Following the release of Halloween III, the nascent franchise fell into an extended hiatus, as the producers and creators John Carpenter and Debra Hill struggled over its future direction.
A key sticking point was Carpenter's reluctance to bring back the film's iconic nemesis, Michael Myers.
With horror writer Dennis Etchison hired to write the script, Carpenter developed a unique spin on the character's resurrection, one that tapped into themes that he would go onto explore in other films.
I have been aware of the Etchison draft for a few years, but never bothered to read it. After watching the John Carpenter-produced Halloween sequels, I was curious to see where the journey could have gone next.
I do not read as many scripts as I used to, so it was nice to dust off the old muscles to conjure an unmade movie. It works for a story about the power of imagination, particularly when it is super-charged by fear.
One immediate reaction is how prescient the story feels, in terms of where the franchise ended up going.
We open on Halloween night, 1978.
We follow the Wallace’s (parents of one of the children Laurie Strode is babysitting that fateful night) as they drive home from a party. As they approach the house, the see police cars and realise something has gone wrong.
Mrs Wallace gets out of the car and runs for her house.
What appears to be a straight flashback turns out to be something less grounded
Mrs Wallace enters her home to discover it is made out of organic matter, like the inside of a body cavity.
She spots her daughter on the stairs, only for this familiar figure to split apart to reveal the Shape who charges her.
This opening dream, a recurring nightmare for Mrs Wallace, reorients the world of Halloween.
It is also clear that Halloween is no longer the fresh voice in horror - this scene bears the stamp of Nightmare on Elm Street.
We are re-introduced to Haddonfield, a town which has been completely re-shaped by the actions of Myers, a figure who continues loom in the community's conscience. Halloween has been banned, and the parents seem to have the authorities under their thumb.
The main characters are the kids from the original film, Lindsey and Tommy - Lindsey cannot remember the night’s events but is in conflict with her mother, who is perpetuating her own trauma of the night.
The script has a good go at not following the same familiar beats - we get a slow build of tension and teases of a familiar shape, but these various glimpses turn out to be the character’s own paranoia - for a while, at least.
There is an interesting scene at roughly the halfway point in which parents argue with a drive-in movie theatre owner operating outside of the town limits.
The argument feels like a distillation of the conflicts Carpenter and his generation of horror filmmakers faced.
I have heard rumours Joe Dante was intended to direct, and I can see him having some fun with the close-minded civic leaders in this scene.
The script does include a lot of description of shots and camera movement, which do evoke Carpenter, and occasionally De Palma’s sly play on viewer’s perception.
It does feature a bizarre turn where a character does not say something and gets themselves deeper into trouble - it is a strange moment that serves the function of exacerbating the conflict between the kids and their parents.
The Shape makes its first appearance on p62 (of the 112-page draft) and second real slasher set-piece takes place at p82 with an inspired though bizarre human puppet sequence, in which a woman realised the man she is having sex with is being puppetted on top of her by the Shape.
The final set piece - in which the Shape slaughters dozens, maybe hundreds of teenage couples in their cars at a drive-in movie playing horror movies - is the franchise folding around onto the entire genre.
As the Shape rampages through the foggy lot, movies like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as Carpenter’s own Christine and The Fog play onscreen, becoming a part of the diegesis.
In one interesting touch that would have made for some rights-issues dealmaking, the Shape contemplates the projected image of Jason Vorhees.
We then get a surreal showdown between the police and a dozen Shapes, before the film launches into its most bizarre and iconic image - seemingly fuelled by the town’s fear, the Shape starts to grow in size as the police fire volley upon volley at it until he towers over the drive-in screen.
This kaiju Shape is one of the things I had some awareness of, and it is one of the reasons I wish this movie would have been made.
The script is easy to read. Slashers always feel a little in the story department - no matter how the characters and themes are set up, they tend to end up on the same familiar track. This one at least ended in a VERY different place. The one downside is that while the characters had potential, they get lost in the hectic mayhem of the finale.
It is ultimately more fascinating for its themes than its plotting or characters.
If it had been made as conceived here, it would have probably had a similar reception to Season of the Witch.
It feels like a movie requiring a filmmaker with a strong visual sense.
While it features certain trademarks, it almost doesn’t read as Carpenter joint.
Dante might have had fun with the metatextuality of the third act, but it feels far more earnest than his work.
This feels more like the kind of project Wes Craven would have made - although having made Nightmare on Elm Street, he probably would have passed on it.
When this script was dropped, Carpenter relinquished all his rights.
Mustapha Akkad went on to produce a more traditional follow-up with The Return of Michael Myers (which does feature a scene featuring multiple Shapes).
The franchise has continued through various iterations - and will no doubt return in some new form.
Studying the history of multiple franchises, one picks up themes and ideas which may appear in early or unused drafts, but then show up years later in other movies. I have found this with the James Bond franchise, which strip-minned un-used ideas from the early drafts of Moonraker, Dalton’s unmade third movie, and the first draft of GoldenEye.
Sometimes it can also just be accidentally arriving at the same place. After multiple movies, it is believable that filmmakers would end up circling around similar ideas.
David Gordon Green’s trilogy would pick up some of the themes this draft developed - the attempt at showing the effect of Michael’s rage on the town and Tommy Wallace in Halloween Kills, and Cory Cunnigham’s copycat crimes in Ends - in different ways.
The decision to not make Michael a corporeal presence remains a fascinating idea. The script does a good job of making the Shape’s return feel like an outgrowth of the town's groupthink, without trying to explain it.
This version of Halloween 4 also features a super-sized version of the final set piece that tries to put a definitive end to the series - with the destruction of Haddonfield along with the Shape.
It is a perverse, almost cosmic level of horror - the town is so polluted by fear it has conjured its own boogeyman, and in order to rid itself of this evil, the town itself must be sacrificed. While I wish the central characters had something to do with the Shape’s demise, the apocalyptic finale is unique.
It does feel like a metatextual joke of John Carpenter trying to kill the franchise - like Dr Loomis he ended Halloween II by blowing up its antagonist; now he destroys the diegesis he resides in.
Somehow, I get the feeling if this movie had been made, Michael’s demise would have still been temporary.
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