House of Horror (Archive)

Tag: Jamie Lee Curtis

  • Halloween: Resurrection

    Halloween: Resurrection
    Tagline: Evil Finds Its Way Home
    Released: 2002
    Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Tyra Banks
    Directed by Rick Rosenthal
    Written by Larry Brand and Sean Hood

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by Dimension Films
    DVD Release Date: December 10, 2002

    Features:
    Special Features:
    Widescreen (2.35:1) – Enhanced for 16×9 Televisions
    Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
    Feature commentary with Director Rick Rosenthal and Editor Robert A. Ferretti
    Deleted and Alternate Scenes with Director Commentary
    Web Cam Special with Director Commentary
    Photo Gallery
    Tour of the set with Production Designer Troy Hansen
    On the set with Jamie Lee Curtis
    Head Cam Featurette
    Storyboard Comparisons
    Spanish Subtitles
    French Track

    Premise: Original Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween: H20, True Lies) is back and joined by Busta Rhymes (Shaft) and Tyra Banks (Coyote Ugly) in the terrifying Halloween: Resurrection – the latest in this electrifying horror film series! The reality programmers at DangerTainment (Rhymes, Banks) have selected Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas – Save the Last Dance), Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas – American Pie 1 & 2) and a group of thrill-seeking teenagers to spend one fun-filled night in the childhood home of serial killer Michael Myers. But the planned live broadcast turns deadly when their evening of excitement becomes a night of terror as Michael himself decides to crash the party!

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Three years after the events of Halloween: H20, Laurie Strode has been confined to a mental institution on a count of murder. Flashback sequences reveal Laurie did not really decapitate Michael Myers at the end of the previous film, but rather a paramedic with whom Myers forcefully switched clothing and his mask. Laurie pretends to be heavily medicated, but in reality, dodges her pills and prepares herself for the inevitable confrontation with Michael Myers. When Myers finally does appear, Laurie lures him into a trap on the roof of the institution. Before she can kill him for good however, he turns the tables on her, and stabs her in the back. She gives Michael a kiss, tells him she will see him in hell, and falls off the roof to the ground below, dead.

    A year later, a group of six college students win a competition to appear on a reality show produced by DangerTainment, on which they are to spend Halloween night in the childhood home of Michael Myers. Their mission is to find out what led him to kill. The investigation is done via live broadcast on the internet, with each student wearing a small camera. The participants think the show is entirely for entertainment purposes, and that the stunt will earn them some publicity and scholarship money. While in the house, the students undercover staged “secrets” of Michael’s insanity, only to inadvertently uncover a subterranean lair where Myers has been living for the past 20 years. The event goes horribly wrong however, when Michael returns home and one by one, kills the students and the crew involved in the broadcast.

    Sara Moyer, the only student left alive, uses her PDA and pen pal on the outside to escape the house and into the adjoining garage, where Myers soon follows. After a brief confrontation, Michael is electrocuted and left to die in a conflagration, which destroys the garage. Only Sara Moyer and Freddie Harris, the host of the show, survive the night’s events. Later, Myers’s severely burnt body is taken to a morgue, where a frightened female mortician slowly opens his body bag. He opens his eyes and the mortician screams, just as the screen goes black.
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  • Halloween: 20 Years Later (H20)

    Halloween: 20 Years Later (H20)
    Tagline: This summer, terror won’t be taking a vacation.
    Released: 1998
    Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, and Michelle Williams
    Directed by Steve Miner
    Written by Robert Zapia, Matt Greenberg, and Kevin Williamson (uncredited)

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by Dimension Films
    DVD Release Date: October 19, 1999

    Features:
    Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1)
    Unmasking the Horror
    Trivia Game
    Music Video – “What’s this Life For” performed by Creed

    Premise: This smart and suspenseful thriller scares up a bone-chilling good time with original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis (True Lies, Halloween I & II) and a hot cast of hip young stars! Now the headmistress of a private school, Laurie Strode (Curtis) is struggling with the horrifying, 20-year-old memories of the maniacal killer Michael Myers… when he suddenly reappears with a vengeance! And this Halloween, his terror will strike a whole new generation! Laurie’s rebellious son John (Josh Hartnett – The Faculty), his girlfriend (Michelle Williams – TV’s Dawson’s Creek), and the school security guard (LL Cool J) will become Michael’s newest victims unless Laurie can conquer her greatest fears and put evil in its place once and for all! The time has come again for you to experience the frightening fun of Halloween – the motion picture series that totally redefined terror!

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): On October 29th, 1998, in Langdon, Illinois, Nurse Marion Chambers-Wittington (Nancy Stephens, Halloween and Halloween II) returns home to find her house has been burglarized. Alarmed, she asks assistance from Jimmy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a teen who lives next door, and his accompanying friend. After calling the police, Jimmy investigates Marion’s house and is unable to find anything out of place, except that her office was ransacked. After the boys leave, Marion inspects the mess in her office. She notices a file folder labeled Laurie Strode, which has been opened and the contents taken. Feeling like someone is still there, she rushes to Jimmy’s house, only to discover he and his friend have been killed. As she tries to escape the murder scene, the killer makes himself known: Michael Myers. Marion attempts to flee, though Myers catches up to her and slits her throat. As the police finally arrive, answering the original burglary report, Myers manages to slip by them into the night. The next morning, detectives note Dr. Loomis’s files on Myers in Marion’s home and alert Haddonfield that Michael Myers, whose body has been missing for 20 years, might be returning home.

    On October 31st, in Summer Glenn, California, a secluded private school is planning a field trip. The buses leave that night, and students are expected to be packed and ready by time the buses leave. Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis), headmistress of the school, begins the morning by arguing with her 17 year-old son, John (Josh Hartnett), about going on the trip. She feels he isn’t ready to go alone without her supervision. As the day goes on, Keri is haunted by the tragic events that took place on Halloween 20 years ago, when Michael Myers tracked her down and tried to kill her. Since then, she has become a functioning alcoholic, overbearing parent, and unable to maintain intimate relationships. Her boyfriend, Will (Adam Arkin), who works as a counselor at the school, notes her mood and her attempts to distance him. Later, before the buses leave, Keri has a change of heart and gives John her permission to go on the trip. However, unbeknownst to Keri, John, his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams), and friends Sarah and Charlie, plan on having a covert Halloween party in the empty school. As the buses depart, Michael Myers unnoticeably gains entrance onto the grounds, and disconnects the phone lines.

    Later that night, Keri confides in Will that she is really Laurie Strode, the survivor of the 1978 Halloween murders. She had faked her death in a car accident years ago to go into hiding under an assumed name. She prays every year that her brother, Michael Myers, will be unable to find her. While Keri discloses her past to Will, John and his friends continue with their private Halloween party. Myers stalks the unsuspecting teens, and after the pairs separate, kills Charlie and Sarah. John and Molly, concerned that their two friends have not returned, set out to find them. Meanwhile, Keri notices that John’s camping equipment is still in his room and believes him to be somewhere on campus. Worried, she grabs a gun under her pillow and sets out to look for him, with Will in tow.

    As John and Molly continue their search, they soon discover the dead body of Sarah, with Michael Myers revealing himself soon after. The two teens escape with Myers in pursuit, eventually ending up outside the doors of the locked dorm. Keri and Will, who could hear the kids’ screaming, get to the locked door moments before Myers catches up to them, and after kids are safely inside, Keri and Michael come face-to-face through the door’s port window. While Keri reaches for her gun, Myers disappears. Afterward, Keri and Will secure the kids in a closet and go looking for the elusive killer. Myers soon emerges, killing Will and prompting Keri to run. She gathers the kids and the three make it to her SUV, driving off toward the school’s front gate. When they arrive, Keri gets out and instructs the kids to drive to the nearest house and call the police. After the vehicle leaves, Keri destroys the gate’s controls, locking herself in with Myers. She grabs a fire axe and sets off into the school looking for Michael.

    Upon entering the school’s second level, Keri shouts out at Michael, only to have him come down behind her. Knowing, she strikes him in the chest with the axe, albeit to no effect. The two engage in a game of cat-and-mouse, until Keri is able to surprise Michael, stabbing him numerous times, and pushing him off the second floor balcony to the ground below. Later, after the police arrive, Myers’s body is placed in a body bag and loaded into a coroners’ van. Keri, knowing Michael’s not really dead, grabs her axe and steals the van, driving off with Michael’s body. Under Keri’s watchful eye, Myers eventually escapes the body bag and tries to kill her. Keri slams on the brakes, sending Myers through the windshield. In a desperate attempt to kill him, she drives full speed at Myers, pinning him to the front of the van and then sending the vehicle tumbling down a hill, where it pins Myers against a tree. Keri, now wounded from being thrown from the van, finds her axe and approaches the trapped killer. Michael reaches out to her. Instinctively, she reaches out, and pulls back while remembering everything he’s done to her. Keri chops his heads off with the axe, finally killing him. Michael’s head then rolls down the hill.
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  • Halloween I I I: Season of the Witch

    Halloween III: Season of the Witch
    Tagline: The night no one comes home.
    Released: 1982
    Starring Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy, and Michael Currie
    Directed and Written by Tommy Lee Wallace

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by Goodtimes
    DVD Release Date: May 1, 2001

    Features:
    Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1)
    Foreign Subtitles

    Premise: Tom Atkins, who also starred in John Carpenter’s The Fog, uncovers a new kind of Halloween horror in this third entry in the successful series from producer-composer Carpenter (Escape from New York). Dr. Daniel Challis (Atkins) and Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) stumble onto a series of gruesome murders when her father, who sells Halloween novelties, is killed by an emotionless assassin. An Oscar nominee for The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Dan O’Herlihy is Conal Cochran, a demented toymaker who wants to return the holiday to its dark roots using his Silver Shamrock masks. His unspeakable scheme will unleash death and destruction across the country, unless Challis can stop him in time, in this nightmarish thriller from Tommy Lee Wallace, the director of Stephen King’s It.

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Halloween III: Season of the Witch takes the Halloween franchise in a new direction, with the intent of creating an anthology based horror series set around the holiday.

    On Saturday, October 23, shop owner Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is chased by mysterious figures wearing business suits. He collapses at a filling station clutching a Silver Shamrock jack-o’-lantern mask and is driven to the hospital by the filling station attendant (Essex Smith), all the while ranting, “They’re gonna kill us. All of us.” Grimbridge is placed under the care of Dr. Daniel “Dan” Challis (Tom Atkins). While Grimbridge is hospitalized, another man in a suit enters his room and pulls his skull apart, killing him immediately. The man then enters his vehicle, douses himself with gasoline and lights himself on fire, causing the car to explode.

    Challis, together with Grimbridge’s daughter, Ellie, begins an investigation that leads them to the small town of Santa Mira, California, home of the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory. They learn from a hotel manager, Mr. Rafferty (Michael Currie), that the source of the town’s prosperity is Irishman Conal Cochran and his factory, and that the majority of the town’s population is made up of descendants of Irish immigrants. Challis learns that Ellie’s father had stayed at the same hotel. Other guests of the hotel included shop owners Marge Guttman (Garn Stephens) and the Kupfer family: Buddy (Ralph Strait), Betty (Jadeen Barbor) and their son “Little” Buddy (Bradley Schacter). All have business at the factory and eventually meet gruesome ends because of the Silver Shamrock masks.

    A day after arriving in Santa Mira, Challis and Ellie tour the Silver Shamrock factory with the Kupfers and are alarmed to discover Grimbridge’s car in a storage building guarded by more men dressed in suits. They return to their hotel, but find they cannot contact anyone outside Santa Mira. Ellie is kidnapped by the men in suits from the factory, and in an attempt to locate her, Challis breaks into the factory. There he discovers that the men in suits are actually androids created by Cochran. Although Challis succeeds in neutralizing one of the androids (Dick Warlock), he is eventually captured by them, while Cochran reveals his plan to kill children on Halloween night. He explains that the Silver Shamrock trademark on the masks contain a computer chip embedded with a small fragment of a five ton sacrificial stone stolen from Stonehenge. When the Silver Shamrock television commercial airs on Halloween night, the chip will activate, causing the wearers’ heads to dissolve and spew insects and snakes. Cochran further explains that he is attempting to resurrect the more macabre aspects of the Celtic festival Samhain.

    Challis escapes, and rescues someone he believes to be Ellie. They manage to destroy the factory and Cochran in the process. However, Challis finds that Cochran replaced Ellie with an android. After destroying it, Challis returns to the same filling station where Ellie’s father had come eight days earlier. Challis contacts the television stations and convinces all but one of the station managers to remove the commercial. The film ends with Challis screaming into the telephone, “Turn it off! Stop it! Stop it!” while the commercial runs uninterrupted.
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  • Halloween I I

    Halloween II
    Tagline: More of the Night HE Came Home.
    Released: 1981
    Starring Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, and Dick Warlock
    Directed by Rick Rosenthal
    Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by Universal Studios
    DVD Release Date: September 18, 2001

    Features:
    Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1)
    Theatrical Trailer
    Press Kit Notes

    Premise: Picking up right where its predecessor left off, Halloween II follows the same ill-fated characters as they encounter the knife-wielding maniac they left for dead in the first Halloween. Is seems the inhuman Michael Myers is still very much alive and out for more revenge as he stalks the deserted halls of the hospital where Laurie Strode lays waiting. As he gets closer and closer to his terrified target, Dr. Loomis discovers the chilling mystery behind the crazed psychopath’s savage actions. Written by horror masters John Carpenter and Debra Hill, Halloween II is a spine-tingling dark ride into the scariest night of the year.

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): After the film replays a re-shot version of the last scene from Halloween, it moves on to Dr. Sam Loomis warning Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) that although he has shot Myers six times, Myers still lives. Meanwhile, Laurie Strode is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, while Myers wanders Haddonfield in search of her. One of the EMS attendants, Jimmy Lloyd (Lance Guest) begins to show an interest in her.

    Jimmy tells Laurie that the man who attacked her was Michael Myers, the infamous boy who murdered his sister fifteen years earlier on Halloween night. After Jimmy leaves, Laurie drifts in and out of consciousness, having strange flashbacks about her adoption by the Strodes and visiting an unpleasant boy in an institution. Myers soon learns Laurie was taken to the hospital, and after arriving, systematically murders the hospital’s staff one by one. Laurie manages to elude him, but she is limping badly and sedated, thus unable to move very quickly.

    Dr. Loomis and the Haddonfield police continue to search the town for the elusive Myers. At the local elementary school they discover Myers has broken into a classroom and scrawled the word Samhain in blood on the chalkboard. Loomis explains that it is a Celtic word that means “lord of the dead,” the “end of summer,” and “October 31st.” Nurse Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Loomis’s assistant, arrives and tells Loomis that she has discovered a secret file on Myers to which he was not privy. The file reveals that Laurie is actually Myers’s sister, adopted by the Strodes shortly after Myers’s parents died. Chambers also informs Loomis he has strict orders to return to Smith’s Grove from the Governor.

    Instead, Loomis forces the escorting marshal (John Zenda) and Chambers to drive him to the hospital, knowing Myers will have already tracked Laurie there. Once again, he finds Laurie in the nick of time, and shoots Myers several times in an effort to stop the murderer, albeit to no avail. Loomis and Laurie are forced to retreat into an operating room, where Laurie shoots Myers in the eyes after Loomis is stabbed by Michael. While Myers swipes at empty air, Loomis turns on the oxygen and ether tanks in the operating room, and motions to Laurie to run. After Laurie escapes, Loomis lights his cigarette lighter, causing an explosion that engulfs him and Myers. A shocked Laurie watches Michael slowly burn to death. The next morning, Laurie is transferred to another hospital, deeply haunted by the night’s events.
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  • Halloween (1978) (Divimax 25th Anniversary Edition)

    Halloween (1978)
    Tagline: The Night HE Came Home!
    Released: 1978
    Starring Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, and P.J. Soles
    Directed by John Carpenter
    Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by Starz/Anchor Bay
    DVD Release Date: August 5, 2003

    Disc 1 Features:
    Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1) enhanced for 16×9 TVs
    Audio Commentary with Writer/Director John Carpenter, Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, and Producer Debra Hill

    Disc 2 Features:
    Halloween – A Cut Above The Rest: An all-new 87 minute documentary featuring interviews with Writer/Director John Carpenter, Actors Jamie Lee Curtis, P.J. Soles, Nick Castle, Charles Cyphers, Producer Debra Hill, Director of Photography Dean Cundey, Editor & Production Designer Tommy Lee Wallace, Executive Producers Irwin Yablans, Moustapha Akkad and others!
    On Location – 25 Years Later: An all-new 10 minute featurette with Actress P.J. Soles and Producer Debra Hill revisiting the original Michael Myers house
    Theatrical Trailer
    TV Spots
    Radio Spots
    Poster and Stills Gallery
    Talent Bios for John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Donald Pleasence
    DVD-ROM: Screenplay
    DVD-ROM: Screen Savers

    Premise: 25 years ago, director John Carpenter changed the shape of terror forever with the immortal story of babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and the night that Michael Myers came home. Roger Ebert still proclaims it “superb.” Entertainment Weekly calls it “the granddaddy of teen- slasher flicks, still more primal and frightening than any of the gazillion knock-offs.” 25 years later, Halloween remains one of the greatest horror movies ever made. For this landmark 25th Anniversary Edition, Anchor Bay has created a stunning new high-definition widescreen transfer of the classic film, plus an unprecedented collection of bonus features that will surprise even the most hardcore fans. Celebrate this remarkable milestone in horror history with the ultimate two-disc edition of Halloween like you’ve truly never seen or heard it before!

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): On Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Audrey Myers (Nick Castle) stabs his seventeen-year-old sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) to death with a large kitchen knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. After his mother and father arrive home and find him in a trance like state, he is immediately sent to Smith’s Grove Warren County Sanitarium in Illinois and placed under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). After years of treatment, Loomis begins to suspect there is more to Myers than meets the eye and plans to have him committed indefinitely after a failed attempt to convince the hospital staff that he needs to be placed in a maximum security facility. Loomis, sensing that a tremendous amount of rage and emotion stir behind Myers’s blank catatonic stare, describes Myers, “…this catatonia is a conscience act…he’s waiting….” Loomis is unsure as to what he is waiting for, but is sure that “it” poses a threat. Upon arriving for his transfer to be prosecuted as an adult in 1978, Myers escapes from Smith’s Grove, steal’s Loomis’s car, and returns to Haddonfield. Loomis knows where he is going and pursues him.

    In Haddonfield, Myers, who disguised in a mechanic’s suit and white Halloween mask, stalks teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and some of her friends. Laurie occasionally sees a man in a white mask (Michael Myers) from her classroom window, behind a bush while she walks home, and in the clothesline from her bedroom window.

    Later in the evening, Laurie meets her friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis) who is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) across the street from where she is babysitting Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews). After arranging to pick up her boyfriend, Annie sends Lindsey to stay with Laurie at the Doyle house but is murdered by Myers (who had followed them). Tommy sees him carrying Annie’s body into the Wallace house and thinks Myers is the Boogeyman. Laurie dismisses the boy’s terror and sends Tommy and Lindsey to bed. Later, Laurie’s other friend Lynda Van Der Klok (P.J. Soles) and Lynda’s boyfriend, Robert “Bob” Simms (John Michael Graham) arrive at the empty Wallace house and are soon murdered by Myers.

    Laurie, worrying after receiving a strange phone call from Lynda at the Wallace house, walks across the street and discovers the three bodies and Judith Myers’s missing tombstone. She is soon attacked by Myers, but manages to escape back to the Doyle house. Myers follows, gaining entrance into the Doyle house, where Laurie stabs him in the neck with a knitting needle. Thinking her attacker defeated, Laurie checks on the kids, only to have Myers follow. Laurie, after securing the kids in the upstairs bathroom, hides in a bedroom closet, where Michael eventually finds her. In a desperate attempt to save her life, Laurie stabs Myers in the eye with a clothes hanger, and after he drops his knife, stabs him in the torso with it. Michael collapses, allowing Laurie to instruct the kids to run for help. Shortly after, Loomis, who having been working with Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) to locate Myers, spots Tommy and Lindsey running from the Doyle house. As Laurie tries to leave the room, Myers comes from behind and begins strangling her. Loomis, who followed the commotion, finds Myers in the upstairs hallway and rescues Laurie, shooting Myers six times and causing him to fall from the house’s second-story balcony. Upon looking out the window for Myers’s body, however, Loomis discovers that he is nowhere to be found. “Was that the boogeyman,” cries Laurie. Loomis responds, “As a matter of fact…it was.”
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