Jamie Lloyd

Jamie Lloyd, also known as Jamie Carruthers, is a fictional character in the Halloween film series, serving as the series protagonist during Halloween 4 and 5. The character has a less prominent role in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Jamie Lee Curtis was asked to return as Laurie Strode for the fourth film, but declined working on another film project, instead asking that the writers include her character's death from an automobile accident in the plot. The fourth film introduced Laurie's daughter, Jamie Lloyd. As the daughter of Laurie, she is also the niece of infamous serial killer Michael Myers and his first victim, Judith 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.

Fictional biography

Early life

Jamie Lloyd was born in 1980 in Haddonfield, Illinois. Her biological mother is Laurie Strode. The identity of her father was never officially revealed (although many fans of the franchise believe it is Jimmy from Halloween II). It is revealed in Halloween 4 that Jamie's parents had died in November 1987.

For the next eleven 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 (Ellie Cornell).

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, Michael kills the Carruthers' Golden Retriever Sundae, a worker at the power plant which causes a blackout of the entire town, the entire police force, the deputy, the police chief's daughter Kelly, Rachel's boyfriend Brady, and 4 men from a vigilante mob.

Escaping from town, Jamie cowers in a pick-up truck as Rachel hits Michael head on, throwing him off the road and knocking him out. Despite Rachel's orders, 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.

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, four of Rachel's friends, two dimwitted cops, and the Carruthers' new dog, a Doberman Pinscher named Max, while in pursuit of Jamie. Towards the end, Loomis takes Jamie to the old Myers house and successfully lures Michael into the house. Despite the doctor's pleas with Michael to fight his rage and seek redemption through a positive relationship with Jamie, Myers tracks down his niece in Judith Myers's deserted bedroom. This leads to a chase scene throughout Michael's childhood home. Jamie attempts to reach Michael by addressing him as "Uncle." He pauses and, at Jamie's request, removes his mask. Upon seeing his face, she says "You're just like me." However, when she tries to wipe away a tear from his face, he recoils, 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 (including Meeker) and that her uncle has escaped. The movie ends with Jamie moaning in terror.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

Six years later, a now 15-year-old Jamie has a cameo appearance in the beginning of the film where she gives birth to a boy on the night of October 30, 1995. The Man in Black had apparently kidnapped her immediately after the shoot-out and has kept her and Michael (George P. Wilbur), in captivity 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. Before being killed by Michael, Jamie hides her baby, who is found by Tommy. The Man in Black in the end is revealed to be Loomis' former medical colleague Dr. Terence Wynn (Mitchell Ryan). He and most of his staff are revealed to be a Druid cult headquartered in the subterranean levels of the Smith's Grove Sanitarium, the place where Michael was committed after killing his sister Judith. They are responsible for Michael's actions, placing an ancient curse on him to kill his family to ward off sickness and death. By the end of the movie, it is implied that Dr. Wynn has been trying and failing to breed the ultimate evil using Michael's DNA and female patients of the sanitarium in in-vitro fertilization experiments; finally reaching a success with Jamie's baby after she had been tested on.

In the theatrical version, Jamie dies relatively early in the film when Michael impales her on a corn thresher and turning it on, disemboweling her.. 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.^[1]

In a controversial decision, director Steve Miner retconned the series with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (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 Carruthers and the Man in Black.

Casting

Jamie Lloyd was Danielle Harris' first feature film role, for which she appears at horror conventions and on Halloween series-related websites. actress Melissa Joan Hart also auditioned for the role. 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 $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.^[2] Harris made her eventual return to the series as Annie Brackett in Rob Zombie's Halloween prequel/remake, as well as its subsequent sequel.

Other 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

• Jamie Lloyd at the Internet Movie Database