The Ultra Depressing Life of Halloween's Jamie Lloyd Part 3

Check out parts ONE and TWO!

Quick recap:  Jamie Lloyd is the daughter of Laurie Strode.  Her mom is dead.  She's also the niece of slasher Michael Myers.  He wants to kill her.  At the end of part five, she had been kidnapped by a mysterious Man in Black who is seemingly in league with Michael.  Could things get worse for the poor girl?  Oh yeah, they sure could.

"Hey guys, I'm new."

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers takes place 6 years after five and is the end of the loose Jamie trilogy (though it is clear she was more of an after thought in this one than the previous two).  It has to be noted that the actress who had brought us this character in parts four and five, Danielle Harris, is absent from this installment.  There's been a lot of speculation over the years as to why Danielle didn't come back but it seems to come down to money and her not being happy with the way her character was to be treated this time around (that should say something).  In her place is an actress named J.C. Brandy.  I have to be honest here, I didn't even realize that she was supposed to be the character of Jamie when I was younger.  The last time we saw Jamie she was 9 years old which means she should be 15 in this entry but the girl playing her always came across as being in her mid-twenties to me.  J.C. does a fine job with what she was given but I still wish Danielle would have been there to give the character closure.

So, let's get down to how things could possibly get worse for Jamie.  The Man in Black who kidnapped her is actually Dr. Wynn (the dude who apparently was giving Michael driving lessons) from the first Halloween who has secretly been a part of a cult manipulating the actions of Michael all along.  The Cult worships the Thorn rune and use blood sacrifices of the family members of their pawns to prevent a curse that would cause a plague upon the land.  Oh yeah, they also are scientists using the power of Thorn for weird experiments.  Something like that.  I don't know if anybody knows exactly what they are supposed to be up to honestly.  Anyways, the point is, when we first see Jamie this time she is giving birth.  She's supposed to be 15 years old and has been kidnapped for the past 6 years and has gotten pregnant somewhere along the way.  This is already really shady as it's clear that the cult have apparently raped her.  Rough.  But wanna get rougher?  It's implied that the father of this baby is Michael.  Her uncle.  Yep, things got worse. 

"Now I'm dead."

A nurse that helped deliver the baby has a change of heart and helps Jamie escape the cult.  Jamie is on the run but Michael is not far behind and ends up killing Jamie after all this time.  The baby is safely hidden but the heroine of the past two movies just died within the first ten minutes of her third appearance.  Michael takes her out by impaling her on some farm implement which he turns on and we get to see Jamie get churned up real good.  I've never understood why they got rid of her so early and easily but it's always kind of annoyed me.  It seems they wanted to turn their attention to the exploits of Tommy from the first Halloween and new character Kara who would be Jamie's adoptive cousin I guess. 

But that wasn't always how it went down.  As most horror fans know part six was a bit of a mess behind the scenes.  The infamous producer's cut of the film included a lot more information on the Thorn Cult and also some different plot elements.  In the original cut Jamie didn't die at the hands of Michael but instead was taken to a hospital.  There, later in the movie, she was taken out by the Man in Black with a gun.  Still not a very satisfactory ending to her character if you ask me.

The writer of Halloween 6, Daniel Farrands, is a true horror fan (he helped bring us the untouchable documentaries Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories recently) and a good writer.  I like how he fleshed out the Thorn concept that was established in part five and I personally really enjoy Halloween 6, I just don't think Jamie should have went out that way.  She definitely could have been a part of the plot, helping Tommy and Kara fight against the Thorn Cult and get some revenge for the terrible life she had to endure at their hands.  Alas, it didn't happen, and a couple of years later Steve Miner and crew effectively made the Jamie movies pointless with the retconning of H20 so does any of it really even matter? - TG

The Ultra Depressing Life of Halloween's Jamie Lloyd Part 2

In case you missed part one check it out here!

The last time we saw Jamie Lloyd at the end of Halloween 4 she was covered in blood after stabbing her foster mom and Dr. Loomis was wanting to bust a cap in her with his trusty revolver (presumably six caps as that's his thing).  So, has Michael Myer's essence transferred into his niece making her the brand new prodigy of evil?  Nah, she's just spent the whole year that takes place between parts 4 and 5 a mute relegated to a children's hospital.  It's never really explained exactly why she attempted to kill her mom but I guess it is just supposed to be chalked up to the effects of the traumatic experience she had just went through.  Loomis is still lurking around too, not quite as gun happy as last year but he definitely has an eye on Jamie and suspects that she may have a connection with her uncle.

"Hey dude, I'm up."

He's right of course, and since Michael didn't die after the assault at the end of part 4 but instead took a lazy river ride to a hermit's shack for some year long complimentary room and board things are shaping up to be pretty crappy for Jamie on Halloween again.  We learn the extent of Jamie's link with Michael when he wakes up and kills the hermit (talk about being unappreciative of the dude who let you be in a coma on his couch for a year) and Jamie sees it in a vision.  Not good.

On the seemingly good side is the fact that Rachael, Jamie's foster sister from part 4, is still around though her foster parents are conveniently out of town.  Yep, good ol' strong willed Rachael who kept Jamie safe and helped put Michael down last time is there to make sure everything is okay.  Well, that is until she gets a pair of scissors in the neck about 15 minutes into the movie.  We are left with Tina, Rachael's friend who is the main teenage character of this movie for whatever reason (the reason probably being that the chick that played Rachael didn't want to commit to a starring role).  Tina is a pretty polarizing character among horror fans and while I fall on the side that can put up with her I can understand how some find her annoying.   Two other new characters also show up, one being Jamie's stuttering buddy from the hospital and the other a mysterious Man in Black whose face we don't see but who is lurking around all the events in the film.  One of these characters will prove to be important to the Halloween 4-6 mythology and the other one stutters.

"Something, something, heart made of neon"

But back to Tina for a second.  Because Jamie can now kinda see through Michael's eyes at times she knows that he has killed Tina's boyfriend and that Tina is now taking a ride with a killer.  Jamie is able to communicate that she knows where Michael is to Dr. Loomis (in the amazing Cookie Woman scene) and they are able to save Tina.  Jamie gets her voice back for some reason too, thus resolving a seemingly purposeless plot point.  Unable to graciously accept a life saving and spend the night with her savior though, Tina goes off to a party at a farm to be with her jerk boyfriend who an hour earlier abandoned her as far as she knows. Michael is headed there himself and because Jamie wants to try to save Tina she heads out on foot with  her stuttering buddy, thus putting herself in grave danger yet again.

Michael slashes a few teenagers and by the time Jamie and friend arrive at the farm Michael is chasing them and Tina in a car.  Michael's driving lessons from part 1 come into play but it seems unlikely that he would pass a driving test once he crashes into a tree.  He ain't dead though and he's after Jamie once again until Tina intervenes.  Tina gets a good stabbing, and while it definitely seems like she is probably dead they never really state that she is, and Jamie escapes with Loomis.  Loomis has a plan and it involves using poor little Jamie Lloyd as bait.  Loomis screams at the woods a bit, telling Michael to go home.

"Close enough."

How Michael knows to find his house is hard to say since what they are passing off as the Myers' house in this film is more along the lines of a castle than a small middle class home.  The director of part 5, Dominique Othenin-Girard, stated that he wanted to take the series back closer to the original but apparently his plan to do that involved changing tons of things not least of which was making Michael's childhood home a Gothic mansion. 

Jamie is successfully used as bait but her cop bodyguard is killed and she ends up trapped in a dang laundry shoot and has to use the stabbing of Michael's knife as a step to get out, only to go hide in the attic in a child's coffin.  Rough.  She has a sentimental moment with her uncle when she tries to communicate with him sensibly but it inevitably turns into a rage attack from Myers, yet another traumatic experience for our little hero.  She runs downstairs to find Loomis leading to a session between the good doc and his patient that includes some tranquilizer darts and a two-by-four.  Loomis seemingly does him in and they are all taken to the police station.

Michael is unstoked to be in chains in a prison cell as we seeing him rocking back and forth and it seems that the unstoppable madman has at least been captured finally.  All is well that ends well.  But remember that dude in a black trench coat?  He shows up with a freakin' machine gun and completely lays waste to the station, rescues Michael, and kidnaps Jamie.  Can this girl get a break? It's only been one year and she's had two awful nights in which she was tortured and saw tons of people die. 

Who was that dude?  What is his connection to Michael and what do they plan to do with Jamie?  Why does he have the same mark on his arm as Michael?  It wouldn't be revealed until six years later when Halloween 6 was finally released.  Click HERE for the third and final look at the sad state of poor Jamie's life soon and we'll find out. 

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!