HALLOWEEN 5: THE
REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS
Now that's one lyin' box!
After a terrific opening credits sequence, for over an hour, Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers sucks, and sucks bad. For a very long time, it looks like the showing-its-age Halloween franchise has completely run out of steam; hell, even the mostly well-done part 4 wore out its welcome around the 70-minute mark, but not like the first hour of this one. The slasher aspect is pedestrian, superfox Ellie Cornell is killed about twenty minutes in by a fatal shoulder wound, Danielle Harris doesn't even get any lines, and for God's sake, there's even a "psychic link" thrown in (Brian tries to jab his eyes out with the nearest convenient object). This all would have added up to a really go-nowhere sequel if it weren't for a kick-ass last act, which unfortunately ain't nearly enough to save the movie.
It's one year after the events of Halloween 4, even though various lines in the film say it's actually two. Returning from part 4 are Cornell (as the soon-to-be-dead Rachel Carruthers), Harris (a traumatized Jamie Lloyd - wait, now it's Jamie Carruthers) (I guess if you try to stab your foster mother - mistakenly referred to by Loomis as her stepmother - to death, she just might adopt you) , Donald Pleasance (Dr. Loomis) and even Beau Starr (the now childless sheriff of Haddonfield). As you can tell from the title, Michael Myers is back; after taking about a hundred shotgun blasts at the end of part 4, he fell down a well, and as the intro to this movie reveals, he crawled out the bottom, into a nearby river, washed downstream for a while, and is taken in by Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski. (the credits list this guy as "Mountain Man", but since there ain't much in the way of mountains in Illinois, I'm tellin' you he's Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski) Myers lays in a coma for a year, Kaczynski taking fairly good care of him, and to show his appreciation, Myers kills his gracious host as soon as he wakes up, making his way back to town to, well, do what Michael Myers does. (think of all the trouble Myers saved by killing Ted Kaczynski in 1989)
Dr. Loomis apparently still hasn't left town after a whole year, and Jamie's been so traumatized by the events of the previous film that she's lost her ability to speak, which is a pain when she has psychic flashes of just what Michael's up to (groan). Since Cornell (who has never looked foxier) makes a relatively early exit from the film, our new teenage heroine is Tina, played by Wendy Kaplan, who sets new standards in slasher-heroine flakiness.
There are little touches I liked about the bulk of this movie. Harris gives it everything she's got, her first appearance beautifully conveying the desperation of trying to scream when your vocal chords won't engage (I used to get nightmares like that a lot). The Carruthers family, whose shaggy old pooch was cut through like warm butter in part 4, now has a big doberman that looks like it could swallow Michael whole. One guy gets in a great little reaction shot when Michael scratches up the car that he keeps so well polished that you can see studio equipment reflected in it. There is, in fact, my favorite "I'm wearing a condom...but shit, I'm dead anyway!" scene, and Loomis - a couple cans short of a six-pack in part 4, now left with nothing but the plastic rings - gets one awesomely hammy line: "I prayed that he would burn in Hell, but in my heart I knew that Hell would not have him!"
Those things I liked aside, the bulk of this movie is nonsense, presented with a refreshingly straight face but not noticeably helped for it. Director Dominique "Omen IV" Othenin-Gerard's style is so ridiculously heavy-handed, you feel like you're being slapped around with a Michael Myers mask (check out that scene where Michael kills a girl with a scythe. Ooh, he's Death incarnate!). There are two cops whose appearances are always accompanied by weird noises on the soundtrack; whistles, party favors, horns honking, ducks quacking...I guess they're supposed to be wacky, so far failing to realize that the mortality rate for Haddonfield cops is hovering around seventy-five percent. (the most dangerous occupation in town remains being the sheriff's daughter).
While I could buy the notion of somebody being able to purchase a Michael Myers mask in Haddonfield ten years after the original massacre, I don't think many would be for sale a year after a second such incident. And man, the now-standard "wear the killer's mask as a prank on the cops" bit? This movie takes it to ludicrous heights of how likely this guy is to get shot. I mean, jeez, it's like the guy put on the whole Michael Myers regalia and chased down a screaming victim with a knife right in front of two cops with their guns drawn - wait a sec, that's exactly what he did.
Michael spends the first half of the movie walking around in plain daylight, despite him being the most wanted man in town, and he never once does...The Fade (TM). Ellie Cornell's shower scene frustratingly shows us nothing. And Loomis twice hints at having information he stubbornly refuses (or fails) to reveal (one time he says "I know what you want from her!", another, "There's a reason why he has this power over you. Did you ever wonder what it is?"). Is he attempting to ascribe a motive to Pure Evil? Hell if I know. Later, he goes on a long rant about how Michael has "the rage". This is not illuminating.
Even the box is full of shit. The full title is Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers, despite nobody ever having really wronged Michael enough to warrant revenge. The tag line is "Michael lives...and this time they're ready!" But they're not ready. The back of the box promises that Michael will be unmasked, and he is, but you don't see anything. And that pic of Michael on the back is obviously a mask shot awkwardly stuck on an entirely different body shot.
Yep, this sure sucks for a while, and whatever it was that kept me amused, I don't know what it is or I'd tell you.
But then there's that last act, which mostly takes the form of Loomis and the police using Jamie as bait to lure Myers back to his childhood home. This home has somehow grown into a huge, run-down building from the modest two-story house we saw in parts 1 and 2. Loomis goes completely wacko, there's a really intense chase through the house, and it all wraps up with the most out-there setup for a sequel I've ever seen.
Man, we've seen a lot of movies set themselves up for sequels, but not as far out of left field as this. This couldn't have been any weirder if the starship Enterprise had slingshot around the sun, traveled back in time and beamed Michael up. It factors in the arrival of mysterious individual in a trenchcoat, steel-tipped boots, spurs, and hat (fedora? porkpie?), packing a doctor's bag and a tommy gun and bearing some strange rune tattooed on his wrist, that Michael shares. Sure, nothing about this character is explained (except that he smokes and travels by bus), but it was intriguing as hell to see this guy come right out of nowhere (well, he'd been lurking in the background throughout the film) and seriously screw around with the conclusion of this film, when it looked like it was going for a fairly standard ending.
Lazy writing? Oh yeah, but it's gotta take a certain kind of ballsiness to be THAT lazy; like Homer Simpson when he reached for that suicide pill because he might have to walk somewhere. But, due to a disappointing box-office take or whatever reason, fans of the series were left twisting in the wind for six years over just what to make of this guy. And when the answer came with Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers, well, it was all a little much. But that's another movie.