1989 should have been a big year for horror fans with the release of Halloween 5, Nightmare on Elm Street 5, and Friday the 13th Part 8 all together. Yet, since the late 80s marked the decline of the slasher genre, it should stand to reason that all of these films were garbage in one way or another. Similar to Nightmare 5, I have never had any fondness for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers which I previously dismissed as just another empty cash-grab. Perhaps since it has been easily ten or so years since seeing this one or because I know there is some horrid crap to come, I came out of my viewing of this film with a newfound appreciation for it. It’s still rather terrible though.
Taking place one year after the events of Halloween 4 (according to the title card that is), Michael has spent 365 days peacefully slumming on the floor of an old hermit, Jamie (Danielle Harris) is traumatized to the point that she cannot speak, and Loomis is even more batshit crazy than before. Even though stabbing your foster mother is not usually a mark in the “Pro” category, Rachel (Ellie Cornell) and her family have adopted Jamie but stuck her in the kiddy crazy house. Since Myers is presumably dead, Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has nothing better to do than lurk around the children’s house and barge in at inappropriate times. After the events of last Halloween, Rachel’s parents convince her to get the hell out of Crystal Lake, err… Haddonfield leaving Jamie under the care of Tina (Wendy Kaplan), Rachel’s crazy friend that we never knew existed before. Needless to say, Michael is not dead yet and rises to begin yet another slaughter of Haddonfield’s denizens as he goes after his niece. Even though he can apparently kill through her. Eh, whatever.
There are many things I can accuse Halloween 5 of. This is not a very highly regarded sequel in the franchise and for good reason since other than Loomis and Jamie, it seems that this was fashioned more like a Friday the 13th movie. ::SPOILER/RANT ALERT:: The biggest thing that pissed me off as a kid and even so today is killing of Rachel. I understand the precedence from F13 Part 2 or Nightmare 3 & 4 but Rachel was not only attractive but a pretty compelling character for the audience in general. She was doubtful at the start of the last film but turned into Ripley-lite to protect Jamie from Myers. And then she dies twenty minutes into this film with a weak death scene that has no emotional resonance throughout since everything assumes she’s gone to go with her parents.
To replace her, we have Tina who might have been fun and spunky in the late 80s but just annoys the shit out of the millennial crowd. Tina, combined with her one-note, cookie-cutter friends add nothing to the story that Rachel could not have but we don’t really care when Tina is being chased/stabbed by Myers because she fails as a character. Even when little Jamie discovers Rachel dead in the palatial Myers house, there is no time to reflect or dwell on the relationship of the two. To me, hands-down, that is the biggest fault of the film.
I’d be remiss in reviewing this movie without talking about the other things that plucked my nerves: the poppy-teen soundtrack, the goofy cops (complete with clown music!), the complete bastardization of the Myers house, and of course the introduction of the major pain-point for the next sequel: Thorn and the man in black. Really, for the few positives it had (namely chase scenes in the back half), the entire production just felt sloppy. The title card indicates one year later yet all dialogue suggests it is in fact two years later what with Jamie being two years older and Loomis referencing “twelve years ago” as if it were the night of the original. And really, even if you’re an off-the-grid mountain man, are you going to let a man lay motionless on your floor for an entire year without calling someone? And even though the mask was pretty aggressive-looking this time around, it’s supposed to be the same from last time. Come on now.
For all of the huge problems this film had, it does has its positives. Director Dominique Othenin-Girard has done little that you might have heard of but that is almost upsetting since he had a great eye for the visual aspect of the picture. It’s nothing 70s-era Carpenter-esque but there were a number of sequences that were shot pretty well even though they were shoehorned into this not-good film. Alan Howarth’s score is still pretty effective and Loomis’ game to entrap Michael was well-played even though that was rendered futile by the end when Michael escapes courtesy of the shadowy man-in-black. Even the notion that Jamie and Michael are connected somehow is interesting but used poorly to the extent that it might as well have made a good six minutes or so to trim from the running time.
Supposedly legal troubles stopped a follow-up sequel the next year but I can’t be too sad about that. Since Loomis was teetering on the edge of clinical insanity and Jamie was given almost nothing to do this time around, I shudder to think of what would come next. Other than Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers that is.
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