committed to the earth;
and when November opens, the harvest has long been reaped and garnered,
the fields lie bare, the fruit-trees are stripped, and even the yellow
leaves are fast fluttering to the ground. Yet the first of May and the
first of November marked turning-points of the year in Europe; the one
ushers in the genial heat and the rich vegetation of the summer, the
other heralds, if it does not share, the cold and the barrenness of
winter...
"Of the two feasts Hallowe'en was perhaps of old the more important,
since the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of the year from
it rather than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses
in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege
of the Saxon invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been
regarded as New Year's day down to recent times... In ancient Ireland,
as we saw, a new fire used to be kindled every year on Hallowe'en or the
eve of Samhain, and from the sacred flame all the fires in Ireland were
rekindled. Such a custom points strongly to Samhain or All Saints' Day
(the first of November) as New Year's Day; since the annual kindling of a
new fire takes place most naturally at the beginning of the year, in
order that the blessed influence of the fresh fire may last throughout
the whole period of twelve months. Another confirmation of the view that
the Celts dated their year from the first of November is furnished by
the manifold modes of divination which... were commonly resorted to by
Celtic peoples on Hallowe'en for the purposes of ascertaining their
destiny, especially their fortune in the coming year; for when could
these devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in
practice than at the beginning of the year? As a season of omens and
auguries Hallowe'en seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the
imagination of the Celts; from which we may with some probability infer
that they reckoned their year from Hallowe'en rather than Beltane.
Another circumstance of great moment which points to the same conclusion
is the association of the dead with Hallowe'en. Not only among the
Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe'en, the night which marks the
transition from autumn to winner, seems to have been of old the time of
year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old
homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and comfort themselves
with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by
their affectionate kinsfolk."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pgs. 730-732)
Still, the Druid/rune plot line is not as outlandish as it may
seem. Human sacrifices were most likely committed on Samhain and
Beltane by the
Celts,
though it bears emphasizing that these victims were by all accounts
convicted criminals (the execution of which in a ritualistic fashion
occurs in numerous cultures) and not the innocents the conspiratorial
right typically depicts them as.
"Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in order to be sacrificed to the
gods at a great festival which took place once in every five years. The more
there were of such victims, the greater was believed to be the fertility of the
land. If there were not enough criminals to furnish victims, captives taken in
war were immolated to supply the deficiency. When the time came the victims were
sacrificed by the Druids or priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they
impaled, and some they burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of
wicker-work or of wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live
men, cattle, and animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images,
and they were burned with their living contents.
"Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But
besides these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale, and with,
apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seemed reasonable to
suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held
annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some at
least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifice, are
still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images
constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids enclosed their
victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the human representative of
the tree-spirit is still so often encased."
(ibid, pg. 745-746)
Beyond this, a sacred alphabet was a major feature of druidistic
paganism, though it was not runic per se. They did have something very
similar, however, known as
Ogham inscriptions,
which were likely used initially as a kind of elaborate sign language
before being chiseled into wood and the like when the Druids were in
decline.
"... In Ireland Oghams were not used in public inscriptions until
Druidism began to decline: they had been kept a dark secret and when
used for written messages between one Druid and another, nicked on
wooden billets, were usually cyphered. The four sets, each of five
characters... represented fingers used in a sign language... Each letter
in the inscriptions consists of nicks, from one to five in number, cut
with a chisel along the edge of a squared stones; there are four
different varieties of nick, which makes twenty letters. I assume that
the number of nicks in a letter indicated the number of the digit,
counting from left to right, on which the letter occurred in the finger
language, while the variety of nick indicated the position of the letter
on the digit. There were other methods of using the alphabets for
secret signaling purposes. The Book of Ballymote refers to Cos-ogham
('leg-ogham') in which the signaler, while seated, used his fingers to
imitate inscriptional Ogham with his shin bone serving as the edge
against which the nicks were cut. In Sron-ogham ('nose-ogham')
the nose was used in much the same way. These alternative methods were
useful for signaling across a room; the key-board method for closer
work."
(The White Goddess, Robert Graves, pg. 114)
All of these make the mythology of
Halloween 6 surprisingly apt
at a synchronistic level. In the next installment of this series we
shall apply the rather elaborate mythology screenwriter Daniel Farrands
created for the franchise to the different endings of the sixth
Halloween film and the implications that it implies. We shall also get around to
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation as well as "the meaning of horror." Stay tuned.
About The Author
