“The Return of Michael Myers” is the first of the Thorn trilogy, so named for the ancient curse that pulls the killer’s strings. During a sanitarium transfer, Myers awakens from a coma with that old autumn urge to terrorize a girl. Upon hearing that Laurie Strode had a daughter, the titan cuts through a swath of first responders, mechanics, boyfriends, rednecks, and cops to get to her, and when their hands touch, some of that classic Samhain spirit rubs off on young Jamie (Danielle Harris), who is in turn compelled to do some bloodletting of her own. Alan B. McElroy’s screenplay was a rush job; due to the impending 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, McElroy had eleven days to pitch, write, and submit a finished draft. The story kills off Laurie Strode without fanfare, and gives Myers a new family member to hunt down as he did in “Halloween II.”
Jamie shares a psychic connection with her uncle, whom she has frequent nightmares about until they finally meet face-to-face. In “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers,” released just a year after the fourth film, Jamie’s nightmares give way to seizures and traumatic muteness. Loomis has the bright, unethical idea of using the girl as a sort of homing beacon to draw the killer near, and it works, but killing him isn’t so easy. What “5” begins, “The Curse of Michael Myers” would see through to its conclusion; a mysterious Man in Black turns out to be a steward for Michael, getting him out of jams and enabling him to eliminate his bloodline on behalf of a Druid cult that controls him with magic runes, causing weary fans everywhere to wonder aloud why he can’t simply be a psychotic man with a knife.