Don Shanks on the massacre that was cut from Halloween 5

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The folks over at Halloween Movies have been releasing an interview with Don Shanks, the actor and stuntman who played Michael Myers in 1989's HALLOWEEN 5, in three parts. Posted a few weeks ago, the second part of the interview dove into the alternate opening of the film, which saw Myers being taken in by a strange fellow called Doctor Death. An image in the interview hinted that the Doctor Death footage has recently been unearthed… and while I'm really hoping to see that footage eventually, there's other deleted footage from HALLOWEEN 5 that I'm anxious to see as well. A deleted sequence that would have shown Myers wiping out a S.W.A.T. team.

Halloween Movies has now posted the third part of the Shanks interview, and in this part he discusses the S.W.A.T. team massacre. Unfortunately, there's no indication that this footage has been found, but it's still interesting to see how Shanks describes the murders that didn't make the cut.

Oh, I took out Haddonfield’s S.W.A.T. team. I killed a whole bunch of people. (The massacre) took place at the hospital, the place where Danielle’s character left from. If you remember, the police get on the radio (in the film) and they say, ‘He’s here,’ and the whole S.W.A.T. team (which is stationed) at the Myers house gets in their cars and they drive off, and there’s one guy left up (in the house) with Danielle in the bedroom, and then there’s one guy down below in a police car (on the street), and over the radio he hears people screaming. So that’s where the (S.W.A.T. massacre) scene was to be – just before that."

Shanks says that the shooting of the massacre was 

mostly second unit, with Don Pike directing instead of Dominique (Othenin-Girard). So we were doing it fast. … There’s one guy, and I mean they show it, when they’re taking out one of the bodies, whose head is twisted around. They put the wardrobe on him backwards, and he looks like his head’s been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees. And another, the direction was, ‘Take an M16 rifle, and you’re just walking through these guys and killing them.’ There’s Donre Samson, a big tall black guy that I kill, and another one, I put the M16 through his head, and another guy, I break his neck and stomp on him, you know. The whole idea was that you’d hear everybody screaming (over the radio) when he’s killing everybody. So we did all these really quick shots. You know: ‘Pick this guy up. Knock this guy down. Stab this guy.’"

It's baffling to me that they would cut a massacre sequence out of a slasher movie, but there were much more baffling decisions made while putting HALLOWEEN 5 together. Like the addition of a mysterious "Man in Black", who was also played by Shanks.

Hopefully we'll get to see Michael Myers' extra HALLOWEEN 5 kills eventually. In the meantime, we'll be keeping a close eye on Halloween Movies to see what's going to happen with that Doctor Death footage they seem to have found.