Shh — this is a gray market bootleg.

Just imagine if you had Halloween and Halloween 2 and you didn’t have to stop watching them. That’s the first simple thing that this fan cut does, but this is about more than not having to have to leave your easy chair.

The other benefit is that twenty minutes of deleted scenes, as well as the extended TV cut of the first movie, have been integrated where they should go. And this all makes sense, as if anything, these movies should naturally run together to create one seamless film, one night of terror.

At three hours and thirteen minutes, its a commitment to be sure.

For those that obsess over these things — hello, we own more than five copies of each of these movies — this uses several of the moments from the TV movies. There are plenty of differences in those films, including the first film gaining the panel review scene and the word sister scratched into Michael’s room at Smith’s Grove.

In case you didn’t know, when this film was sold to NBC, there were numerous changes demanded of the film. To fill out a two-hour running time, new footage had to be shot to fill in what was taken away, so John Carpenter shot three days of all new footage using the crew of the second film, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence. This new footage builds on the new revelations in the second part of the story.

Speaking of Halloween 2, there’s a resequencing of the beginning of the TV movie version, as Mrs. Elrod’s scene occurs slightly later in the film after Ben Tramer’s is killed. It’s re-edited to suggest that Myers kills Mrs. Elrod instead of Alice Martin, who survives in the TV cut (as does Mrs. Elrod, perhaps, as we can hear her screaming as Michael walks away from her house).

There’s also an added scene where Janet talks to Jimmy about Laurie’s injuries and says that Dr. Mixter gave her a double-bullet sedative, as well as a reporter speaking over Night of the Living Dead, Mr. Garrett telling Karen that the murders are the result of drugs, more of Jimmy bringing Laurie the Coke he promised, Janet telling Karen about the power going out and how Laurie was screaming about Michael Myers coming to get her and a different voice over of Laurie yelling, “Please don’t hurt me, Michael! I’m your sister!”

Watching this won’t really change how you feel about the movies, only add a bit of texture and nuance to your viewing. I love how we can play with film and experience it in the way that we want to, taking out the best parts and combining narratives and gaining the most full version of what we want to see. For many of us, like my wife, the versions of these films that she remembers are ones taped off of TV, so this is almost like adjusting and improving those incredibly vital memories.

Sources: If you want to know everything there is to know about these movies, visit the Halloween Series Wiki.