The Ultra Depressing Life of Halloween's Jamie Lloyd Part 1

When Jamie Lloyd, who is the protagonist of Halloween 4 and 5 and also featured in Halloween 6, is first introduced she is an eight year old orphan suffering from intense nightmares of her murderous uncle...and her life doesn't ever get too much better from there.

Jamie (not too subtly named in honor of Jamie Lee Curtis who was onto more "legit" movies by that time) is daughter of Laurie Strode from the original Halloween and it's sequel and the niece of Michael Myers.  It's never stated who her dad is (it definitely ain't Ben Tramer) but both him and Laurie die, pretty anticlimactically by the way, in a car crash sometime between the second and forth films.  Maybe they were distracted by Tom Atkins running down the road raving about Halloween masks.

Even though Jamie now has a foster family that cares for her, her life is already pretty crappy.  She feels like a burden on her foster sister Rachael and the kids at school torment her relentlessly.  I've always felt that bullying in movies seems forced and fake more often than not but Halloween 4 takes the cake.  The kids that Jamie goes to school with give her crap simply because she doesn't have a costume on like they do and then proceed to rip on her because her mom is dead.  "Jamie's mommy...is a mummy!".  Low blow, fake 1988 eight year old kid, low freakin' blow.  After that they chase a crying Jamie out of the school chanting "Jamie's an orphan! Jamie's an orphan!".  Pretty over the top.  What does this make Jamie do?  Change her mind about not wanting to go trick or treating so she can fit in.  Social peer pressure is rough for nieces of Boogymen, dude.

"I'll just take this."

Jamie picks out a clown costume at the drug store (in which we see a ton of awesome '80s Halloween masks) in an allusion to the costume little Michael wore at the beginning of the original Halloween and is either riding high off of some double scoops or looking forward to them.  But she can't make it out of the scene without something bad happening and ends up seeing "Nightmare Man" in the drug store.  She freaks out and breaks a mirror and everybody just assumes that she...hallucinated I guess?  No such luck though as Nightmare Man is Michael in the flesh and he just got himself a brand new white face mask.  Her evening isn't about to get any better.

Rachael takes her trick or treating she runs into the bullies from school who now miraculously want to be friends since she has a costume.  Little jerks.  But once a curfew is called and all the kids are picked up by their parents, Jamie is alone and scared. After finally meeting back up with Rachael they are escorted by some cops to a house to hold up because Jamie's uncle is on another murder rampage and his intended target just happens to be his niece.  Well, of course, everyone in the house aside from Rachael and Jamie are murdered and after a brief detour at the Haddonfield school with Dr. Loomis the girls are on the run.

It all culminates with Michael on the receiving end of a pick up truck and what basically amounts to a SWAT team.  Michael falls into a well (I guess that what that is) and nobody thinks to follow him or make sure he is dead but all is well that ends well.  Oh, except for that brief moment when Jamie touched Michael while he was down for a minute.  That probably wasn't good.

The girls are brought home and Jamie's foster mother is fixing her a nice warm bath.  Could it be that this poor girl is going to escape with a happy ending?  The ominous POV shot that just put on a clown mask and picked up a pair of scissors puts an end to that thought.  Jamie, who has had a pretty rough Halloween, has decided to end the day by stabbing her foster mom.  Has Michael's evil been transferred into his little niece?  Loomis, who is ready to bust a cap into an eight year old, seems to think so but nobody found out until a year later when Halloween 5 was released and that will be the movie I look at in the next part of this three part look at the life of one of the most put upon characters in history. - TG


Check out part 2 here!