Video Scripts: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, Halloween 3

Cody shares three more videos he wrote for JoBlo and Arrow in the Head.

I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered 

- Frailty, Dead Calm, and Shocker 

- 100 Feet, Freddy vs. Jason, and Pin 

- Night Fare, Poltergeist III, and Hardware 

- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, and It's Alive

- Dark City, Mute Witness, and The Wraith

- Army of Darkness, Cannibal Holocaust, and Basket Case 

- Halloween timeline, The Pit, and Body Parts

- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and The Thing (2011)

- The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, and Maximum Overdrive

- A Fish Called Wanda, Night of the Creeps, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI

- Race with the Devil, Speed, and Romancing the Stone

- Maniac Cop 3, WarGames, and Night of the Living Dead (1990)

- The Rock, Witchboard, and Friday the 13th Part 2

- Intruder, Saving Private Ryan, and Big Trouble in Little China

- The First Power, Psycho (1960), and Hot Fuzz

- Cat People (1982), Bride of Re-Animator, and Con Air

- Moulin Rouge (2001), The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985), and The Stuff

- Children of the Corn (1984), Bone Tomahawk, and Fight Club

- The Departed, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and Ginger Snaps

- Silver Bullet, Last Action Hero, and Children of Men

- FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, and Lethal Weapon

- The Thing (1982), Monkey Shines, and Friday the 13th (1980)

- P2, Lethal Weapon 2, and Frozen (2010)

- Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), and Lethal Weapon 4

- The Fast and the Furious, Dance of the Dead, and The Rage: Carrie 2

- Puppet Master, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Castle Freak (1995)

Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, two for the JoBlo Originals channel and one for JoBlo Horror Originals.

For the Revisited video series, I continued the Fast and Furious franchise retrospective with a look at director Justin Lin's 2006 film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift:

Tokyo Drift script: 

INTRO: Universal had a hit franchise on their hands with The Fast and the Furious. They just weren’t quite sure what to do with it. That uncertainty is how we get the third film in the franchise. The one that jettisoned almost all connection to the previous two in favor of introducing new characters. Telling a story about an outsider who finds new friends – and love – in the world of racing. It’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and it’s about to be Revisited.

SET-UP: Starring Paul Walker as undercover LAPD cop Brian O’Conner and Vin Diesel as criminal street racer Dominic Toretto, The Fast and the Furious earned more than two hundred and six million dollars at the global box office. Very good for a film made on a budget of thirty-eight million. The budget was doubled for the sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious – and since Diesel chose not to return, the story followed Walker’s Brian O’Conner as he brought down a Miami drug runner. The sequel did well, earning two hundred and thirty-six million at the box office. The domestic numbers were down a little, but the international numbers were much higher. So you’d think distributor Universal Pictures would see a clear path to move forward with this franchise. It looked like a series of films about Brian O’Conner busting criminals and racing cars in a variety of interesting locations would be a success. But Universal and producer Neal H. Moritz weren’t so sure.

They did know they wanted to make a third film, though. So they held an open writing call. Any writer who wanted to come in and pitch a Fast and Furious idea could do so. One writer who had a pitch was Chris Morgan, who had recently earned his first screen credit by rewriting Larry Cohen’s script for the thriller Cellular. Morgan’s pitch caught their attention because it not only moved the story to a new location – Tokyo, Japan – it also opened the door to a new racing sub-culture. The first film was inspired by real-life quarter mile street races in Los Angeles and New York. Morgan’s idea was inspired by drifting competitions, which had been popular in Japan since the 1970s. Races that make drivers drift their cars around tight corners. A technique that was perfected by drivers practicing on Japan’s winding mountain roads. Morgan wanted to bring Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto into the Tokyo drifting world. Show him learning how to drift. And have him solve a murder mystery along the way.

Getting Diesel to star in the film was unlikely. Not only had he skipped 2 Fast 2 Furious, he had recently dropped out of the xXx sequel as well. It seemed like the only franchise he was interested in was his Riddick space adventures. So Universal told Morgan to remove Dominic Toretto from the idea. And while Paul Walker would have gladly come back for another sequel, they didn’t want Brian O’Conner in there either. Diesel and Walker were both in their thirties at the time, and Universal wanted younger leads so they could appeal directly to the youth market. Specifically, they wanted the main characters in this film to be high school students. So Morgan wrote a script that is basically a twist on The Karate Kid Part II: American youth goes to Japan, romances a local girl, learns drift racing instead of karate, and clashes with a rival who has a criminal kingpin for an uncle.

With the story in place, Moritz reached out to a director: Justin Lin, who had recently made the independent film Better Luck Tomorrow. Lin raised that movie’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollar budget by maxing out ten credit cards, wiping out his life savings, and getting a little financial help from M.C. Hammer. Moritz was very impressed by the film, which was about over-achieving Asian American youths pursuing a hobby of escalating criminal activity. But Lin wasn’t impressed by the script he was shown for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. He told SFgate that his response to Universal was, “’I think it’s offensive and dated, and I don’t have any intention of doing it.’ But Stacey Snider, the head of the studio, said, ‘Just tell us what you’d do differently.’ So I said, ‘To begin with, I’d get rid of all the gongs and temples and Buddhas and the visual gags about how the white guy is a foot taller than all the Asians.’ And she said, ‘Okay, we’ll make the kind of movie you want.’ … Ultimately, it ended up being a constant challenge. I kept on getting into discussions that were like, ‘You signed me to do a certain type of movie, if you don’t want to do that movie, get rid of me.’ But all you can ever ask is that the producers and the studio be fair and reasonable. And to their credit, they were very fair and reasonable.”

Scripted by Morgan and rewritten with Lin’s input, Tokyo Drift centers on American teen Sean Boswell. He has a record of reckless driving and property destruction, so when he competes in a disastrous race through a construction site at the beginning of the film, this is going to be his third strike. The authorities want him off the streets. So his mom sends him to live with his father – a U.S. Navy officer stationed in Tokyo. There Sean befriends a military brat called Twinkie and falls for a classmate named Neela. Who is into drift racing and has a complicated relationship with a guy everyone calls the Drift King. Or D.K. A guy who wants to follow in the criminal footsteps of his uncle, who is in the Yakuza. Sean is a fan of classic American cars, he brushes off the vehicles his Tokyo peers drive as “cute little toys”. But he gets interested in drift racing, and one of D.K.’s associates, Han, agrees to teach him how to drift. As the film goes on, interactions between Sean and the Drift King get more troubled. And more dangerous. When D.K. finds out that Han has been making shady deals behind his back, a chase through the streets of Tokyo ensues… Ending with Han’s death in an explosive crash. D.K. is also intensely jealous that Neela is falling for Sean. Of course, it all comes down to a race: Sean against D.K., drift racing along mountain roads. And the loser has to leave Tokyo. Sean makes sure to bring his own style to drifting. The car he drives in the final competition is an American classic: a 1967 Mustang.

Lin signed on in June of 2005 – exactly one year before Universal planned to give the film a theatrical release. When the casting process began, he was hoping to find an Asian American actor he could cast in the lead role. Even though Universal told him there was no one who was bankable. After a global search, Lin became convinced that the best actor for the lead role was a white actor from Alabama: Lucas Black. Whose previous credits included Sling Blade, Friday Night Lights, and Jarhead. A supporting cast was then built around Black. Nathalie Kelley makes her screen debut as Neela. Kelley had only just recently gotten her driver’s license, but had to appear to be an experienced drift racer in the film. Rapper Bow Wow was cast as Twinkie. Brian Tee is the villainous Drift King. The legendary Sonny Chiba plays D.K.’s Uncle Kamata. Sean’s parents are played by Lynda Boyd and Brian Goodman. Zachery Ty Bryan appears as the jock Sean races at the beginning of the film. With Nikki Griffin as the girl who puts herself up as their prize. As Han, Lin cast Sung Kang – who had also played a character named Han in Better Luck Tomorrow. They saw their previous collaboration as the back story for Kang’s Tokyo Drift character. Han got mixed up in the crimes committed in Better Luck Tomorrow, and went off to Tokyo to avoid prosecution. Another Better Luck Tomorrow cast member, Jason Tobin, plays Han’s friend Earl, but that character has no connection to Lin’s indie film. Japanese film producer Kazutoshi Wadakura and real-life Drift King Keiichi Tsuchiya have cameos as fishermen who witness Sean’s drift practice sessions.

Despite being completely different from the previous Fast and Furious movies, Tokyo Drift had the highest budget yet. Eighty-five million. That extra cash came in handy, because much of the filming did not take place in Japan. Instead, Japan was recreated in the Los Angeles area. The waterfront docks, the winding mountain roads, those aren’t in Japan. That’s California. When D.K. chases Han and Sean through Tokyo’s Shibuya district, that’s mostly not Japan. The production shut down six city blocks in downtown Los Angeles and turned it into Tokyo by dressing street signs, buildings, newsstands, restaurants, and bus stops with Japanese kanji. Then they filmed in this fake Shibuya for almost two weeks. Eventually cast and crew headed over to Japan for four weeks of exterior shots. When you add these expenses to the fact that over one hundred cars were wrecked during filming and the drifting cars burned through around two thousand tires, it’s no surprise Tokyo Drift needed some extra money.

Once the production made it to Tokyo, they found that city officials don’t give out film permits. So the cast and crew ran around the city shooting guerilla-style, getting whatever footage they could. When they went to film in the actual Shibuya district, the police shut them down… And Lin discovered that the producers had hired someone else to tell police he was the director. Because they knew a director would get arrested for filming in the Shibuya district. This guy was busted and spent the night in jail so Lin wouldn’t have to.

REVIEW: Lin openly admits that there are elements in Tokyo Drift that are similar to The Karate Kid Part II. It might not follow that movie as closely as the first Fast and Furious followed Point Break, but the connection is there. Lin also had Westerns in mind while making the film. Stories of mysterious strangers coming into town and taking on the bad guys. And SFgate’s Jeff Yang pointed out that it was in the tradition of kung fu movies as well. Movies like Drunken Master, The One-Armed Swordsman, and Shaolin Temple. Stories where a cocky young man takes on a seasoned master and fails. Then learns the techniques necessary to defeat the master from an eccentric mentor. And he usually has to avenge a murder by the end, too. Tokyo Drift is more likely to make you think of these movies from other sub-genres than it is to make you think of the previous two Fast and Furious movies. So to enjoy the movie, you have to accept that it’s something different. This isn’t a story about Brian O’Conner or Dominic Toretto. It’s a whole new group of characters, and you have to be open to their story. Instead of wishing you were watching somebody else’s story.

Taken on its own merits, Tokyo Drift is a solid racing drama. Sean Boswell is a likeable lead character, and Lin made the right casting choice. Not only does Lucas Black do a great job of bringing Sean to life, but he does so while speaking with his natural Alabama accent. Something that makes his character stand out as even more of an outsider when he’s interacting with people in Tokyo. The story he gets mixed up in there is interesting. We root for him to defeat D.K. so he can pursue a relationship with Neela in peace. And the thing that really makes the film worth watching is the presence of Sung Kang as Han.

Kang emanates coolness in every moment he has in the movie. As he takes Sean into his world of drifting and questionable business, he’s also making the viewer get more invested in the story and characters. Lin has said that Han scored through the roof with test audiences. He was the favorite character of every focus group they showed the movie to. We do come to care about this guy, possibly even more than we care about Sean. So when he gets killed off with roughly 25 minutes left to go, the viewer is just as devastated as Sean is. Which gives us even more reason to root for him in the climactic race against D.K.

Lin did an excellent job directing the movie. Tokyo Drift has a great energy and style to it, and some awesome visuals. One of the most memorable moments is a moonlight drive Sean and Neela take while on a date. Drifting around curves on a mountain road, part of a line of other cars. If drifting can look this cool, you can really understand why Sean gets so interested in it.

Lin said, “Drifting is a very cinematic sport. It’s exciting to do something that’s never been done before on film. It’s amazing to me how we’ve found new angles and new camera moves to capture the action. These drivers are so good and so precise, we were able to come up with new ideas on how best to capture it.”

LEGACY/NOW: Tokyo Drift went over well with test audiences, but Universal still wasn’t sure what the future held for the franchise. Some were concerned that The Fast and the Furious was already played out. There was some consideration given to the idea of sending sequels direct-to-video. The studio is very big on making direct-to-video sequels. Just look up the American Pie, Tremors, Bring It On, Chucky, Death Race, Scorpion King, or Dragonheart franchises for proof of that. There was a chance The Fast and the Furious could join those ranks. But then the studio got an idea for how they could give the ending of Tokyo Drift a boost. And have audiences leave screenings buzzing about the possibility of a fourth film. They asked Vin Diesel to make a last minute cameo.

Diesel could have refused. He could have asked for more money than the production would be able to pay him. Instead, he asked for the rights to the Riddick franchise. Universal handed them over – and offered him the chance to produce the next Fast and Furious movie. He took the offer. So Tokyo Drift ends with a scene where Dominic Toretto shows up to challenge Sean to race. And while doing so, he mentions that he was friends with Han. Actually, more than friends. They were family.

So when Tokyo Drift hit theatres on June 16, 2006, it started drawing in not only audiences that were interested in seeing this new story. But also fans who wanted to see the Vin Diesel cameo that tied it to the other movies. Even with that extra bit of Diesel in there, it fell short of its predecessors. It made just over sixty-two million at the domestic box office. Less than half of 2 Fast 2 Furious’s domestic numbers, which were almost twenty million below the first movie’s. At the international box office, it performed better than the first movie, drawing in over ninety-five million. That was still fourteen million short of the second film’s international box office. In the end, TOKYO DRIFT earned a total of just under one hundred and fifty-eight million. Not too bad. But almost forty-nine million less than the first movie. And almost seventy-nine million less than 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Justin Lin had proven he could make a summer popcorn movie, and he was ready to step away from blockbusters for a minute. He went into production on the comedy Finishing the Game. He was planning to balance working on studio movies with making more indie films. But then Universal asked him to direct the fourth Fast and Furious movie, which led to him directing more sequels. And making a Star Trek movie for Paramount along the way. At this point, it’s been a long time since he revisited the indie world.

If that Vin Diesel cameo in Tokyo Drift hadn’t opened the door to the next sequel, The Fast and the Furious might have gone direct-to-video after all. But now Universal knew how they were going to proceed. Dominic Toretto was coming back… and they were going to reunite him with Brian O’Conner. And we’re going to take a look at their reunion, in a movie simply titled Fast & Furious, in the next episode of Revisited.

Justin Lin returned to direct the 2009 sequel Fast & Furious, and I covered that one for the Revisited series as well: 

Fast & Furious script: 

After two sequels apart, the Fast and Furious family is reunited in the fourth film. Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, the gang’s all here. And yes, they’re racing cars once again… but this time the stakes are life or death. We’re going back to 2009 to talk about Fast & Furious for this episode of Revisited.

Universal tried something different with the third film in the Fast and Furious franchise. Rather than make it a direct follow-up to the previous films, they brought in new characters. Teenagers they thought would be more appealing to the youth market. They got a decent movie out of it, but not a lot of pay-off. Tokyo Drift made substantially less than its predecessors at the box office. And the moment that had viewers buzzing was the last minute cameo from Vin Diesel. After opting out of 2 Fast 2 Furious, the Fast and the Furious star graced Tokyo Drift with his presence for a few seconds. And opened the door to the sequel fans really wanted to see, the return of the original cast, the reunion of Diesel with Fast One and 2 Fast star Paul Walker.

Universal was going back to the series’ roots with the fourth film, but they also brought back the Tokyo Drift creative team. Justin Lin would return to direct the fourth movie from a script by Chris Morgan. Morgan’s original idea for Tokyo Drift had centered on Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto. He would have been the one learning to drift in Tokyo – and would have been investigating a murder at the same time. The idea of Dom solving a murder case carries over to the script Morgan wrote for Part 4. And he decided to make it a very personal case.

At the end of The Fast and the Furious, LAPD officer Brian O’Conner, played by Walker, helped criminal street racer Dom get away from the police. They had bonded during Brian’s time undercover in the street racing world. Brian had even gotten romantically involved with Dom’s sister Mia, played by Jordana Brewster. A post-credits scene showed that Dom had made it to Mexico. The fourth film, which drops the definite articles from the title and is simply called Fast & Furious – continuing the trend of crazy titles that started with 2 Fast 2 Furious – catches up with Dom eight years later. He and his girlfriend Letty Ortiz, played by Michelle Rodriguez, have made their way to the Dominican Republic. There, they have teamed up with locals Leo and Santos, played by Tego Calderón and Don Omar, to pull off a gasoline heist. And Dom has called in his pal Han to help.

Played by Sung Kang, Han was the breakout character in Tokyo Drift. Test audiences always scored him as their favorite character. And Lin had an affinity for him because Kang was basically reprising a role he had played in Lin’s indie movie Better Luck Tomorrow. So the decision was made to bring Han back for a quick appearance in Fast & Furious. Even though he had died in Tokyo Drift. During his cameo in that film, Dom had mentioned that he and Han used to ride together. That they considered each other to be family. So Fast & Furious became a prequel that gives us a glimpse of their time together. Since audiences kept responding so well to Han… and Lin kept coming back to direct sequels… the character would return for more movies after this. Pushing Tokyo Drift further and further down the timeline.

But Han exits Fast & Furious right after the gasoline heist. Dom knows the authorities are closing in on him, so he parts ways with Letty. He goes off to Panama. And soon he’s informed that Letty returned to Los Angeles… and was murdered. So he risks his own safety and freedom to go to L.A. and find out what happened.

The filmmakers had originally planned to re-introduce Brian O’Conner with a scene set in a prison. Presumably this would have been a fake-out. Brian was an outlaw himself in 2 Fast 2 Furious, facing jail time for letting Dom go. So if Fast & Furious started by showing him in prison, viewers would have thought he had finally been locked up. Even though the events of 2 Fast 2 Furious were meant to clear his record. But in this film we learn that Brian has been recruited by the FBI – he is now Agent Brian O’Conner! And therefore would have just been undercover in prison to get information. Lin planned for the very first shot of Paul Walker in this movie to be of him behind bars, shirtless. Then he realized that things probably wouldn’t go so well for someone who looked like Walker if they were in lock-up. The week before they were going to shoot that scene, Lin decided to completely rework Brian’s re-introduction. Instead of being in prison, he’s chasing down a suspect in a frenetic foot chase. A bummer for anyone who was hoping to see Walker shirtless. But a more exciting choice for an action movie.

Brian is working to bring down a drug cartel run by a mysterious man named Braga. Braga has been smuggling heroin into the United States from Mexico for a decade. The FBI knows that street racers are recruited to do the smuggling. But they don’t know exactly how the operation works. Dom’s investigation of Letty’s murder is also leading him toward Braga. So he crosses paths with Brian in the process. They end up having to work together again. And late in the running time, Dom learns that Brian has been keeping secrets again. Letty was involved with Braga’s heroin smuggling because of Brian. She made a deal with the FBI: they would clear Dom’s record if she helped bring Braga to justice. As the film nears its conclusion, Brian tries to set up the same deal for Dom himself.

Vin Diesel wasn’t involved with 2 Fast 2 Furious because he didn’t like the idea of The Fast and the Furious getting a sequel. He has also said that the script he saw that would have featured Dom wasn’t good. A couple years later, he also chose not to return for the xXx sequel. So getting him to come back for Fast & Furious was an accomplishment – and Universal sweetened the deal by letting him produce the film with franchise producer Neal H. Moritz. They also let him direct a twenty minute short called Los Bandoleros. Which shows Dom and his cohorts preparing for the gasoline heist. And he got to take one of the cars home as a souvenir. While developing the film, Lin worked hard to make sure all of the returning stars were satisfied. Which wasn’t always easy, as he has said that it was like “building a road while the car is still driving on it”. On his audio commentary, he talked about the conversation that really sealed the deal with Diesel. They were discussing the script when Diesel asked him what the film was really about. The theme of it. Lin said, “It’s been very interesting, because for these kind of fast cars and hot chicks films, the theme that’s been driving these films is family. The exploration of what it means to have this non-traditional family. I thought the theme for this film should be sacrifice and what that means for Dom. As soon as I mentioned sacrifice to Vin, it clicked. I guess it wasn’t a hard sell because basically you’re saying, ‘Vin, you get to be Jesus Christ,’ and I think he took that well.”

Lin inherited the main stars of Fast & Furious from the original film. He then built a supporting cast around them. John Ortiz was cast as Ramon Campos, who is presented as being the right hand man to Braga. But there’s more going on with him than meets the eye. Laz Alonso plays Fenix, who leads the drivers hired to smuggle Braga’s drugs. Then executes them after they reach the states. Which is why he killed Letty. Jack Conley plays Penning, Brian’s boss at the FBI. Shea Whigham is Stasiak, a colleague Brian doesn’t get along with. Liza Lapira plays FBI agent Sophie Trinh, a more helpful colleague. In the mix at Braga’s organization is Gal Gadot as Gisele Yashar. Who is strongly attracted to Dom – but he doesn’t hook up with her because he’s mourning Letty.

Fast & Furious was Gadot’s first film, and acting wasn’t something she had intended to do. The Israel native had done modeling work and served the mandatory two years in the Israel Defense Forces. Then she was attending law school when the casting director for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace saw her modeling card. Gadot took the Bond meeting, but was straightforward with the casting director. She told them she wasn’t an actress and didn’t want to waste their time. So she wasn’t cast in the Bond movie. It wasn’t until after that brush with the film world that she started taking acting classes and auditioning for projects. The same casting person she had met for Quantum of Solace was also working on Fast & Furious. That’s how she was cast as Gisele – and started down the path to becoming Wonder Woman.

Some involved with Fast & Furious considered this film to be the “real sequel”. Coming after two entries where the franchise got sidetracked. It brings the original stars back together and cements the idea that the series is about family. So it sounds like this should be a fun party. But the film is surprisingly downbeat; easily the most dour entry in the entire franchise. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to make the reunion movie a revenge tale. Everyone’s serious, angry, sad. Characters are too busy mourning Letty and feeling betrayed by Brian to have a good time. And that makes the movie less entertaining than the preceding three.

Jordana Brewster was upset that she was left out of 2 Fast 2 Furious. Yet the movie that brought her back to the franchise is her least favorite of the ones she’s in. Speaking with Collider, she said Fast & Furious is “very grey. It’s set in L.A., Paul’s in a suit. I’m in this red dress and I have bangs and I’m just very sad and pissed off at him. I just feel like I don’t remember that one super fondly.” She also questions her performance as Mia in the film, saying, “I was kind of prissy in 4 and then back to really knowing what I want in 5. … It’s really important to me that Mia’s very centered and grounded, and I lost sight of that in 4. But also, it was a reintroduction to everyone.”

Although the movie is melancholy, it does have plenty of action in the mix. And in these action sequences, you can see the first signs of how over-the-top the franchise would get. The opening gasoline heist is the biggest action scene these movies have had yet. And ends with Dom driving a car under a burning tanker that’s rolling and bouncing down the road. Timing it perfectly so he can drive through unscathed. With plenty of digital enhancement helping him out. The smugglers get Braga’s heroin into the states by driving through tunnels. Sequences set in these tunnels aren’t visually appealing. And require a lot more digital enhancement. But that’s where the climactic chase happens. It’s one of the least engaging sequences in the early films.

At this point in the franchise, people can still get injured when their cars smash into something. Letty is in a bad spot when Fenix makes her crash her car. Brian is very banged up at the end. But we also get a preview of Dom’s superhuman abilities when he gets shot in the shoulder. And doesn’t seem to mind very much.

There are plenty of problems with Fast & Furious. But as far as car-based action movies go, it’s not bad. Just underwhelming. There are some good character moments. It’s nice to see Brian, Dom, and Mia interacting again. And it’s very satisfying when we see Brian and Dom work together to dispatch Fenix. The man who killed Letty. Even though later sequels would tell us that Letty wasn’t really killed.

Universal had been planning to give Fast & Furious a June release. The same as they had done for the previous three movies. But late in the process, they decided to pull the release forward two months. It moved from June 12th to April 3rd. Due to this change in plans, composer Brian Tyler had to speed up his process. He went from having a couple months to record the orchestral score to having just three days to do it. The one hundred and seven minute movie required seventy-two minutes of music. So Tyler gathered his orchestra and recorded twenty-five minutes of music each day for three days. The musical time crunch isn’t evident in the finished film.

The release date shift didn’t hurt the film at the box office, either. You’d think a summer release would have been better. The teens these movies were aimed at were out of school with plenty of free time in the summer. But even though they were still in school in April, they obviously found the time to go see Fast & Furious. So did the older audience who had been there when the franchise started eight years earlier. And viewers who skipped Tokyo Drift came back to see this one. Fast & Furious became the most successful film in the franchise up to this point. It drew in over one hundred and fifty-five million at the domestic box office. Passing the record of one-forty-four-point-five that was held by the first film. The international box office added more than two hundred and four million. Leaving 2 Fast 2 Furious’s international haul of one hundred and nine million in the dust. At the end of its theatrical run, the film had earned more than three hundred and fifty-nine million on a budget of eighty-five. Guaranteeing that there would be another sequel.

Paul Walker was instantly on board to come back for Part 5. Interviewed by The New York Times in the build-up to the release of Fast & Furious, he said Universal was “already talking that we’re going to make a fifth one in Europe.” But there was a bit of déjà vu here. Walker had experience being in a successful film with Diesel, then having his co-star refuse to return for a sequel. He told the New York Times, “I’m sure Vin’s going to be busy.” When they asked Diesel about it, he wouldn’t promise that he’d come back for Part 5. He simply said, “You know my process is script first.”

Of course, Diesel did end up coming back for Part 5. And every sequel since then. But 5 didn’t take Brian and Dom to Europe like Walker heard it would. They would get there eventually. But first they had to go on a detour to South America. Fast Five, the most popular of all the sequels, is set in Brazil. And we’re going to talk about that one in the next episode of Revisited.

And for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie video series, I wrote about the oddball Halloween sequel Halloween III: Season of the Witch: 

Halloween III script: 

For two films, movie-goers watched the masked slasher Michael Myers stalk Jamie Lee Curtis and murder his way through the small town of Haddonfield on Halloween night. So you can understand that some were shocked when they went to see Halloween III and it wasn’t anything like the previous two films. Instead of more Michael Myers, they got a movie about a warlock who wanted to use the power of Stonehenge to kill millions of children. With masks that would melt their heads down into puddles of snakes and bugs. This change in direction did not go over well. For decades, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was largely disregarded. And now we’re going to try to figure out What the F*ck Happened to This Horror Movie!

In 1976, producer Irwin Yablans of Compass International Pictures had an idea for a movie about a killer stalking babysitters. It could have been called The Babysitter Murders, but when Yablans decided the story should take place on Halloween night, it became Halloween. Impressed by director John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, he hired Carpenter to write and direct the film. And Carpenter brought his girlfriend Debra Hill onto the project to co-write and produce. When Halloween was released in 1978, it was a massive success. So, of course, Yablans wanted a sequel. Carpenter and Hill weren’t enthusiastic about making Halloween II… but legal and financial circumstances basically pushed them into it. Then legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis showed up with an offer: he wanted to produce Halloween II, and offered Yablans a major payday to let him do so. Yablans took the deal, and De Laurentiis gained the right to make Halloween II. With an option to produce Halloween III as well.

Released by Universal Pictures in 1981, Halloween II didn’t make as much money as its predecessor did. But it was successful enough to open the door to a sequel. And De Laurentiis decided to exercise his contractual right to produce Halloween III. Carpenter and Hill were the first filmmakers approached about the project. Their hearts hadn’t been in Halloween II to begin with. Carpenter had Rick Rosenthal direct it instead of taking the helm himself, and from the script on up to the finished film they weren’t too happy with how it had all turned out. So the last thing they wanted to do was make Halloween III. They knew it was going to happen with or without them. So Carpenter gave a response he thought would ensure that it would be made without them. He said he would only work on the film if it was something completely different. No masked slasher. No stalked babysitters. The only connection the film could have to the previous two was the Halloween setting. And to his surprise, De Laurentiis and Universal were completely fine with that approach. Carpenter and Hill were again hired to shepherd a new Halloween movie to the screen.

Now they had to figure out just what this different idea would be. Hill had a simple pitch: a movie that would show what happens when “witchcraft meets the computer age”. Carpenter and Hill only intended to produce the sequel, so Piranha and The Howling director Joe Dante was hired to direct. And since Carpenter and Dante were both fans of the British horror stories about Professor Quatermass, they brought in Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale to write the script. Kneale had total freedom to come up with any kind of story he wanted to. Just as long as it was about witchcraft in the computer age. While the script was in progress, Dante received a competitive offer. He was given the chance to contribute to Twilight Zone: The Movie alongside John Landis, Steven Spielberg, and George Miller. And he took it. When Dante left Halloween III behind, Carpenter turned to an old friend: Tommy Lee Wallace.

Carpenter and Wallace had known each other since grade school. When Carpenter got into filmmaking, Wallace was right there beside him. He helped out on the set of Dark Star. Was art director and sound effects editor on Assault on Precinct 13. Production designer and editor on Halloween and The Fog. He had been the first choice to direct Halloween II – but left the project after reading the script. He had no interest in making a bloody body count movie. If Halloween III had been another Michael Myers movie, he still wouldn’t have been interested. But as soon as Hill told him it would be something different, he signed on. And he had to start moving fast. He got the offer to direct in January. Filming was scheduled to begin in mid-April. The film had to be through post-production by mid-September to be ready for an October theatrical release.

There was a speed bump on the way to production. When Kneale turned in his script, the story and structure of Halloween III was in place. But the tone and pace were off. There was a feeling that the sixty-year-old screenwriter wasn’t in tune with the horror audience of the ‘80s. The script was slow and dark, with no room for jump scares or stylized murder scenes. Or moments of humor. The lead character was an alcoholic with a depressing home life. A toxic relationship with his wife. Bratty kids. There were odd supernatural moments with no reasoning. And a lot of mean-spirited jokes at the expense of the Irish. When Carpenter and Wallace asked Kneale to liven things up and make it more ‘80s, the writer walked. He had no interest in compromising his script to appeal to the modern youth. So Carpenter did his own rewrite on the script. And when Carpenter was finished, Wallace did a rewrite as well. Carpenter didn’t want to take credit for his contributions. Wallace wanted credit for his. And Kneale wanted his name taken off the movie entirely. So that’s how Wallace ended up with the sole writing credit. Even though fifty to sixty percent of Kneale’s script was still in place when filming began.

The story begins with store owner Harry Grimbridge running for his life after visiting a Halloween mask factory. He’s being pursued by well-dressed silent assassins. Characters Wallace added to the script; he calls them Graysuits. After collapsing at a gas station, Grimbridge is taken to a hospital. Where one of the doctors on staff is Dan Challis, an alcohol-chugging ladies man with an ex-wife and two kids he doesn’t seem to see much of. While in the hospital, Grimbridge is killed by a Graysuit. Which then blows itself up in the hospital parking lot. Challis is baffled by this turn of events. And intrigued when Grimbridge’s daughter Ellie shows up looking for information on what happened. Ellie asks Challis to help her investigate the mask factory. So he ditches plans with his kids to go on an adventure with a woman young enough to be his daughter. And yes, they do end up in bed together, after traveling to the small town of Santa Mira. Which seems to be strictly controlled by Conal Cochran, owner of the Silver Shamrock mask factory. Soon, Challis and Ellie are able to confirm that something insidious is going on here. Cochran is planning to celebrate Halloween in the old fashioned way: with human sacrifice. He has harnessed the supernatural powers of Stonehenge and somehow distilled it into computer chips. Which he has hidden in the trademark badges on every one of his Silver Shamrock masks. TV commercials with a catchy jingle tell the children of American to tune in for a big giveaway on Halloween night… but when they do, the magical chips in the masks will be activated. And millions of children are going to die in horrific ways. To stop Cochran, Challis and Ellie will have to deal with the Graysuits. Which are actually robots created by the mask-and-toy-maker. And hope they won’t fall prey to his schemes themselves.

Carpenter was dating future wife Adrienne Barbeau by the time Halloween was released. Barbeau invited her friend Garn Stephens to a screening of the film – and Stephens brought her husband Tom Atkins. A few years later, Atkins and Stephens were both cast in Halloween III. Atkins took on the role of Dan Challis, while Stephens plays Marge Guttman, an ill-fated Santa Mira visitor. Wallace cast Stacey Nelkin as Ellie Grimbridge, with Al Berry as her short-lived father. Atkins’ friend Ralph Strait plays store owner Buddy Kupfer, who gets killed alongside his wife and son, played by Jadeen Barbor and Brad Schacter. Jonathan Terry appears just long enough to lose his head as disgruntled Santa Mira resident Starker. Wendy Wessberg is assistant coroner Teddy. Dick Warlock, who played Michael Myers in Halloween II, is a prominent Graysuit. And Wallace’s then-wife Nancy Kyes Loomis, who had played a Michael Myers victim in the previous films, makes an appearance as Challis’s ex.

The first person Wallace had in mind for the role of Conal Cochran was Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. Ned Beatty was also on a list of possibilities. An offer was made to Fred MacMurray of My Three Sons and The Absent-Minded Professor. But he never responded. It was Debra Hill who suggested Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy for the role. And O’Herlihy went on on to deliver an incredible performance on the level of a James Bond villain.

Halloween III had a budget of two-point-five million, the same as Halloween II. Only twenty-five thousand of that went toward the special effects. Burman Studios had just four weeks to get those effects ready before filming… But it’s interesting to see that the director who thought Halloween II was excessively violent brought a lot of violence into Halloween III. Grimbridge’s face crushing death. Starker’s decapitation. The destruction of the Kupfer family. None of those were in Kneale’s script. Carpenter and Wallace added those moments. The murder of Teddy wasn’t even in the shooting script. Her scenes were additional photography, worked in when it was decided the movie needed another kill. But Wallace was comfortable with these moments of violence because he thought he could shoot them in a tasteful, artistic way. With as little gore as possible. Effects artist Tom Burman agreed with the approach. He told Fangoria magazine, “This movie is really not out to disgust people. It’s a fun movie with a lot of thrills in it; not a lot of random, gratuitous gore.” That said, the deaths of Marge Guttman and the Kupfers are more disgusting than anything Michael Myers ever did.

The pumpkin, witch, and skull Silver Shamrock masks were supplied by Don Post Studios. The mask company that had created the Captain Kirk mask that Wallace modified into the Michael Myers mask for the first film. To save costs, the filmmakers let Don Post retain the copyright to the masks, so he didn’t charge the production for them. And even let them film the Silver Shamrock factory scenes inside his factory. Jim Leonard designed the pumpkin and witch masks. Pat Newman designed the skull mask, which Don Post Studios had actually already been selling since 1965. Trying to make sense of the fact that his movie was called Halloween III, Wallace referred to the Silver Shamrock masks as “the Halloween Three”.

While the previous Halloween movies had been “knife movies”, Wallace saw his entry as a “pod movie”. Just like one of his all-time favorites, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He even paid tribute to Body Snatchers by filming some scenes in the same location, Sierra Madre. And the town name Santa Mira was directly lifted from the earlier film. Wallace also wanted to make sure his movie had an ambiguous ending. Which Body Snatchers almost had, until the studio made the director shoot an epilogue where it seems everything is going to be okay. Wallace thought Body Snatchers should have ended with Kevin McCarthy screaming “You’re next!” directly into the camera. Which is why Halloween III ends with Challis screaming into the phone. Trying to get Silver Shamrock commercials taken off the air. We’re left not knowing if he was fully successful or not.

A test screening of Halloween III was held in Las Vegas – and the audience was not happy with the ending. Universal requested that it be changed. But it was in Carpenter’s contract that he had final cut. And when Wallace said he wouldn’t change the ending, Carpenter supported him. The studio couldn’t do anything about it.

The idea behind making Halloween III something different was that it would turn the franchise into an anthology series. Every year, Carpenter and Hill would produce a new horror movie that would be set around the Halloween holiday. This way they could tell a variety of stories. Before he left the Halloween world behind, Kneale even had an idea for a Halloween 4 that would’ve been a ghost story. The problem was, the marketing of the film didn’t get this idea across at all. Anyone who didn’t read magazines like Fangoria had no idea what was going on with Halloween III. The fact that some posters included the words “All New” certainly didn’t provide an explanation. So movie-goers made the logical assumption that Halloween III was going to give them more Michael Myers action.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch reached theatres on October 22, 1982. It had a solid opening weekend of six-point-three million. But there were a lot of unhappy audience members. While the movie looked familiar, since cinematographer Dean Cundey had returned… and it sounded familiar, because Carpenter and Alan Howarth provided the score again… it was “All New” in a way they didn’t expect. And didn’t want. It has been reported that people walked out of Halloween III when they realized Michael Myers wasn’t going to show up. Some demanded their money back. The box office numbers plummeted. By the end of the twelve week theatrical run, the movie had only made fourteen-point-four million. Far below Halloween II’s twenty-five million, which was already far below the first film’s box office. Wallace was left feeling that he had made a total flop. A box office disappointment that viewers hated.

But as years went by, Halloween III started to gain a cult following. It received reassessment from viewers who decided to give it a try on its own merits. Pushing Michael Myers out of their minds, they found that Wallace had actually made a good Halloween-themed film. One that combines the roots of the holiday with modern trick-or-treating. That retains the cool Carpenter / Cundey style, filtered through the sensibilities of Wallace. That has an unlikely hero – an alcoholic deadbeat – who is entertaining to watch because he’s played by Tom Atkins. And features a brilliant performance from Dan O’Herlihy. This witchcraft meets the computer age idea was something different for sure. But being different didn’t mean it was bad. And for those who missed Michael Myers, there was a whole lot more of him to come.

If you decide to watch Halloween III, you should be warned that you’ll be exposed to the Silver Shamrock jingle. Which will be stuck in your head for the rest of your life. But Wallace says there’s a message to be found in the effectiveness of this earworm. In his own book about the making of Halloween III, he said the film takes a stance against the advertising world. Against “all that noise, all those jingles, all that advertising hype, all that pressure being exerted twenty-four / seven on the public to buy, consume, want and need more and more without question.” He warns viewers that “powerful forces are at work, some merely greedy, some downright evil, none particularly interested in making a better world”. So enjoy that Silver Shamrock jingle. But don’t fall into the Silver Shamrock trap.

More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!