In the late 1970's, the customary horror film was in a state of despair. Fright night classics such as THE EXORCIST and Hitchcock's PSYCHO had become archaic. The contemporary horror market had become saturated with low budget gross-out flicks and brainless drive in schlock. It seemed as though the horror film had finally met its maker.

And even though maverick directors such as Wes Craven (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA), Bob Clark (BLACK CHRISTMAS) and Tobe Hooper (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) continued to push the proverbial cinematic envelope, their films hovered in relative obscurity. The Hollywood moguls and the mass movie-going public had all but forgotten the horror film. Better yet, the "suspense" horror film... but all of that was about to change.

In 1976, a ratty-haired, chain-smoking, 27 year-old film school degenerate named John Carpenter wrote and produced a low budget youth-in-revolt picture called ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. The film, about a gang of misfit thugs who vow revenge on the crooked cops who infiltrate their neighborhood, had drawn quite a buzz around certain film circles. Though its initial theatrical run in the States was, at best, dismal, it took off overseas. It wowed critics at Italy's Milan Film Festival and drew the attention of Irwin Yablins, an independent film producer, who was so enthralled with the brazen and unrelentless route Carpenter took in capturing the rebellious youth that he picked it up and distributed it through his own production company, Turtle Films.

With Yablins' pulling muscle, ASSAULT snaked its way into the exhalted London Film Festival, at that time one of the most prestigious and influential cinematic gatherings on the planet. Though the film generated virtually no response (good or bad), it did catch the eye of Moustapha Akkad, an Arabic film producer, who was desperately trying to break into the much sought-after American movie market.

Meanwhile, Akkad had just wrapped up production duties on LION OF THE DESERT, a biopic about Omar Mukhtar, the Arabian renegade who battled the Italian's during World War II. Surprisingly, the film had come in nearly $300,000 under budget. Eager to use the leftover production money for another, smaller project, Akkad contacted Yablins, who informed the producer that he already had something in mind.

That something was THE BABYSITTER MURDERS, the story of an escaped homicidal maniac who terrorizes teenage babysitters in a peaceful suburban neighborhood. Akkad scoffed at the idea, calling it trivial and contrived. But Yablins swore that he had the man who could make it work: John Carpenter, the renegade auteur of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Akkad met with Carpenter, and after a series of tense discussions, the young director and Yablins "shamed" Akkad into putting up the $300,000 for the film. Akkad had initially vetoed the premise, but was sold after Carpenter's convincing pitch.

"He told me the story verbally and in a suspenseful way," says the producer. "He didn't want to take any fees, and that showed he had confidence in the project."

A contract was hastily mapped out and signed - Carpenter would get $10,000 to direct, write, and compose the music for the film. He would also get a modest percentage of the back end.

John's aspiring producer girlfriend, Debra Hill, was soon brought on board. As well as handling co-production duties, she also helped Carpenter pen the script, writing what she called "the girl parts," while Carpenter wrote the more sinister scenes and dialogue. By this time, the original concept had shifted. One night just before writing had commenced, Yablins phoned Carpenter with a new idea.

"Why don't we set it on Halloween night," Yablins suggested. "In fact, why don't we call it HALLOWEEN."

Carpenter and Hill loved the new premise and quickly began tossing around ideas. "We went back to the old idea of Samhain," Hill remembers. "That Halloween was the night where all the souls are let out to wreak havoc on the living, and then came up with the story about the most evil kid who ever lived. And when John came up with the idea of a town with a dark secret … that's what made HALLOWEEN work."

The duo knocked out what would eventually become the shooting script in a matter of days, and quickly began casting. For the part of Laurie Strode, the teenage heroine who would fall prey to the killer, Carpenter courted Anne Lockhart, the daughter of June Lockhart, the actress who spent six years playing Ruth Martin on television's "Lassie." Anne's acting experience was limited, but she had screen time working in the genre, playing a nubile heroine in James Polakof's 1974 low-budget horror romp, "Slashed Dreams."

But the Lockhart courting was swiftly averted when the sibling of another famous Hollywood actress was brought to the table - Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh, the actress who portrayed Marion Crane in PSYCHO.

"I remember Jamie was doing her first reading [of the script] on the phone," Hill remembers, "and there was something she did. It wasn't the words or how she read them, it was the intelligence between the lines. She had a vulnerability about her … she just came alive to me."

Curtis, who had never starred in a feature film, quickly signed on, leaving only one other crucial role to be cast: that of Doctor Sam Loomis, the quirky psychiatrist hell bent on apprehending the killer. The role was initially offered to horror icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, both of whom promptly turned it down due to financial concerns. As filming drew near and the role was still vacant, Carpenter made a desperate plea to Donald Pleasence, one of his favorite actors, to accept the part for a mere $20,000.

Though he liked the script, Pleasence was apprehensive. The actor, who had starred in numerous genre efforts, was considering expanding his repertoire and was concerned that starring in yet another horror film would permanently tarnish his reputation as a character actor, not too mention typecast him indefinitely. Ironically, it was his children who wooed him into accepting the role after they viewed a screening of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and loved it.

Pleasence (who would go on to work with Carpenter again in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and PRINCE OF DARKNESS.) eventually accepted the part. And on March 17, 1978, shortly after assembling a small but exemplary crew, shooting began in Pasadena, California, a middle class suburb North of Los Angeles.

The crew worked out of a Winnebago owned by Dean Cundey, the acclaimed cinematographer who had just wrapped work on a horror-spoof called SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS. Tommy Lee Wallace, an old friend of Carpenter's, was initially signed on as the production designer, but due to the modest budget and small crew, soon found himself juggling other duties, among them, art director, location scout, and eventually co-editor.

As production designer one of Wallace's chores was to find a suitable mask to be wore by Michael Myers (a.k.a. the Shape), the escaped homicidal killer, played by Nick Castle. Wallace, along with Carpenter and Hill, tossed around many ideas for the mask.

"The first idea we had was a clown mask, which we all thought was eerie and scary, " remembers Wallace. "A clown mask really shakes you up a bit, so we knew we were on solid footing."

But the idea of a clown mask soon fell by the way side. In the script, Carpenter describes the killer's mask as having "the pale, neutral features of man weirdly distorted by rubber." And the use of a clown mask would have clearly contradicted that idea. So Wallace was sent scurrying to secure a more appropriate mask.

He eventually found what he was looking for at Burt Wheeler's Magic Shop, a small prop store on Hollywood Boulevard. It was there that he plopped down $1.98 for a William Shatner novelty mask, the mask they would eventually use.

"Tommy widened the eye holes and spray-pained the flesh a bluish white," remembers Carpenter. "It was truly spooky looking. It didn't look anything like William Shatner after he got through with it."

With the primary details in place, the crew went about trying to make the warm California setting look more like a chilly autumn night in Haddonfield (the fictitious Illinois suburb where the film takes place.) Pumpkins were flown in from the Midwest. Synthetic leaves were sprinkled throughout the neighborhood. It worked. The young crew, most of which had barely even set foot on a movie set, performed their jobs with precision. The production had culminated without a hitch.

"Everyone had something to prove," remembers Cundey. And prove themselves they did.

Principle photography lasted 21 days, wrapping in early April. Shortly thereafter, Carpenter and Wallace edited the film, using virtually all of the shot footage (only a couple of extra scenes were cut from the theatrical print. Those scenes, as well as some addition footage lensed in 1981, were later added to the television version).

In June of 1978, Carpenter and Alan Howarth, a professional studio musician, shacked up in Sound Arts Studios in Los Angeles to record the soundtrack. Carpenter, whose father was a musical instructor at Bowling Green University in Kentucky, composed the music, a haunting mix of wire-thin piano licks and drooling synthesizer riffs. The recording wrapped in two weeks and, by the end of July, the film had been completed, a mere nine months after the initial premise was pitched to Moustapha Akkad.

The film made its theatrical debut on October 25, 1978, at Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. The response from the audience was terrific, generating enough of a buzz to catapult the picture into the Chicago Critic's Film Festival.

It was there that the movie really took off. The critical response to the Chicago screenings was overwhelming. Notable critics from around the globe championed the movie as a landmark in horror cinema. Famed television personality Roger Ebert called it a "merciless thriller," and placed it on his Top 10 best list for the year.

The critical praise and rabid fanfare launched the film into major markets by the end of the year, and the box office success was staggering. The little $300,000 horror movie had turned into a bona fide blockbuster, eventually grossing more than $50 million worldwide and becoming the then-highest grossing independent movie of all time.

Hill remembers the phenomenon fondly. "Audiences loved it," she says. "I remember going to see it in Westwood (Calif.), and it was a madhouse - very much like a 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' viewing, with people reciting the lines along with the film and screaming with the screams."

But all of the critical praise and exuberant hubbub could not overshadow the picture itself. While the Hollywood movie-making machine quickly began churning out low rent imitators, the raw passion and sheer integrity of John Carpenter's film could not be matched.

The simple nightmarish tale of an escaped homicidal maniac on the loose was a story that had been told countless times in dozens upon dozens of films before it. But "Halloween" was different. As easy and safe as it would have been to slap together a plot-less gore bath full of tits and ass and constant bloodletting, Carpenter opted to go another route, concentrating on suspense and scare tactics rather than hair-brained eye-candy.

"We didn't want it to be gory," recalls Hill. "We wanted it to be a jack-in-the-box."

And that is precisely what it was. Carpenter's masterful direction and emphasis on suspense forced the viewer to always be alert. Shooting on the rarely used Panavision scope format, he strategically framed each shot with the possibility of seeing The Shape lurking in every corner or darkened shadow, relentlessly stalking his would-be victims.

The opening shot in particular (a long and winding tracking shot reminiscent to the opening scene in Orson Welles' 1958 Oscar-winner masterpiece "A Touch Of Evil") was extremely effective. It was that shot that let viewers know exactly what they were in for - a terrifying, edge-of-your-seat suspense ride, not just another hack-job horror flick.

Like all things successful, "Halloween" drew jeers, as well as cheers, from the press. One of the most often stated qualms with the film had been the accusations of misogyny. The fact that Laurie Strode, the film's only surviving female character, didn't have sex, while her friends, all of whom were murdered, did, stirred up finger-pointing from some feminist moviegoers.

"I was actually surprised when some of the reviews came out saying that," says Hill. "I thought we had created a very strong [female] character."

Says Carpenter: "Michael Myers is sexually repressed. That's his problem. There's a connection between him and the virginal heroine. They're both repressed. I wasn't making any comment on sexually active girls."

When the theatrical thunder had finally died down later that year, Trancass International Films signed a deal with NBC to air the movie on broadcast television. It proved to be an exhausting venture for all of the creative entities involved.

"First, the network told us what had to go, which was everything," remembers Hill. "I wrote them back, telling them this was ridiculous." But NBC wouldn't budge. There was no way they were going to air the R-rated version of the film in prime time.

The problem was fixed when John Carpenter decided to shoot some additional footage that could occupy the space that would surface when the more violent scenes were edited. But it wasn't a standard issue cut-and-paste job Carpenter had in mind. Instead of creating a series of mindless "filler" scenes (which some directors often do for television versions of their films), he instead decided to spice up the back-story by shooting additional footage showing the trials Loomis had to undergo, and the genesis of his frayed relationship with Michael.

Added were scenes of the odd doctor confronting sanitarium officials in 1963, years before Myers' escape. The intense scenes played like a showdown. Loomis bartered and begged the higher-ups to remand Myers to a maximum-security ward, warning them that if they didn't, sometime in the not-so-distant future, he would escape, and wreak havoc on the "poor little town" of Haddonfield. There was also a scene that showed Loomis confronting a young, silent Michael Myers ("You fooled them, didn't you?"), as well as additional footage of the doctor inspecting the asylum the morning after Myers' escape.

Overall, the simple yet enthralling movie captured audiences like no other horror film had ever done before, and the legacy proved to be one that could never be let go.

Following the success of HALLOWEEN, John Carpenter and Debra Hill moved on to their next project, THE FOG, a supernatural thriller about a haunted California coastal town, which starred HALLOWEEN alumnus Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis and Charles Cyphers. While the film generated positive box office response, its merits paled in comparison to HALLOWEEN.

The hoopla that had spawned from HALLOWEEN, as well as the hugely successful television version (which drew tremendous ratings for NBC when it aired), nearly forced the producers into making a sequel. Carpenter and Hill were both courted for the project, but Carpenter refused to direct.

"I had made that movie once and I didn't want to make it again," he said.

Instead, he agreed to write the screenplay and co-produce with Hill. By early 1981, the sequel was officially in development. The producer's began scouring the cinematic playing field for a director who could not only make a film that lived up to Carpenter's original, but someone who could deal with the pressures and headaches that would inevitably come with directing such a high profile follow-up.

They had initially approached Tommy Lee Wallace. But due to apparent scheduling conflicts, he was forced to turn it down (though he did serve as production designer.) After a comprehensive search for an adequate director, they settled on Rick Rosenthal, a young graduate of the American Film Institute who, at the time, was making a modest living directing documentaries for a small public television station in New Hampshire.

In his free time, and with his own money, he would occasionally shoot strange, short German expressionist-type films. It was one of those films, "The Toyer," a thirty minute opus about, oddly enough, an escaped killer, that drew the attention of Carpenter.

"We seemed pretty philosophically compatible regarding suspense and horror," Rosenthal says.

Elated to be taking over the directorial reigns, Rosenthal quickly signed on. Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis and Charles Cyphers also signed on to reprise their roles, and just like that HALLOWEEN II was under way. Carpenter and Hill quickly hashed out a script. The story would take place on the same night as the original film, and would be centered around Laurie Strode, who would be sent to the local hospital to recuperate from the wounds that she suffered earlier that evening. There, Myers would track her down and the horror would continue.

But the original premise for HALLOWEEN II was much different than the film that inevitably surfaced. Carpenter and Hill had initially outlined a story that took place years later in the big city of Chicago. Laurie, who was still traumatized by the events that happened to her in 1978, had moved away from Haddonfield to escape her horrid memories. She would find temporary solace in a well-secured high rise apartment building. Then, five years later, on Halloween night, Michael Myers finds her. Instead of the typical formulaic stylings that people would expect from a horror sequel, Carpenter wanted to turn HALLOWEEN II into a fast-paced action movie. His initial idea was to have The Shape find Laurie early in the film, and instigate an extended chase scene that would be the cornerstone of the story. But such a high-octane movie would have been too costly, not too mention time-consuming. So Carpenter thwarted the idea.

HALLOWEEN II was released theatrically on October 27, 1981. As expected, it was not as successful at the box office as its predecessor, but it was a success nonetheless, pulling in over $30 million worldwide. The finality of the film's ending seemed to mark the end of the famed franchise, but that would soon turn out not to be the case.

In 1983, Carpenter and Hill were courted once again to produce and write a second sequel, this time by Akkad and celebrated Italian film mogul Dino DeLaurentiis. Exhausted and creatively tapped after working on the first two films, as well as THE FOG, Hill told Fangoria magazine that she almost fainted when she was approached to do a third film.

Carpenter and Hill firmly informed the interested producers that under no circumstance would they make a direct sequel to HALLOWEEN II. They had intended for that to be the end of Michael Myers, and as far as they were concerned, it was. "'Halloween' is not a 'pod' movie, not a 'knife' movie," she said. She was not interested in bastardizing what had become two great films just for financial gain.

Instead, she and Carpenter proposed the idea of turning the HALLOWEEN franchise into a yearly serial, with a new film released each October with an entirely new plot and set of characters. The producer's liked the idea, and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH was born.

The film, a quasi-Science Fiction romp written by Nigel Kneale (who for unspecified reasons refused screen credit), tells the story of a small town costume manufacturer who creates masks that, when triggered, will send a plague of sinister demons upon mankind.

The corny, rehashed story and the lack of Michael Myers left a bad taste in the mouth of some moviegoers. Inevitably, the film tanked, barely breaking the $10 million mark. Tommy Lee Wallace, who directed, tried to incorporate the manic sense of urgency and evil, diabolical ramblings that made similar Science Fiction stories likeINVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS work, but ultimately fell short.

HALLOWEEN III was quickly forgotten and has remained in relative obscurity to this day. But the amazing success of Michael Myers could not be ignored. And with HALLOWEEN III-inspired horror pictures raking in big bucks throughout the 1980's, it was only a matter of time before The Shape returned to the big screen.

In 1986, Moustapha Akkad began pondering the idea of a brand new HALLOWEEN film. At first, he contacted Carpenter, who had just finished filming THEY LIVE, a satiric Science Fiction farce based off a short story by Ray Faraday Nelson. Carpenter was not interested in making another HALLOWEEN movie, especially one that involved the Michael Myers character. In fact, he was so opposed to the idea that he filed a lawsuit in hopes of securing rights to the HALLOWEEN name. The court battle proved to be tumultuous, and Carpenter inevitably lost. Akkad retained rights to the "Halloween" franchise and dived headfirst into HALLOWEEN 4, sans Carpenter.

He enlisted the help of Paul Freeman, a long time friend and fellow producer who had been productively working in the industry since the late 1960's, to take over the principal producing chores. Freeman's first objective was to hire a director. After an extensive search, he found Dwight H. Little, a Cleveland, Ohio, native who had just wrapped his major directorial debut GETTING EVEN, a suspense film about a rich industrialist who holds the city of Dallas hostage.

Little accepted the offer, but knew it would be a formidable task.

"One of the obvious challenges in making a part four of anything is to interest a contemporary audience in old characters and themes. I wanted to capture the mood of the original HALLOWEEN and yet take a lot of new chances … to walk a fine line between horror and mystery. I never intended to make an ax-in-the-forehead type of movie."

The next step in the process was finding a writer who could legitimately bring the series back from the dead. For months the producers thumbed through piles of scripts, trying to find the one that could restore the respectability that horror fans demanded from the HALLOWEEN name.

"We had so many scripts sent to us," remembers Akkad. "There were so many stories pitched to us." But none of the written work seemed suitable for a HALLOWEEN film.

Exhausted and eager to get to work, Little recommended Alan B. McElroy, a friend and professional comic book writer who had never wrote a feature film. To avoid an impending Writer's Guild strike, McElroy quickly hammered out a screenplay and shipped it off to the producer's. All of them fell in love with it, and McElroy was instantly signed on.

"The script was fantastic," remembers Akkad. "I sent it to Debra Hill, and she said, 'That's the greatest script I've read out of the hundred that I've seen.'"

As elated as the producer's were to finally secure a writer, McElroy was equally happy, not only to sell his first screenplay, but to be the initial creative force behind revitalizing the HALLOWEEN franchise.

"The first two HALLOWEEN movies were the cornerstones of my college years," the writer remembers. "When I first saw the original, I was dating a girl and took her to the theatre to see it. We were the only one's in the theatre, but she was climbing all over me. When HALLOWEEN II came out, a group of friends and I got completely blitzed and saw it, and we had the best time. So when Dwight asked me to write the script, I jumped at the chance. Here I was going to bring The Shape - Michael Myers - back to life. It's a piece of film history."

Excluding Donald Pleasence, none of the original cast returned. Instead, the story took a different route, concentrating on a new set of characters and circumstances. Laurie Strode's niece, the young Jamie Llyod (Danielle Harris), would become the new heroine and object of Michael Myers' wrath.

The film was shot during the Spring of 1988 in Ogden, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Certain scenes were shot in the Ellis mansion, a historical tourist site nearby. The film was wrapped by early summer and, after a strategic marketing campaign championing the return of the famed Myers, was released theatrically on October 21, 1988.

Despite apprehension from jaded fans, HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS was an amazing movie. One of those rare sequels that lives up to the foundation formed in the original, while adding a contemporary twist and some new ideas along the way. Even more, the film was a huge success at the box office. Industry folk had been skeptical as to whether the film would succeed coming in a decade after the first. But it did, grossing more than $30 million worldwide and introducing a whole new generation to the Michael Myers saga.

A year later, Dominque Othenin-Girard, the director of the critically acclaimed 1986 drama AFTER DARKNESS was recommended to Akkad by Debra Hill to take the helm for the next sequel. Shem Bitterman and Michael Jacobs (the writer of the 1985 Peter Fonda action vehicle CERTAIN FURY) were signed on to write. All of the principle cast members from the previous installment returned as well, and within a year, HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MTERS was released.

The film was panned by critics and drew mixed reviews from fans. The frequent bloodletting and lack of true suspense seemed to contradict the original platform for which the HALLOWEEN films had stood. But Othenin-Girard looked at things differently.

"I know this was the fifth film, and people have come to expect certain things," he said of his often-criticized work. "But the main thrust is to keep the audience off balance and on edge."

The director was not only criticized by fans but by certain cast members as well. Donald Pleasence publicly offered his opposition to the film's liberal use of gore FX in many interviews prior to its release. In a 1989 one-on-one with "Fangoria" magazine, the actor said: "[Othenin-Girard] has a lot of imagination and is very clever, but I don't think he understands that he's making the fifth film in a series, rather than his own idea of what the film should be. I haven't agreed with a lot of what he has done with this film, so we talk and come to compromises."

Regardless of the creative squabbles, the film still generated a modest profit, and a sixth film, initially entitled HALLOWEEN 666: THE ORIGIN OF MICHAEL MYERS, was quickly rushed into development.

But unfortunately, due to internal struggles and a rapidly dissolving mainstream interest in horror, HALLOWEEN 6 hovered in development hell for nearly half a decade.

Scott Rosenberg (CON AIR) was hired to write the script. His story, which portrayed Michael Myers as a homeless person living in squalor in a Chicago ghetto, drew mixed reaction from the producer's and was eventually curtailed. A handful of other writers were hired on and quickly dropped. At one point, famed auteur Quentin Tarantino was brought in to write and produce the film. But he too eventually left the troubled production to write and direct his own film, the 1992 indie masterpiece RESERVOIR DOGS.

Inevitably, Danniel Farrands, a writer who had submitted a HALLOWEEN 5 treatment which Akkad rejected, was hired to handle the script while Joe Chappelle, the filmmaker behind the 1993 indie flick THIEVES QUARTET, was brought on to handle the directing chores.

Farrands' first draft concentrated heavily on the spirit and lore of the Halloween holiday, while playing up the ominous standards that Carpenter set with his original film. "I tried to emphasize suspense over gore," the writer remembers.

But Farrands soon found himself engaged in bitter creative struggles with producer Paul Freeman and Chappelle. His final draft had changed so drastically that he considered not taking screen credit.

Eventually, filming finally began in early 1995, five years after it was initially set to begin. Donald Pleasence once again returned to the fold as Sam Loomis, but sadly it would prove to be his last role. Shortly after the completion of principle photography, the actor succumbed to heart failure. He died in his home on February 2, 1995.

The death of Pleasence rattled everyone in the HALLOWEEN camp, but post-production duties continued nonetheless. An initial cut of the picture was put together by film editor Randy Bricker. It was a cohesive, continuation of the events that took place in HALLOWEEN 5, a faithful adaptation of Farrands original script, and an all-together decent film. But for reasons unknown, Chappelle and Freeman (with the blessing of the higher-ups at Miramax, the film's distributor) decided to overhaul the cut. Rand Ravich was called in to rewrite several key scenes. And just months before the set release date, Chappelle called back the now-disgruntled cast and crew for reshots, completely changing the tone and pacing of the film.

Ravich remembers the rewrites somewhat bitterly. "Miramax has this tendency to rewrite after they've shot," he explains. "I worked on HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE and then on 'Halloween.' [Pleasence] had already died, and I had to rewrite these scenes that he was in. They would send me these tapes with Donald in them and I couldn't rewrite his dialogue, because he was dead. I had to rewrite all the coverage and they wanted to change the context of scenes, so it was like this weird puzzle."

A confusing final cut was sloppily spliced together and released theatrically on September 29, 1995 as HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. The film did well initially, grossing more than $10 million and becoming the number one box office attraction of the week. But the bad word of mouth and horrible reviews quickly sunk the movie into oblivion. It bottomed out at a mere $18 million worldwide.

Among the low points in the film were the lack of screen time that Pleasence received, and the gigantic mistake of not casting Danielle Harris as Jamie Llyod. Instead, the tight-pocketed producer's opted to cast J.C. Brandy, a relatively unknown television actress, after denying Harris her measly $5000 asking price.

But the biggest problem with the theatrical cut of the film was the utterly confusing plot line and the ragged ending. To this day no one is quite sure just what happens at the end of the film. Even Farrands, the writer, is a bit puzzled.

"[The ending] was a problem from the get-go," he remembers. "I had written more than a dozen scenarios for the end of the film. The final 15 minutes you saw in the final theatrical cut were completely re-written by Joe Chappelle, who assured me that 'everything would make sense' once I saw it put together on film. To this day, I am scratching my head."

Fortunately, video copies of the original cut have surfaced on the bootleg market, and many "Halloween" fans have finally gotten the chance to experience what Farrands had originally envisioned as HALLOWEEN 6. Deceptively entitled "The Producer's Cut," the film is as close to the original premise as possible, a cut culled together from various footage that was edited out of the theatrical print. But editor Randy Bicker finds the makeshift "Producer's Cut" moniker somewhat deceiving.

"I think it's funny that everyone calls it that," he says. "If anything, it's the 'Anti-Producer's Cut.' That is definitely not the movie that the producer's wanted to release."

The debacle that was HALLOWEEN 6. seemed to finally end the series once and for all. But that would prove not to be the case.