Jamie Lloyd is a
fictional character and
protagonist in
(1988),
(1989), and
(1995).
Jamie Lee Curtis was asked to return as
Laurie Strode for the fourth film, but declined for another film project. She asked that the writers include her death from an automobile accident in the plot. Instead, the fourth film introduced Laurie's daughter. As the daughter of Laurie, she is also the niece of infamous
serial killer Michael Myers. She was played by
Danielle Harris in
Halloween 4 and
Halloween 5, and by
J. C. Brandy in
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
Early life
Jamie Lloyd was born in Haddonfield, Illinois. Her biological mother is Laurie Ann Strode (born
Laura Ann Myers). The identity of her father was never officially revealed.
It is revealed (in
H4) that in late November 1987, Jamie's parents died.
For the next 11 months, Jamie would suffer from nightmares about her uncle Michael. She gradually comes to love her surrogate family - her foster parents Richard and Darlene Carruthers, and especially their daughter Rachel, her 17-year-old foster sister.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Jamie suffers from nightmares about her feared uncle, Michael Myers (
George P. Wilbur). She is also tormented by schoolmates because she is related to Haddonfield's notorious "boogeyman". On October 30, 1988, Michael is being transferred out of Ridgemont Federal Sanitarium back to Smith's Grove. While in the transfer ambulance, he recovers from his ten-year coma upon learning the existence of his niece. Accordingly, he kills the two medical attendants and the two drivers. While making his way back to his hometown, he also kills a mechanic and a waitress. In Haddonfield, while on the trail for Jamie, he kills 11 more people and the Carruthers' family dog, Sundae.
Escaping from town, Jamie cowers in a pick-up truck as Rachel Carruthers (Ellie Cornell) hits Michael head on, throwing him off the road and knocking him out. Jamie goes over to him and holds his hand. The police tell Jamie to drop to the ground and shoot Michael many times, causing him to fall into an abandoned mine shaft, which then collapses on top of him. Later, back in her foster home, Jamie is possessed by Michael's spirit and stabs her foster mother, though not fatally. When screams are heard from upstairs, Dr. Loomis walks over to the staircase seeing Jamie poised at the top holding a pair of bloody scissors. Sheriff Ben Meeker (Beau Starr) restrains Loomis from shooting her. Jamie is now apparently consumed by Michael's rage.
Donald Pleasence reportedly favored taking the series in a new direction by having Jamie become the Shape in the next sequel, but the producers opted to stick with a proven formula.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
One year later, a severely traumatized Jamie is housed in the Haddonfield Children's Clinic. She has now been rendered mute and suffers from nightmares and seizures. Early in the film, a brick, bearing a note reading, "The evil child must die," is thrown through her window. When Michael (
Donald L. Shanks) awakens from a year-long coma, she develops a telepathic bond with him. Sensing when he is near someone, Jamie goes into convulsions when he kills. Michael kills Rachel (which places the title of Jamie's protector into Tina's hands), four of Rachel's friends (including Tina), two dimwitted cops, and the Carruthers' new dog, a Doberman named Max, while in pursuit of Jamie. Towards the end, Loomis takes Jamie to Michael's childhood home. Despite the doctor's pleas to Michael to fight his rage and seek redemption through a positive relationship with Jamie, Myers tracks down his niece in the house. By addressing him as "Uncle," she gets him to pause and remove his mask. Upon seeing his face, she says "You look just like me." However, when she moves to wipe away his tear, he puts his mask back on, and attacks her in a rage.
Using Jamie as bait, Loomis catches Michael in a net, shoots him with tranquilizer darts, and beats him into unconsciousness with a wooden beam. Michael is manacled and locked up in the local jail, awaiting transport to a maximum-security facility, where, Meeker says, he will remain "until the day he dies," to which Jamie responds, "He'll never die." After Jamie is escorted out to be taken home, the mysterious "Man in Black", glimpsed briefly earlier in the film, arrives at the police station and begins firing a machine gun. Jamie goes back inside to find that eight police officers have been gunned down and that her uncle has escaped. The movie ends with Jamie moaning in terror.
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers
Jamie, now age 15, only appears at in the beginning of the film where she gives birth to a boy on the night of October 30, 1995. It is apparent that the Man in Black had kidnapped her immediately after the shoot-out and has kept her in captivity, along with her uncle Michael (Wilbur), for the past six years.
Dr. Loomis and
Tommy Doyle (
Paul Rudd), whom Laurie Strode was babysitting on Halloween 1978, attempt to rescue Jamie after hearing her plea for help on a local radio station. Jamie hides her baby, who is found by Tommy and names Stephen. The Man in Black in the end is revealed to be Loomis' former medical colleague
Dr. Terence Wynn (
Mitchell Ryan). He and his staff act as a
Druid cult headquartered in the subterranean levels of the Smith's Grove Sanitarium to get closer to Michael's DNA to use in their
genetic engineering experiments during their
in-vitro fertilization of embryos. They would develop into babies that would harness the power of Michael's curse within their DNA; making Stephen the result of this experiment possibly using one of Jamie's eggs, an unknown sperm sample, and a gene sample of Michael's DNA.
In the theatrical version, Jamie dies relatively early in the film when Michael impales her on a corn thresher, activating it afterwards. In the producer's cut, she survives most of the film only to be shot in the head by a gun fitted with a silencer by a disguised Dr. Wynn.
Continuity
When screenwriter
Kevin Williamson first outlined
Halloween H20, he created the storyline in which Laurie Strode has faked her own death and taken on a new identity as a specific way of retconning the character's death in
Halloween 4. In Williamson's original treatment, there are scenes in which a Hillcrest student does a report on Michael Myers' killing spree, mentioning the death of Jamie, complete with flashbacks to 4-6 mentioned in the text. "Keri"/Laurie responds to hearing the student's report on the death of her daughter by going into a restroom and throwing up.
In a controversial decision, director Steve Miner retconned the series with (1998). This installment retained Laurie's faked death from Williamson's treatment, revealing that she did so in order to avoid detection by her relentless brother. Under a new identity, Laurie has fled to Summer Glen, California, along with her only son, John Tate (Josh Hartnett). However, to focus more on the Laurie Strode character, the events of parts 4, 5, and 6 are written out of the continuity, thus erasing the Jamie Lloyd character from the canon.
The official Halloween: 30 Years of Terror comic book, taking place in the new continuity, had an adult Tommy Doyle illustrating comic books. Various elements from the fourth through sixth movies can be seen on his books, one of which is Jamie.
The upcoming comic Halloween: The Mark of Thorn will feature Jamie, as well as Tommy Doyle, Rachel Corruthers, and the Man in Black.
Casting
Jamie Lloyd was Danielle Harris' first role, for which she appears at horror conventions and on
Halloween series-related websites. Harris sought to reprise the role for the sixth installment, now titled
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, but the producers and
Dimension Films reportedly refused to pay her the mere $5,000 she requested, and she wasn't fond of the script. The role was instead given to actress
J. C. Brandy, who was a
Halloween fan herself. Harris made her eventual return to the series as
Annie Brackett in
Rob Zombie's
Halloween prequel/remake, as well as its subsequent sequel.
Notes
In the films, the uncertainty of Jamie’s age stems from a discrepancy between
Halloween 4 and
Halloween 5. In the former film, set in late October 1988, Jamie's foster sister,
Rachel Carruthers (
Ellie Cornell) wonders why Jamie continues staying up so late. She asks, "You going for a record here? The Seven-Year-Old Insomniacs' Hall of Fame?" The latter film is set one year later in late October 1989. Rachel and Jamie’s adolescent friend
Tina Williams (
Wendy Kaplan) exclaims to
Dr. Sam Loomis (
Donald Pleasence) that "Jamie’s a nine-year-old girl!"
In the novelization of the fourth film, Halloween IV (1988; revised edition, 2003) by Nicholas Grabowsky, Jamie is six years old, which implicitly dates her birth to 1982. According to H4, Laurie legally died 11 months earlier in November 1987 and Richard and Darlene Carruthers are Jamie’s foster parents. In H5, it is apparent that Jamie had been adopted assuming the name "Jamie Carruthers".
References
External links
at the Halloween Series wiki
at the Horror Film Wiki, a horror film Wikia
Category:Halloween (film series) characters
Category:Fictional adoptees
Category:Fictional telepaths
Category:Fictional mute characters
Category:Fictional characters from Illinois
Category:Child characters in film
Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1988
