Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is the worst movie of all time

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Holy shit snacks. This movie is BAD and crazy. So much nonsense. Lowest box office totals of the Halloween franchise. I'm guessing this is generally what happens when you just wing the plot as you go along. With Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers ending so definitively with Myers getting his ass lit up and buried and his niece, little Jamie Lloyd, stabbing her foster mother and taking up the role of pure evil. While they don't totally ignore the ending of Halloween 4, they do dismiss it. Jamie has a psychic connection to Michael in Halloween 5 but she no longer has his evil inside her or whatever and they chalk up her trying to kill her foster mother as a fluke. Going in, the previous director and writer, one Dwight H. Little and Alan McElroy respectively, set the stage for a Loomis focused film where he would either try to stop this evil, killer child from or try to help her from turning completely evil or some shit. That was idea at least but they didn't want to do it as they thought they should probably exit on a high note which Halloween 4 was. But Moustapha Akkad, who owned the rights, disagreed and was all about him some Mikey Myers. So when the first screenwriter offered up a draft where Jamie inherited Michael's evil, Akkad fired him and hired an eccentric named  Dominique Othenin-Girard who just got weird with it. Worst movie ever.

Pros: The only Michael Myers film other than the original Halloween that actually feels like it takes place on Halloween. They really do up the festivities in this one. The chick who plays Tina, though annoying, is pretty attractive. While this movie is complete trash... it is sort of fun in the end.

Cons: The wheels really come off the bus plotwise. Kill off the best character from Halloween 4 almost immediately. The Man in Black stuff is just awful. As is the Mark of Thorn. More animal cruelty. The mask looks like shit. The performances on the whole are exceptionally bad. The Keystone Cops are just embarrassing.

And heeeerrrreee we go... With the events of Halloween 4 a year behind--these events include the entire police department getting butchered, the sheriff's daughter getting impaled with a shotgun, a kid getting shot to death by a roaming death squad, and the protagonist (Jamie Lloyd) trying to stab her foster moth to death with a pair of scissors--everyone except for Jamie and Dr. Loomis, Myer's former shrink, are ready to move on and forget the killer that they assume to be dead... But he's not. Not even close.

Tina, the brunette, and some other chick

The movie stars, once again, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis and Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd, both of whom were in Halloween 4. Only others returning, to my knowledge, were Ellie Cornell who briefly reprises the role of Rachel and Beau Starr returns as Sheriff Ben Meeker. Newcomers include Wendy Foxworth (as Wendy Kaplan) plays Tina who more or less completely replaces Rachel after that character is killed off early in the flick, Jonathan Chapin as Tina's raging dickbag boyfriend Mikey, Tamara Glynn as Samantha (the blonde friend of Tina), Jeffrey Landman as Jamie little annoying buddy Billy, and Matthew Walker as Spitz who is this way over the top blonde guy with a death wish who keeps dressing up like Michael Myers and pretends to stab people. Donald L. Shanks takes on the role of The Shape aka Michael Myers.

The film was directed by one Dominique Othenin-Girard who seems like a real piece of work and hasn't done anything you've seen since movie came out 30 years ago. As you can imagine, there is some real shit in this movie and it is more or less all attributable to Othenin-Girard. I'm limiting it as I don't have the energy to rage about everything. First, lets start with the most ridiculous opening scene of all time where in Myers slips out the back of a  mine after getting shot 50 times and crawls into a river as Illinois's finest toss a stick of dynamite down the shaft. The way he crawls... It is hard to convey how dumb this looks. From there he slipped into a river and floated down stream where some bum with a fishing shack pulls Myers out of the river and cares for him as he chills in a coma for a year until the next Halloween rolls around. What this entails--feeding him, changing him, so forth--is unclear. Once Myers comes to, he immediately repays this guy by murdering him... and then he's off.  

Also early in the film we learn Jamie's foster parents, Rachel's biologicals, decide to go out of town on vacation one year to the day that a masked maniac killed half the town, tried to kill both of the children in their care, and offed the family dog AND their foster daughter tried to stab one of them to death for which she is locked away in the children's clinic. Seems like a great time to get out of dodge, don't get me wrong, but maybe take the kids with you on that one. No time for a second honeymoon, I guess you can say. Anyway, Rachel, again, is not long for this movie. Way hotter than she was in the previous flick, we get a close call as we see Myers wandering around inside her home as she showers. Luckily, though, Jamie, now mute, is psychically connected to Myers or something and knows he's about to kill which she like pantomimes to Loomis choking out words like "dog" and "Rachel" and so forth. "What's that, girl? Timmy is stuck in the well!" "Dog" was in reference to the family's new dog after the previous one was killed the year before. We see late in the film that this dog is murdered too although when this happens is also unclear since the dog is tied up outside when Tina gets to the crib after Rachel has been murdered, but I digress. For now Myers just let the dog out and he is loose to roam the neighborhood. But these fucking awful Keystone Cops are out and about and find him. "Find dogs; rescue cats. It's our job and we love it," is something they actually say as goofy slide whistle music plays in the background. These two fucking suck. They go in and look around and shit but do a half-assed job and Rachel goes back in and gets murdered. No one really asks where she is or anything which is weird since they are all supposed to kick it together at this huge house party and her sister or whatever, Jamie, is constantly freaking out and what not.

Apparently the actress, Cornell, was super pissed about this shit, and rightfully so. In Halloween 4 she was a bad-ass and what not. Here she is in a scene where she looks and acts completely differently where she showers and then dies. It wasn't even a matter of her wanting more money like with all the "returning" characters that had similar fates in the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies as Cornell threatened to walk when she saw what happened to her character. Originally, all the same shit was supposed to go down but she was supposed to die more violently with scissors going in her mouth and down her throat. It sounds weird and Cornell called bullshit on that. So they ended up changing the death and throwing more money her way which sort of worked out for her but then again she still had to be in this POS. This was producer Moustapha Akkad big regret when it came to the film. At the time leaving basically all creative control up to Othenin-Girard who thought that if Rachel's character went early, then it meant "anything could happen next" which was cliched to shit by that point.

Oh Billy

More shit here, this kid Billy is fucking irritating. This kid makes me irrationally angry. I'm sure the child actor is serviceable or whatever but the shit they have him do. Like how he constantly fake stutters and is always whining and shit. He is sort of this constant presence in Jamie's life, sidling around and being annoying. At one point Loomis has had enough of him and acts disgusted. This, also early in the movie, is pretty subtle but totally noticeable. It's in the children's hospital (not trying to think too much about how hard that kid would have it to be in there with a kid that tried to kill her foster mother and what not) after Jamie just had one of her freak outs. Loomis sort of throws him out with this look of disgust on his face without saying a word. Also, Loomis should still think that Michael is dead and what not but is totally in the know that he is alive despite any evidence whatsoever. It's just a feel he has I guess but have no idea since it isn't at all explained or really hinted at in the movie.

The last bit of shit I'll get into is everything to do with "The Man in Black" (MIB), a guy we see take public trans, which is cool... The character is played by Shanks who was also Michael Myers. No one, including the director or writer, had any idea who the fuck the character was supposed to be or where the story line was going. The character ends up breaking Myers from prison after he is captured by Loomis who chains and tranqus him before beating him into submission with a wood plank and then having a heart attack on top of him. This fucking guy. Why the fuck? He was never part of the plan, which is obvious, and was added halfway through after Akkad started to freak out about the way the film was turning out with the various plot holes and what have you. So Akkad's suggestion was basically to make the movie more confusing and that they would hire someone else to clean it up in the next installment which is all insane nonsense. This is also where we start to get this "Mark of Thorn" bullshit, more on that in the next movie.

I could go on with more shit here like how the Myers's house is completely different than it was in the first flick or how this shithead Spitz runs out in a Myers mask wielding a knife at the cops which is a great way to die or any number of other things that don't make any sense and are just crazy that happen in this movie. But I ain't got all night. So yeah. Lots of shit. Little desire to spend any more time thinking about it. 

Anyyyywhoooo. Favorite quote of the flick comes at the end when Meeker or whoever explains what is going to happen with Myers now that they have caught him because, again, that happens. In it he says something like "from here it is to a federal super-max where Myers will stay until the day he dies." And Jamie, delivering the best line of the movie, solemnly says "he'll never die." True dat.

Best kill isn't anything special really. Just a weird three pronged hook tool thing to the head. But it is satisfying because it is Tina's dickhead boyfriend Mikey who gets it. He spends his minute and a half or so on screen just being an unbelievable asshole. Tells his friend he'll kill him for touching his car, treats Tina like absolute shit, peeling out when travelling less than 50 feet from one side of the liquor store to the other, and he even tries to fight Myers for scratching his car with said hook thing. Super satisfying when he gets his which leads to my favorite scene of the movie.

Favorite scene I chose based on unintentional hilarity. It's the one where Myers, having killed Tina's boyfriend Mikey, goes and picks her up for their date at country farm party which is all kinds of insane. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy seeing what Myers would be like as a boyfriend and all, and it turns out not much worse than her real boyfriend Mikey was. Myers picks her up at her house, honks impatiently for her to come out, drives like a maniac, and slams on the breaks going 60 when Tina nags him to stop and get cigarettes. He's had enough and plans on killing her when she gets back in the car from the convenience store. But Jamie has a vision of the convenience store logo that is a cookie woman with big cartoon cookie tits which Billy interprets for everyone and someone recognizes as said store. So all the cops show up and Myers discretely bounces which Tina thinks was Mikey being a prick. Absurd.

Going with Donald Pleasence for the MVP. More of a half-hearted, token MVP for this one. Sort of like when Steve McNair won the NFL MVP back in the early 2000s. He was a top five player for so long at that point, hey, he did alright, probably not truly the best, but he's old and has hung in there for let's give him the MVP situation. He does alright here and I'm really sure who else I'd give it to. Probably not Harris who also does fine. But Pleasence really goes for a couple of times here. There is the scene where he challenges Myers to come to his old house where he killed his sister back in the day. Then, once he gets him there and all the police leave based on Jamie's vision, which is more for the shit pile that I didn't get to, Loomis does some dumb shit so he can have his little showdown with Michael. How he catches him in the end involves a lot impossible planning that we don't see and couldn't have happened unless the cops were in on it but I digress, again. But the scene where he goes for is genuinely well performed but is just some more dumb shit. It's where Loomis starts trying to talk sense into Michael whom he has thought was pure evil for 25 years. Oh it's dumb and doesn't make sense but dude is impassioned, for sure.

Yeah, this movie is nuts, makes no sense, and is just bad. Don't watch it unless you are a Halloween completest as it doesn't even resemble John Carpenter's original in pretty much any way. Really looking forward to when H20 resets the goddamn universe back to after Halloween II. But of course, we still have Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers to get through before that sweet relief.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is the greatest movie of all time

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Surprisingly solid. Remembered it fondly from childhood. When it came out in 1988 when I was in second grade this little chick that lived down the street and her sister, second grade and kindergarten were these two, had seen it and regaled my bro and I with the entire plot in detail with vivid descriptions of kills and so forth. Later, she was the one that told me that they were making a fifth film that was coming out the following year. No idea how she knew that as this was pre-internet. But it was the coolest. You see, I too was really into horror and my parents too didn't give a shit about what I watched. Yeah, I crushed hard on that little lady. So yeah. Good memories before I had even seen the movie which happened a few years later. Loved it when that finally came about. Figured it would be fine or whatever but wouldn't really hold up to my equally low but different standards today. Wrong. It was pretty dope. Liked it way more than any of the other sequels in the Halloween franchise. In fact, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is the greatest film of all time. If you don't believe me, then maybe you'll take Peter Griffin's (from Family Guy) word on the film. Spoiler, he too says it is the "greatest movie of all time". No shit.

Pros: Back to what the people want (though it took some suspending disbelief to get there): Michael Myers killing folk. The hiding out at the sheriff's house is one of my favorites from the franchise. Decent amount of suspense. Still not quite a Jason ripoff but it's inching there. Performances are almost shockingly solid. The Rachel/Jamie relationship.

Cons: The mask looks terrible and at one point is pink with blonde hair which is just cray. The end where Jamie stabs her ma, spoiler, is weak bullshit. As was Myers's escape from the hospital. Basically a solid movie sandwiched between shit.

Here's the gist... Michael Myers, still alive after getting shot in both eyes and flaming for a good 35 seconds, awakens from a 10-year coma and escapes from the hospital to massacre more people as he makes his way to his bloodline in Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the young daughter of the now deceased Laurie (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween and Halloween II). However, his old psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, played, once again, by Donald Pleasence, is on it, trying to stop the evil before it can repeat the carnage in sleepy Haddonfield, Illinois.

Some weird shit on the production of this flick. You may recall that Halloween III: Season of the Witch didn't have shit to do with Michael Myers and instead followed around a drunk doctor uncovering a mystery surrounding these dope killer masks (they are featured in the new Halloween movie trailer, by the by). This was because producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill, who wrote the first three films, shelved the Michael Myers storyline after the second movie had the character definitively die. They wanted the series to be more of the anthology type with each movie telling a different tale (this one was supposed to be a ghost story or some such shit). But after III confused audiences who went to see a slasher featuring The Shape, producer Moustapha Akkad, who had worked with Carpenter and Hill and on the first three flicks, demanded that Myers come back. Everyone was sort of on board but creative differences are a bitch.

Going to try to keep this rundown short... Carpenter liked this guy Dennis Etchison's script. The two had worked on novelizations of II and III and Carpenter liked the cut of his jib. And Etchison's outline does sound pretty interesting. One of those early self-aware flicks that get trippy and play fast and loose with the genre and our understanding of it. Something like a Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Etchison did an interview a while back giving some intriguing deets:

The idea is that the town, after all those terrible murders ten years earlier, has banned Halloween. They don't recognize Halloween as a holiday; they don’t allow Halloween masks and costumes or Halloween candy. And you know Hunt, the deputy from the first two films? Hunt is now the sheriff. And ten years of repression and suppression have boiled to the surface and there are some hints that He’s back!...

Some of the shit that was in the script included a tulpa, a paranormal being created through spiritual or mental powers, Myers that is sort of birthed in a pumpkin patch out of one chick's fear and is like 15 feet tall. The ending too sounded super dope and featured a scene in a drive-in theater, which I always love seeing portrayed on screen, like in the movie Targets which is insanely dope. It also had Tommy and Lindsay, the kids from the original film, as the leads in this one. Etchison explained it would have went thus:

It ends up with an enormous climax. Tommy and Lindsay go on the run into the countryside, away from Haddonfield. Lindsay hasn’t been able to remember anything that happened in 1978. She has no memory of it; it’s blacked out of her mind. And her mother wants it that way. 

Tommy, on the other hand — they both saw shrinks for a while when they were kids, and Tommy is beginning to get some flashes of it and begins to understand what’s happening. Whenever he tries to call Lindsay from across the street the mother never accepts the calls. ‘Don’t call here again, Tommy Doyle!’ Because it will remind Lindsay of what happened. But they’re bonded together because of what they went through, and they’re grown up now and they kind of like each other. But she’s not allowed to see him. 

Anyway, it ends up with this tremendous bloody scene at the packed drive-in at midnight. It’s really incredible. And the Shape is there and he’s stalking and killing people right and left. Tommy and Lindsay get away. They wake up in a farmhouse outside of town, in the country somewhere, and she has had a dream that starts to bring it all together for her…In short, it’s not just a slasher movie. The story has a philosophy behind it.

So it was more or less that when Haddonfield tried to suppress Halloween and Myers, it all came bubbling up to the surface ironically bringing him back into existence. Dope as fuck, right? But Akkad fucked it in the end, "too cerebral" for his taste saying that Myers must be flesh and blood killer. Eventually Carpenter and Hill had signed all of their rights away to Akkad and that was that and the script was forgotten. But yeah the end result was pretty great. But that sounds fucking cray and scary as fuck.

Anyway, back on track. Some shit I liked about the film, though the opening isn't the best with a sort of dumb kill (a thumb through a guy's skull), the movie doesn't fuck around and gets right into it with Myers waking up from a 10-year coma and immediately killing everyone around him. It basically gets some carnage and one sweet ass explosion out of the way early so you know what the guy is capable of before making you wait with some serious suspense late in the film that leads to some decent enough kills. Also, it's a different actress but they bring back the character Lindsay from the first film. She seems like a groovy chick in this as well. Pretty and cool. Looked up the actress. Owns a decent looking restaurant in South Carolina. She's 30 years older and rounder but still pretty and seems to be still grooving as well. 

How the fuck does this even happen?

Some shit I didn't like or made me uncomfortable... The scene where a group of little kids surround Jamie and chant "Jamie's an orphan" at her was fucked. Kids suck. The weirdest thing in the movie was Loomis hitchhiking which was just absurd. It's pretty unintentionally hilarious, in fact. He is out there and these teens pull up to him and are all, "yeah, come on, hurry up grandpa," and all that shit and then when he gets to the car they peal out. Then he gets picked up by a bumpkin priest that he makes insane small talk with as he rides back to Haddonfield. When Myers kills this guy Bucky who works for the power company by throwing him into a transformer is also unintentionally funny as fuck. Also, why does Myers always have to kill the family dog? Tired of that shit. I hate it. That dog didn't do shit to him. And there is a scene out of nowhere where Myers is wearing a pink mask with blonde hair. No idea what they fuck was going on there. It's late in the movie when Myers is in the school. It's some weird shit. 

Schwing

Best scene is easily when Rachel, Jamie, Sheriff Meeker, the sheriff's daughter (Kelly Meeker), Rachel's boyfriend Brady (who gets caught doing the sheriff's daughter), a deputy, and Loomis all hideout in the sheriff's house after Myers has slaughtered all of the city's police. It starts out super awkward as Rachel caught Brady with Kelly earlier, they just went back at after Rachel left by the by, and the sheriff is no idiot and knows that his daughter was getting schtooped and what not. Let's take a second here to talk about how hot I thought this woman who played Kelly Meeker was, an actress named Kathleen Kinmont. She was the sexiest chick I had ever seen when I was a child. In 1990, when I first saw this, she was up there with Kim Basinger, Elisabeth Shue, and Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation as the prettiest women of all time. And she holds up. She really does it for me with hella ass and boobs and the little "Cops Do It By The Book" T-shirt. Fine AF. Anyway, it is then that the movie becomes a home invasion flick with the Myers stalking Jamie from outside the home. It is super intense as we, the audience, knows he is there and already in the house, while everyone else boards up the doors and windows to keep him out when they are actually just keeping themselves from escaping. When Sheriff Meeker leaves to deal with a vigilante killing and Loomis goes out to hunt Myers or whatever, the only two people that have a chance of disposing the killer, you know these folk are fucked and indeed they are. It's here that I really doubled down on this movie being dope. 

Escapee Myers without the mask. Good look, actually

It is after this scene that we get my favorite line of the movie. It is just a dumb throwaway from when Jamie, wandering around after everyone in the hideout has got got, gets scooped up by Loomis who is out trying to kill Myers. She says, "Everyone is dead. I just want to go home." Sort of hilarious. 

Best kill comes near the end when the group of vigilantes that killed that kid earlier find Rachel and Jamie outside of the school. They take them to the next town over when Myers pops up in the bed of the truck. After easily dispatching the three bumpkins in the back, Myers rips out the fat driver's throat. It looks great and is an excellent kill. You know it is coming but it is still pretty fucked and shocking. 

Though Pleasence really goes for it here, especially at the end when get the twist ending of Jamie stabbing her foster mother having turned evil or whatever, screaming "No! No! No!" repeatedly whilst trying to kill the child, the MVP of the movie is Rachel and Jamie's relationship. It's not that either of them have to knock it out of the park with their acting or anything for the film to work. You really just need for them to pass as foster siblings. But with these two, you genuinely get that they care deeply for each other. Like the scene where they have to escape the hideout via the roof and Rachel has Jamie climb on her back while she crawls away from the killer. The actor that plays Rachel, Ellie Cornell, kills it here. Really feels like a big sister and Danielle Harris totally makes you think that she loves her sister and trusts her completely. The pair really do a fantastic job. That shit and the long, super tense scene at the sheriff's house elevate movie to what is so far the second best of the franchise. Good shit.