Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode. The audience sees Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), Myers’ former psychiatrist, pursuing him as he did in the first two installments.
The 1988 movie’s title refers to the character of Michael Myers returning after being absent from the third Halloween movie, in ghost form. The plot focused on the characters of Lindsey Wallace and Tommy Doyle; they’d be ten years older and bonded by their shared trauma.
But, executive producer Moustapha Akkad didn’t like the idea—he thought that Myers should be a live killer rather than a ghost. Eventually, Carpenter and Hill sold Akkad their rights to the franchise. Akkad didn’t kill the project, since he figured that the continued success of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films meant that there would still be audience interest in Michael Myers movies.
Halloween 4: Difficulties On Set Explained
Akkad saw countless story pitches and made numerous script rewrites until coming across the story of Jamie Lloyd, written by Alan B. Elroy and Dwight Little. The script, which was written in eleven days due to an approaching writing strike, would resurrect Michael, but it differentiated him from other movie bad guys—he’d go after a child instead of a group of teenagers.
Once the movie was finally being made, on-set hindrances kept pushing its release date. The costume department, for one, had to completely remake Myers’ mask, since the one used in the first two movies had not been preserved properly. Viewers might notice a mistake in the scene inside the school—Myers is briefly wearing a pink mask with white hair, instead of a white one with brown hair. In other difficulties, because it was spring when the movie was filmed, the producers had to get leaves and squash—which they’d paint to look like pumpkins, which weren’t in season—delivered to the set.
Ultimately, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers saw moderate success at the box office, and sees even more today with its large cult following. Its sequel, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, was released a year later, with Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasance—along with Ellie Cornell, who played Jamie’s sister Rachel Carruthers—returning to the screen. Seven more installments came after that, with another slated for October 2020 and the final one for 2021.
