Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers | 1988
- Locations |
- Utah
- DIRECTOR |
- Dwight H Little
Six years after the last Halloween movie (and seven since the last to continue the story of Michael Myers), the series is kickstarted, but with ‘Haddonfield, Illinois’ moving from leafy Pasadena to Salt Lake City, Utah.
It’s ten years after the events of the first Halloween and a pair of unwary paramedics are charged with transporting a highly dangerous prisoner/patient from ‘Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium’ to ‘Smith Grove’.
Some bright spark in the admin department thought that October 30th, the evening before Halloween, would be the ideal date for this touchy operation. They clearly didn’t run that by dogged Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasence) first.
The sanitarium is the Meridien at Capitol Park apartment complex, 400 East Capitol Park Avenue, in the Greater Avenues district, to the north of Salt Lake City. It’s now quite smart – and I'm sure the number of serial killers confined to its basement is well within acceptable guidelines.
Once Loomis gets news that the ambulance carrying Myers has been ‘involved in an accident’, he’s immediately on the scene, prophesying doom, that ‘it’ has escaped.
The accident site, “south of Mill Creek” is beneath the rail bridge over the Weber River alongside Utah 39 / West 12th Street west of Route 26, northwest of Ogden – over 30 miles from Salt Lake City.
Losing no time, Loomis heads off to ‘Haddonfield’ to warn Myers’ sole surviving relative, a seven-year-old niece called Jamie (Danielle Harris), daughter of Laurie Strode.
Stopping to fill up at a dilapidated gas station, Loomis is horrified to discover that Myers has got there first. ‘Penney’s gas station’ is now Penney’s Grill, 7760 UT-36, Stockton, south of Rush Lake, about 30 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The grill occupies the same location but has been totally rebuilt since the film.
In ‘Haddonfield’, the modest little home where Jamie lives with foster parents and foster-sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) is 509 East 3rd Avenue, between North G and North H Streets, Lower Avenues, Salt Lake City, where the conflict over babysitting clashes inevitably with the unstoppable urges of horny teens.
Jamie’s school, where she’s mercilessly tormented by her very nasty schoolmates, is the McGillis School, 668 South 1300 East Street, Salt Lake City.
Outside of Salt Lake City itself, much of ‘Haddonfield’ is Midvale on I-15, about eight miles to the south.
When Rachel takes Jamie to pick out a Halloween costume from the local discount mart, where her boyfriend Brady (Sasha Jenson) also happens to work, the ‘Vincent Drug’ store (where there’s a creepy bit of foreshadowing in the outfit Jamie chooses), is 7696 North Main Street, Midvale.
Michael / The Shape, it seems, is also there, picking up a Michael Myers Halloween mask (as the DVD commentary has it, if he’d picked up a Richard Nixon mask, the film might have gone in a whole different direction).
Before Loomis can get to her, Jamie has been persuaded to go Trick or Treating on North Canyon Road, Salt Lake City (she’s seen at 282 and 278 North Canyon Road), near City Creek Canyon and the Utah State Capitol Building.
‘Earl’s Bar’, in which the locals hear a warning on local TV news to close up business and head home, was the old Ore House Saloon, which stood at 9350 West Bingham Highway in Copperton. After being seriously damaged by fire, it was restored but finally demolished completely in 2011.
Confusion reigns when Michael Myers manages to trash the local electricity power station, plunging ‘Haddonfield’ into darkness. The station is just to the north of 7652 Holden Street, opposite West Smelter Street, back in Midvale.
Things get worse when Loomis and Sheriff Meeker (Beau Starr) discover the aftermath of a bloody massacre at ‘Haddonfield Police Station’ – which in reality is Midvale City Center, 655 West Center Street, just around the corner from ‘Vincent Drug’.
A posse of gun-totin’ locals from the bar hardly help when they mistakenly gun down a local in mistake for the killer by the pillared WWI Memorial Pagoda at Memory Grove Park, 300 North Canyon Road, Salt Lake City – just north of the Trick or Treat location.
Loomis, Jamie and Rachel secure themselves safely in Sheriff Meeker’s house, 607 2nd Avenue at I Street, Salt Lake City, a couple of blocks east of Jamie’s house, barricading the doors unaware that Myers is already inside.
For the climactic rooftop chase, the roof was recreated slightly closer to the ground (but only slightly).
• Many thanks to Peter Paulsen for help with this section.
