Franchises: Halloween. Halloween 5 (:The Revenge of Michael Myers) (1989)

*I put The Revenge of Michael Myers in parentheses because, while it's on the posters and video covers, the actual film just says Halloween 5, suggesting that subtitle may have just been a marketing afterthought.

Here are two little interesting personal tidbits about Halloween 5 start off with. First, when I began looking up the franchise after seeing the first two films on Halloween in 1999, this one wasn't listed in our satellite provider's programming guide for that month. In the glossary in the back, it jumped from Halloween 4 to The Curse of Michael Myers, making me think that was Halloween 5; it wasn't until I looked the series up online that I learned Curse was actually the sixth one. Moreover, even though I've since become very aware of how this entry, despite having its fair share of fans, isn't that well thought of in general, when I was first looking up reviews for the franchise, those I found for Halloween 5 were mostly positive. In Creatures Features, John Stanley gave it three-and-a- half stars out of five, as opposed to the two he gave Halloween 4, and called it, "Surprisingly good of its kind," though mainly attributed that to the performances of Donald Pleasence and Danielle Harris, while saying it was still filled with clichés. Moreover, a person on IMDB felt it was the best of the entire series and actually went through why they thought each of the others paled in comparison. And when I saw the VHS in stores and looked on the back, it seemed pretty cool and the idea of seeing Michael Myers take off his mask really got my attention (I missed the unmasking in the original when I first saw it). So, with all this "hype," as well as because I had already seen and really enjoyed Halloween 4, I was fairly stoked for Halloween 5 when I got the VHS in 2002 and watched it several days later.

My first reaction was, "Well... that wasn't nearly as good as I expected." I wasn't angry or anything when it ended, and did think it was watchable (I actually watched it quite a few times, along with the others), but I didn't think it was as good as so many other people, or rather, how I thought so many other people, felt. But over the years, I've come to understand that this is actually considered by many to be one of the weaker of the series. Again, I have stumbled across the occasional good review, but the majority of them have ranged from my general feeling, that it's mostly just lackluster, to it being the worst one ever. While I've never totally despised it like so many other fans (although, I did go through a period where I really didn't like it at all), I always understood why it was looked down upon so much, and when I learned of its development and production issues, its lacking quality made sense. All that said, however, in order to do this review justice, I did watch Halloween 5 again just to be sure of my opinion, as I didn't want to completely trash it without justification. Ultimately, I don't think it's out-and-out horrible but, at the same time, it's one of my least favorites, for sure. It does certainly have its strong points, but it's very predictable, not scary at all, is plagued by numerous half-baked ideas and some obnoxious characters, the filmmakers' intentions to subvert expectations range from aggravating to downright dumb, and worst of all, the whole concept is starting to feel rather tired by this point.

After being fired upon by Sheriff Meeker and the state police until he falls down a mine shaft, Michael Myers manages to crawl out through a small tunnel before a stick of dynamite is dropped in to finish the job. After being washed down a river, he comes ashore near a cabin that's home to an old hermit. Entering, he attempts to kill the man, but collapses and falls into a comatose state. The following year, on Halloween Eve, Michael awakens, kills the hermit, and heads back to Haddonfield to resume his hunt for his young niece, Jamie Lloyd. Ever since she apparently became possessed by Michael's evil and attacked her foster mother, Jamie has been under the care of Dr. Loomis at the Haddonfield Children's Clinic. Now mute, she's beginning to exhibit signs of a sort of psychic link with her uncle, knowing when one of her loved ones is being menaced by him. Loomis, who's becoming increasingly unhinged and obsessed with Michael, whom he knows is still alive, hopes to use this as a means to find and destroy him. Meanwhile, Michael kills Jamie's foster sister, Rachel Carruthers, and begins stalking her friend, Tina Williams, following her to a Halloween party at the Tower Farm and hacking and slashing his way through her group of friends. Once a number of people, including Tina herself, are dead, Jamie agrees to help Loomis, and a trap is set for Michael at his old house. But will Loomis' plan be enough to stop Michael, and how far will he go to do so? And who is this mysterious, shadowy stranger who's suddenly arrived in town and has been watching everything play out?

Halloween 5 seems to have been snake-bit right from its inception. Moustapha Akkad himself admitted that, after Halloween 4 did quite well at the box-office in 1988, making $17.8 million on a budget of $5 million, they got greedy and made it a priority to fast track the next one for the following year. However, when they went into production, the script wasn't completed and the story not even fully fleshed out, with some saying there was no third act yet, leading to rewrites during shooting and explaining why the story feels muddled. Another strike against it was the simple fact that, despite the successes of Halloween 4, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and especially A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master the previous year, the slasher genre was on its last legs by the end of the decade, after already starting to peter out by 1984. Despite how well their respective entries did previously, none of the three major slasher franchises had much success in 1989. In fact, New Line Cinema made the exact same mistake with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child as Akkad and company did with Halloween 5: the previous film was a big hit, so they decided to get the next one out as quickly as possible. As a result, while The Dream Child did do fairly well, it certainly wasn't a blockbuster. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was pretty much a bomb, inspiring Paramount to sell off the rights to that franchise. And Halloween 5 did worse than both of them and, to this day, remains the least successful film in the franchise, and that's including Halloween III. 

Because of how well they did with Halloween 4, Akkad hoped that director Dwight H. Little and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy would stick around but they chose to move on, with Little saying he didn't think he could do a better job than the one he already did (McElroy has said that, seeing how things went, he wished they'd done Halloween 5). Akkad was then encouraged to hire Shem Bitterman, a playwright who'd come with an unused concept for Halloween 4, to pen Halloween 5. Bitterman's script, which featured the subtitle, The Killer Inside Me, picked up right from Halloween 4's ending and continued on throughout the same night, just as Halloween II did with the first one. It didn't make Jamie a killer (marching orders from Akkad himself, probably not wanting to risk the consequences of another Michael Myers-less movie), except at the very end, but did very much deal with the consequences of her attacking her foster mother, while also resurrecting Michael. As for a director, I know that my good friend, the late Jeff Burr, was considered and came very close to doing it, but ultimately, went on to direct Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III instead. Back when I first wrote these reviews, I wasn't quite sure why Jeff didn't get the job, so I e-mailed him about it and, rather than just paraphrase what he said, I decided to let him tell you himself. The following paragraph comes straight from the response I got from him.

"My story on H5 is this... I was brought in to meet Moustapha Akkad by Ramzi Thomas, who had seen Stepfather 2 and The Offspring (From a Whisper to a Scream). I had a great meeting with Moustapha and told him how much I was an admirer of the first movie, etc., etc. (and asked him for Oliver Reed stories from Lion of the Desert!). He gave me the script, which at that time was a first draft written by Shem Bitterman. This would be around March or Feb. of 1989. I went away and read the script and then had another meeting with Moustapha where I gave him my notes on the script, etc. He responded to the notes, and then brought me into another meeting, with Ramzi Thomas (who was Moustapha's right hand man at the time). We all seemed on the same page, and then they met with my brother William and with Darin Scott, who would have been producers on the film if I had gotten the job. So, after all the meetings and discussions, etc., I got a phone call from Ramzi Thomas, saying "Chill the champagne, but don't pop the cork yet." Which meant that we were close to getting the job, but it wasn't signed sealed and delivered yet. Then, apparently, Debra Hill called Moustapha and really pushed hard for Dominque Othenin-Girard. And in the end, we know what happened. The main thing that I regret from not getting that job is that I never got to work with Donald Pleasance, one of my favorite actors of all time. And later, I got a compliment from Moustapha through someone who had a meeting with him and said that they knew me. He told them to tell me that he thought I did a great directing job on Night of the Scarecrow. It was great to hear from someone who I really respected. I was so saddened by his death, and sad for his family. But the original Halloween still stands as a damn good cinematic legacy, and it is also great that his son has picked up the torch."

As Jeff said, they went with Dominique Othenin-Girard, a Swiss-French filmmaker whose first film, the 1985 horror flick After Darkness, which he co-directed with Sergio Guerraz, had been entered into the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. Debra Hill met him at Sundance in 1989, thought he would be a good choice, and recommended him to Akkad, whom she was, initially, still on good terms with, unlike John Carpenter. This was to be Hill's last bit of involvement with the Halloween franchise so, for all of you who utterly despise this film, you have her to thank for it. In any case, when Akkad first met with him, Othenin-Girard brazenly tossed Bitterman's screenplay into a trashcan and, along with screenwriter Robert Harders, pitched an idea that involved Michael Myers being resurrected by lightning and, like the Frankenstein monster, would no longer be evil but misunderstood and hunted by the townspeople. Though Akkad, naturally, nixed that idea, it shows just how Othenin-Girard was intent upon subverting expectations (when he was interviewed in Taking Shape: Developing Halloween from Script to Scream, he referred to Halloween 4 as "weak" and "predictable"). Still, Akkad liked his moxie enough to hire him as director, and with another screenwriter, Michael Jacobs, the two of them, over the course of just six weeks, rewrote Bitterman's screenplay to where almost nothing of it remained, although Bitterman still got credit on the final film.

While Akkad may have initially liked the choice of Othenin-Girard, it seems that feeling may have soured over time, mainly because Othenin-Girard wanted a lot more blood (apparently, the original cut was so violent that it had to be heavily edited to get an R-rating), which Akkad, naturally, was very much against. Othenin-Girard wasn't too popular with some of the cast and crew as well. Donald Pleasence wasn't fond of the gorier approach, and felt they dropped the ball in carrying on from the ending of Halloween 4, as well as in the way his character is written here (Othenin-Girard, however, insists Pleasence liked it in his Taking Shape interview). In the Halloween: 25 Years of Terror documentary, makeup effects creator Greg Nicotero talks about how he tried to give Othenin-Girard some suggestions on how to shoot a particular death scene and the director basically buried him, telling him, "Well, what do you know? You're the makeup effects guy." Similarly, Ellie Cornell did not at all care for how her character went out in the original script and had them change it to something a little more dignified (not that it was that much better). And when you see and read interviews with Othenin-Girard, be it those that were conducted back when the film was in production or in Taking Shape, and listen to the audio commentary he did with Danielle Harris and Jeffrey Landman, he tries to sound intellectual and poetic, but instead, mostly comes off as clueless. The "cat and mouse" thing he describes in one of those interviews is particularly telling because it goes nowhere and he seems to realize this, because he just stops talking. One thing's for sure: he knows that a number of people hate the choices he made but he stands by them and is glad they got a response, even if it's negative. His track record since Halloween 5 has been very spotty. Immediately afterward, he made Night Angel, a movie that few saw and fewer remember, and then, he did Omen IV: The Awakening, an awful TV sequel that nobody asked for; in fact, he actually got replaced on the latter right before filming was completed! Since then, he's mainly worked in television, and mostly back in his native country, although occasionally, he has made theatrical films in America, like Private Lessons: Another Story and Beyond Desire, neither of which I've ever heard of.

As always, Donald Pleasence is a welcome addition to any movie, but I'm not a fan of where they took Dr. Loomis' character here, as it's apparent he's completely losing his mind in his obsession to destroy Michael Myers. The man who genuinely cared about keeping Jamie Lloyd safe in the previous film and was shattered when Michael's evil took her over is now a fanatical madman, intent on using her psychic link with her uncle to find him, no matter what. In his first scenes, he comes across as rather imposing, walking in on Jamie when she's having a little visit from Rachel and Tina, sternly asking, "What is going on here?" Later, after it appears that her sensing Rachel being in danger was a false alarm, Loomis sees that Jamie still senses something and shoves some paper in her face, exclaiming, "Tell me. Tell me what you know! Here, write! Write! Write! Write what you know." But one of the cruelest moments between them is when, after Jamie has been badly frightened by an experience where she thought Michael was after her, Loomis comes into her room and demands she help him. He exclaims, "We both know he's alive... but you know where he is! Why?! Why are you protecting him?!" He throws aside a tray by her bed and brings up how Michael's influence made her stab her foster mother. Jamie turns over on her side, in tears, but Loomis goes on, telling her, "You can't hide from him. He'll always get to you," and then that someone stole the coffin of a nine-year old girl from the cemetery, yelling, "What do you think he's going to do with that?! Huh?!" Even after Nurse Patsey, who is like a surrogate mother to Jamie, comes in and tells Loomis to leave her alone, he not only says, "Tears won't get you anywhere," but actually makes a scoffing chuckle about it! Back in my review of the original Halloween, I said I never felt Loomis was crazy but just very driven to stop Michael Myers and protect others from him. That feeling lasted through to Halloween 4, and would return in the next film, but here, Loomis is so unhinged that it makes you not want to root for him.

That said, Loomis does still show concern for the safety of others, like when Jamie senses that Rachel is in danger and he calls her to make sure she's alright, or when Jamie later senses the same about Tina and he gets her to tell them where she is. He also tells two cops to follow Tina when she heads out to the Tower Farm, exclaiming, "If that girl dies tonight...!" But during the last act, Loomis goes off the rails. After getting Jamie to agree to help him following Tina's death, he not only uses

her as bait for Michael in his old house but goes as far as to keep her there after all the police have been diverted to a situation at the clinic, knowing he'll come for sure now. When Michael does arrive, Loomis smashes Deputy Charlie's radio so he can't call for help and even pulls a gun on him, telling him to stay with Jamie. Another thing I don't particularly care for is how much Loomis tries to reason with Michael. Yeah, he did that in Halloween 4 but it was only once and felt like it 

was out of pure desperation on his part; here, he seems to think he actually can reach him. He tells him to fight off the rage that drives him in his old house and, when he confronts him there, tells him to remember how much "better" he used to be (huh?) and that Jamie can take his rage away. You could say he was just trying to lure Michael into his trap but, either way, that doesn't sound like it should come from the man who once saw Michael as nothing but an evil monster that needed to be stopped. In fact, early on in the film, Loomis gives

Sheriff Meeker one of his expected talks about Michael's evil: "I prayed that he would burn in hell but in my heart, I knew that hell would not have him." Great line, but because of it, it now makes even less sense for him to try to appeal to any humanity that may still be within Michael.


During the last bit of the climax, Loomis sinks to new lows when he grabs Jamie, picks her up, and literally uses her as bait after Michael has been chasing her all over the house. As he walks backwards, holding the struggling and panicking Jamie, as Michael slowly approaches them with his butcher knife raised, he crazily yells, "Come get your little girl! Come and take us both!" Luring him into the main living room, he tells him, "Michael, let's play a game: catch the little girl. Get

the little girl, then you're home and safe." That's when Loomis drops a chain net over him, shoots him with a bunch of tranquilizer darts (why not a machine gun or something?), and when he yanks that out of his hands, Loomis rips out a wooden beam and beats him into submission, yelling, "Die! Die! Die!", which is hard to take seriously. So, this was Loomis' big plan? Did he really think a mega-dose of horse tranquilizers (if you caught that reference, then you're pretty awesome) and a

beatdown was going to do the job? Shouldn't he know from experience that wouldn't work? If he was trying to capture him, I guess it worked, as Michael does pass out from the tranquilizers and beating, but Loomis' intent was always to destroy him, so that makes no sense. And if you watch Loomis after he collapses on top of the unconscious Michael, you can see that he dies: he lets out a long moan, his face goes slack while his eyes stay open, and he lets out one last breath, hinting that he had either a heart attack or a stroke.

Knowing that he was in the next movie, I didn't think Loomis died, nor did I know that was the intent for a long time. I don't know if it's more dignified than the way he went out for good in either version of the following movie but, if he had to die, I wish it had been as a full-on hero back in Halloween II. 

I think the burn makeup on Loomis' hand and the side of his face are a little better here than they were in the previous movie, no doubt due to the work of KNB, but it's still not as grisly or extensive as it should be. I also must say that it's rather sobering to see and hear in these later films how old and worn Donald Pleasence was getting, especially by the time this one came around. Not only has his physical appearance changed dramatically from the first two Halloweens but his voice often sounds very weak and strained, a far cry from the one he had in his prime, which could be rather commanding one moment and quietly creepy another..

As if it's not bad enough that they didn't follow through on Halloween 4's cliffhanger (they even hurt it by saying Jamie Lloyd simply stabbed and injured her foster mother instead of killing her), now Jamie's mute for about the first half of the movie. The most logical answer is that it's due to severe trauma, but some have suggested it's because of her psychic link with Michael, that she's unable to talk because he doesn't. But I've always felt that Michael can talk but just never does, and what's more, not only is Jamie able to wheeze out words every now and then, but she inexplicably gets her voice back. So, by this logic, shouldn't Michael be talking now as well? As for the psychic link, while it's not that inexplicable, given the connection the two of them appeared to have in the previous movie, its sudden progression to this state is given no explanation, save for possibly being the result of her touching Michael's hand. Also, it takes away from the creepy feeling of fate I felt was in Halloween 4. Granted, that was flawed in and of itself, but it was still creepy to think that the reason Jamie was having these frightening visions of Michael and she got the same type of clown costume he wore when he killed his older sister was because, no matter what, she was doomed to become the same type of inhuman monster he is. Flushing it away by saying he actually took control of Jamie and made her stab her stepmother through this link, as Dr. Loomis says (if he can do that, then why not have her kill everybody around her and then herself?), really degrades and cheapens that idea.

Now, with all that said, I can't deny that Jamie is still a great little lead and Danielle Harris, again, kills it, convincingly coming across as frightened, emotionally tortured by her link with Michael, and distraught over his killing everyone she cares about. That's a heavy burden of emotions to put on a child, especially when they're unable to talk for a good chunk of the film, and Harris pulls it off brilliantly. Again, you feel bad for Jamie, as she's now forced to stay at this children's clinic and Dr.

Loomis is constantly on her about her, wanting her to help him find her uncle, when all this poor girl wants is to be left alone and for Michael to just go away. But as he closes in on her and eventually kills Tina, despite Jamie's attempts to save her, she realizes that helping Loomis is the only way she'll ever be rid of him. Thus, she goes along with his plan to act as bait, but ends up getting in more danger than she bargained for when the police are sent away, Michael incapacitates Loomis, and kills

Deputy Charlie, leaving her defenseless. Eventually, Michael traps her up in the Myers house's attic and she finds the small coffin he took from the cemetery earlier that day, as well as several bodies, including Rachel. Upon seeing this, Jamie appears to give up hope, as she lies down in the coffin, waiting for Michael to kill her. But then, she calls him "uncle," and not only manages to temporarily talk him down but gets him to remove his mask. Upon seeing his face, Jamie appears to form more of a genuine connection with

him, saying he's just like her, and tries to wipe away the tear that's rolling down his face. This tender moment doesn't last, as Michael recoils in rage, shoves his mask back on, and goes back to attacking. Jamie runs into Loomis and the doctor, now having gone quite mad, uses her to draw Michael into his trap. After Michael is captured and chained up in the police station, waiting to be transported to a maximum security prison, it seems as though Jamie can rest easy, even though she comments that he'll never die. But then, everyone

in the station is killed and Michael is on the loose once again, with poor Jamie left alone, knowing that. Even though I personally think this ending is lame, and I'll get more into that soon, I do feel sorry for Jamie when she cries, "No!", upon seeing Michael's empty, blown open cell, as everything she's gone through has been for nothing.

I don't know why Ellie Cornell is third-billed below Donald Pleasence and Danielle Harris, as she barely lasts more than twenty minutes in. Bringing back Rachel, who was such a great and likable character, to kill her off is bad enough (as we know, that happens far too often in sequels anyway), but it's also in such an undignified manner, where she doesn't get to put up a fight and is only wearing a shirt and underwear. Dominique Othenin-Girard claims it was akin to Marion Crane's death in Psycho, but there's a difference between unexpectedly killing off a major star in an isolated movie and doing so to a beloved character from a previous one. In any case, as brief as her screentime is, Cornell is still very likable as Rachel. Despite Jamie having stabbed her mother, she still loves and cares about her foster sister, and one of her best moments comes after someone throws a brick through Jamie's window, with a note tied to it proclaiming, THE EVIL CHILD MUST DIE! She tells Dr. Loomis, "How could they? When are they gonna realize that she is not him, she's just a child?" Now, Rachel has doubts about joining her parents on vacation at a cabin and considers staying with Jamie. Later, though she's, at first, a bit dismissive when she gets a frantic phone call from Loomis telling her to check on her dog, Max, when she goes downstairs and sees he's gone, she has enough sense to do what Loomis says, which is get out of the house and get the police. Unfortunately, when they don't find anything, she goes back to her routine, unaware that Michael is inside and silently stalking her. And this is where things fall apart. For one, how in the world does she not realize Michael is standing in the back of her closet while she's getting some clothes, especially with his breathing? For another, when she looks outside to see that Max is barking at the house (at least, I think that's what she's meant to realize), and then hears something in the next room, she does the typical dumb slasher movie thing and goes to investigate, which gets her killed. Cornell may not have liked the original way that Rachel died, getting the scissors down her throat, but I don't think this was much better.

Another returning actor from Halloween 4 is Beau Starr as Sheriff Ben Meeker, but he has even less to do than Ellie Cornell. He's never present during the most important scenes, and his only bearing on the plot is when he arranges an ambush for Michael at the Myers house, with a bunch of well-armed men. Even so, it is nice to see him again, and it helps keep continuity with the previous movie. Plus, Starr does manage to do a little bit with his character, as Meeker seems much more bitter and angry than he was before, no doubt due to Michael having killed his daughter. He's quite sick of Loomis by this point, sort of becoming like Sheriff Brackett in that respect, commenting, "Every time that little girl twitches, I'm supposed to call out the National Guard." He gets especially angry when Loomis attempts to remind him of what a threat Michael is by bringing up his daughter's murder, which makes me wish they'd done more with it, like have Meeker actually confront Michael and take him on. Seeing as how his only interaction with him previously was shooting him down along with the state police, I think it would've been nice to see Meeker have more of a battle with Michael and have him go out that way, as they planned in the original script for Halloween 4. Instead, his ultimate fate remains ambiguous, and since he never appears again, you can only assume he died during the station shootout at the end.

Halloween 5 gets a lot of flack for how so many of the teenage characters are either incredibly annoying, stupid, or just plain unlikable, and none of them get more crap than Tina (Wendy Kaplan). In the Halloween: 25 Years of Terror documentary, John Fallon of ArrowintheHead.com says she was the one slasher movie character that he wanted to kill himself, and I have to agree that she is pretty damn annoying. She's meant to come across as really bubbly, energetic, and fun-loving, but is more loud and obnoxious than anything else, as her voice is just irritating, and she's very ditzy and air-headed, in general. The moment where she pisses me off the most is when, after the police pick her up because Jamie senses she's in danger, she's brought to the children's clinic. But she then immediately leaves to go to the Tower Farm party, even though Jamie is hysterically crying for her to stay. Her excuse that she gives Jamie is, "You might not understand but, when you're older there are people you're gonna meet who make you feel, like, connected. Like your heart is made of neon and, when you find them, you have to be with them." She then leaves, all while Jamie is crying her eyes out and begging her not to go. She just says, "I'll be back. I love you," in that dumb baby-voice of hers and walks out the door. Just to add fuel to the fire, when Dr. Loomis advises her not to go, she accuses him of filling Jamie's head with, "All that Boogeyman crap." Does she not know who Jamie's uncle is? Is she so stupid that she has no idea about what happened back in 1978 and, moreover, the previous year? And then, when Loomis tells her to be sensible, Tina just runs down the stairs, yelling, "I'm never sensible if I can help it! Hee hee hee!" That was the moment when I wanted to take her and smack the hell out of her. And when you later see her at the Tower Farm, dancing and partying with her friends, it makes you dislike her even more, as she doesn't seem to care at all about how hysterical Jamie was. She did shed a tear after running out of the children's clinic, but I guess she got over it pretty quickly!

All that said, even though she is very irresponsible and flaky (I forgot to mention: she's planning on allowing her friend, Samantha, to have sex with her own boyfriend not only in Rachel's house but her bed), she does seem to have a sisterly bond with Jamie. I know that may seem contradictory given what I said up above, but she not only comes to see her at the beginning but also attempts to do so again later, only to be prevented by her dickhead boyfriend (to be fair, she could've put her foot

down and gone to see Jamie anyway). When Jamie is being chased by Michael in the car at the Tower Farm, although it's unlikely she would be able to do much, Jamie runs to catch up with them, screaming, "Leave her alone!" And finally, her death comes about when she attempts to stop Michael from killing Jamie. Michael is about to stab her, when Tina runs up and grabs his arm. Even though he's too strong and manages to stab her in the base of her shoulder, she buys Jamie enough time to get away. I have to give her credit for going out while doing something heroic. Granted, I would've much preferred Rachel had gone out that way, but whatever.

As annoying as Tina is, she's not the most unlikable character in the entire movie. That would be her boyfriend, Mikey (Jonathan Chapin). Thank God this guy is in only three scenes and is killed fairly early on, as he's a complete asshole. He's like a douchey version of Fonzie, with his black leather jacket and dark glasses, and I don't know why Tina likes him, as he doesn't seem to like her all that much. He often comes across as annoyed by her very presence and, given how Tina mentions, "The old silent treatment," he seems to treat her like shit, actually getting mad and glaring at her when she says she wants to see Jamie. In fact, he seems to hate everybody around him, including Spitz, whom he coerces to take some cases of beer from the store where he works. Spitz then compliments the wax job on his car, which Mikey applied in a rather erotic manner, and because he touches it, Mikey grabs his chin and growls, "Touch the car again and you're dead!" I know it's a faux pas to smudge the wax right after it's been applied but, Jesus! And later on, when he and Spitz are loading the beer into the back of his car, he has that "chip on his shoulder" look again when Spitz tells him to get going and jokes, "Don't drink it all before we get there." Once Spitz is out of earshot, Mikey calls him an idiot in a contemptuous tone of voice. I was so happy when Michael put that garden tool in his face, because when you have two Michaels in your movie, and Michael Myers is the more likable one, you've got problems!

I actually kind of like Samantha (Tamara Glynn) and Spitz (Matthew Walker)... well, mainly Spitz. Sam is about as ditzy and annoying as Tina, and she seems to be a little overly jealous, given how she smacks Spitz in the arm a couple of times when he's just messing around with Tina as she's sitting in Mikey's car. There's not much else to say about her, although I do like how, after Spitz is killed, she tries to take on Michael Myers, despite having no chance whatsoever. Anyway, I think Spitz is really

funny and comes off as a guy you'd like to hang out with, with all of his energy and his silly laugh (that's why I get so angry in the scenes where Mikey treats him like crap). I really enjoy his scenes in the barn, when he's goofing around with Tina and Sam, especially when, while he's dressed up as Michael Myers, he acts like he's stabbing Sam, who screams in a panic, and when it turns out to just be him, she gets really pissed, smacks at him, and yells, "You son of a bitch, you scared me half to death! It wasn't funny!" Even though that scene is an example of one of the film's major flaws, which is too many false scares, her reaction, as well as his ducking when she's smacking him in frustration, makes me laugh. Finally, I'll give this to Spitz: he's probably the only guy on the planet who can have sex with his pants on. I don't know how he managed to pull that off but he did... that is, until Michael put a permanent end to it. (In the documentary on the Scream Factory box-set, Matthew Walker says only he knows if he finished.)

Another character who a lot of people hate is Billy (Jeffrey Landman), this stuttering little boy who's a friend of Jamie's at the children's clinic and is the one who's best able to interpret what she's trying to say during her mute phase. Many find his stuttering so annoying that they hate him about as much as Tina, but that's not how I feel. For one, he's not in the movie that much, and even then, he doesn't have that many lines. Second, his stuttering is sporadic: sometimes, he does it quite a bit, and other times, not at all, and even when he does, it doesn't annoy me, at least not nearly as much as the character Jake in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. I could tolerate Billy, and wasn't begging for Michael to run over him during the chase scene, as other people were.

Two characters whom you definitely didn't need are the bumbling cops, Deputies Nick (Frank Como) and Tom (David Ursin). Fortunately, they're not in the movie that much but still, did we really need more comic relief, given the antics of Tina and her friends? They're meant as a tribute to the bumbling cops in The Last House on the Left (yeah, pay tribute to the aspect of that movie that is unanimously hated even by most fans) and even though these deputies don't irritate me on that level, their rather unfunny routines and banter, exaggerated facial expressions, and the cartoony sound effects that accompany them are groan-inducing. (For God's sake, Como has said that Dominique Othenin-Girard constantly told him and Ursin to walk like penguins!) The only moment where they kind of make me laugh is when, after they've pulled their guns on Spitz when he's dressed up as Michael Myers, acting like he's going to kill Tina, and it's revealed as a prank, Tom yells, "Definitely not funny! Somebody could be dead right now!", to which Nick remarks, "Fortunately, we're lousy cops." And again, that was weak.

The closest thing Jamie has to a mother figure here is Nurse Patsey (Betty Carvalho), who really looks out for her and does everything she can to comfort her when she's traumatized and frightened. She's not in the film that much but comes across as very warm and sweet, particularly at the beginning, when Jamie wakes up from a nightmare about attacking her stepmother the year before and Patsey comes in to calm her down, holding her close and softly singing to her. And as I said

before, she's the one who tells Dr. Loomis to back off in that scene where he's yelling at Jamie. Speaking of sympathetic characters, you can't forget about Deputy Charlie (Troy Evans), who serves as Jamie's bodyguard when Loomis and Meeker set up the trap at the Myers house. He makes it clear that she can count on him and all she has to do is signal him with a loud knock to make him come out of his hiding spot to protect her. He also tries to take Jamie to the police station after everyone leaves but the unhinged Loomis prevents him from doing so, smashing his walkie-talkie and threatening him with a pistol to make sure he and Jamie stay put. Later on, when they both realize Michael is coming up the stairs towards their room, Charlie tries to get Jamie out of there by having her get on his back, as he prepares to climb out the window. However, he's too late, as Michael smashes through the door and Charlie shoots him several times. Michael, as usual, gets right back up and proceeds to violently stab and then hang him outside the window.

One last character I want to mention is the old hermit (Harper Roisman) whom Michael comes across after escaping down the river at the beginning of the movie. While there's nothing all that special about the character himself, as he doesn't say or do much and gets killed very early on, you have to wonder what compelled him to take care of Michael after he not only sneaked into his cabin but attempted to kill him before passing out. I'm sure this scenario is meant to evoke the famous scene between the Frankenstein monster and the old blind hermit in Bride of Frankenstein, but the surface level value is as far as that goes. Much more interesting is how this scene was originally scripted and shot, as it involved a bizarre character called "Dr. Death" who, the following Halloween, attempts to bring Michael back to life through occult means in his shack, which is filled with all sorts of runes and tablets. This would explain Michael's inactivity over the following year, as he was meant to actually be dead, whereas in the final film, he just goes comatose during that time with no explanation (does he always just switch off when Halloween passes?). Some footage from that scene remains in the final film, and like with the hermit, Michael's first action upon returning to consciousness is to kill Dr. Death, stabbing him in the chest with a sharp, ritualistic stone. However, Moustapha Akkad didn't like it (according to Othenin-Girard in his Taking Shape interview, Akkad felt Michael's first victim should be someone the audience would have sympathy for), so they reshot it with the hermit. In that same interview, Othenin-Girard claims that producer Ramsey Thomas as the one who shot the new scene, not him.

Looking back at the original version of this review, I now believe I was far too harsh on Halloween 5's visual style, mostly because I loved how Halloween 4 looked, with its extensive use of blue lighting. That is retained here in a few scenes, like the beginning at the children's clinic, which features a lot of lightning flashes, and some moments in the barn at the Tower Farm, but for the most part, I felt the cinematography was plain and generic, with no mood or atmosphere. Looking at the movie more closely, I now realize that it is very

well shot by cinematographer Robert Draper, who said Othenin-Girard's goal was to bring a more European look to it. I'm still not the biggest fan of much of the exterior nighttime photography, as it doesn't look that interesting to me, but there's plenty of awesome work to be had in the interiors, which often involves lots of dark shadows and notable shafts of light, particularly in the Myers house (the scene in the attic during the climax looks especially beautiful, thanks to all the lit candles), and the Tower Farm barn. Also, though I

don't get the logistics of it, as I'll go into later, the sequence where Jamie thinks Michael is chasing her through the clinic's basement is full of striking images created by light and shadow. Going back to the barn, there's mist swirling around inside, and it also fills the field and forest around the farm, making for an eerie setting for the car chase sequence and the scene afterward where Dr. Loomis yells into the woods at Michael. That's an instance where I do think the nighttime exteriors 

are shot well, with others being the exterior of the hermit's cabin at the beginning and the Myers house. By contrast, you also see Michael stalking Rachel, both outside and inside her house, in broad daylight, meant to create a false sense of security. In fact, Michael spends a good chunk of the first act out in the daytime, though not always to the best effect, as I'll get into. As you might expect, we get the prerequisite shots from his POV and over his shoulder during his stalking scenes, but they also tend to shoot him from low angles to make him come off as more imposing, which wasn't that hard to do, given Don Shanks' very large stature.

All those compliments aside, where I think the cinematography fails is in a number of the stalking moments. While the POV shots are fine, you get such good glimpses of Michael as he's lurking in the darkness or the background that it makes you wonder how nobody else can see him. In fact, there's a moment in the barn where Tina catches a glimpse of him, yet doesn't go, "Spitz, is that you?" Also, the mask he wears here, which is awkward enough already, tends to look like a bobble-head when you see it in the background, like when he

emerges from Rachel's closet. But the most egregious moment is when Tina and Sam are fooling around outside the clinic, as you can see Michael standing underneath some tree branches maybe ten or fifteen feet away, and he loiters there for a long time before finally hiding. In fact, for a while, I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be Michael, as you can't quite make out the mask, and it never cuts to a close-up or uses music to truly establish the threat of his presence (they do cut to Jamie starting to have another episode, but I never

made the connection). I thought it might've actually been some extra who just wandered into that shot and they never caught him, but I now know that it is Michael. Again, how in the hell do Tina and Sam never notice him? Originally, they were meant to be doing cartwheels and the suspense was supposed to come from them getting closer and closer to him each time, but, again, you'd have to wonder how they wouldn't be unable to see him in the first place. If he was lurking behind a bush,

that'd be one thing. One last thing I have to mention is how the main room of the Myers house looks during the scene between Loomis and Michael, with the very bright, orange lights coming through the windows. This is supposed to be happening late at night, yet that kills the feeling for me. I'm fine with moody lighting, and it doesn't always need a logic behind it (the way this looks kind of reminds me of the covered attic windows in Hellraiser, which also look like that even at night), but in this instance, it doesn't work, in my opinion.

Like its predecessor, Halloween 5 was shot in Utah, mostly in and around Salt Lake City, which also manages to keep continuity between them (you see several notable locations once again, like the Carruthers house and the exterior of the Vincent drugstore). I also like that there are no Southern-style hicks this time. However, this is another movie, like the original, where the daytime exteriors make it really hard to buy that it's late October in the Midwest, what with all of the green trees and bright green grass, despite their putting

dead leaves on the ground here and there. Fortunately, like before, once night falls, it's easier to suspend your disbelief, and you do see some pumpkins (actually watermelons) and Halloween decorations, people dressed up and trick-or-treating, the children's costume party at the clinic, and the party at the Tower Farm (I originally claimed that you saw very little Halloweenish stuff in this movie, which I now realize I was quite

wrong about). Trust me, there are later movies that have this problem of it not feeling like the holiday during the daytime even worse, like Halloween: Resurrection (H20 does feel the same way to me, but since, like Halloween III, the main setting there is California, I'm more lenient on it) and Rob Zombie's first one.

As for the individual locations, I like what you see in the opening, with the interior of the mine-shaft, the small tunnel Michael crawls through, and the stream he's washed down, before climbing to shore and heading to the hermit's cabin. You can, indeed, see remnants of the original Dr. Death scene in the finished film, as the cabin's exterior looks rather creepy, and when you see Michael lying on a wooden slab inside a year later, all of the candles around him, the sinister-looking jack-o-lantern just beyond his feet, and a nearby table full of various

objects, such as some old-looking books, give off a much more sinister vibe than what you might expect from the hermit (also, when it cuts to the new footage with the hermit, the lighting doesn't match at all). We see a little more of the Carruthers house this time, and the same also goes for the Haddonfield police station, as you now see where Michael is held after he's captured at the end. And we also get to see just a little bit more of the town itself in the scenes with the teenagers outside and

then behind the store where Spitz works, and the gas station with the sign of a woman with chocolate chip cookies on her boobs, where Tina goes to buy some cigarettes.

The Haddonfield Children's Clinic, despite having the expected sterile look on the inside, is a mostly innocuous-looking place, and is all decorated for Halloween, particularly in the main foyer, where they have a costume contest for the kids. However, the lower area, where Jamie runs when she thinks she's being chased by Michael, is another story entirely. Right before you get to the expected creepy basement, there's something akin to a laundry room, where all these sheets are hung up, and the air-conditioning seems to be blowing hard

for the purpose of drying them. I don't think I have ever seen anything like that, be it in movies or real life, but I will say, it does make for some striking imagery during the chase, with the man's shadow appearing behind the sheets, as Jamie scrambles to escape. Another creepy location is the Tower Farm, particularly the barn where Michael stalks Tina, Sam, and Spitz. Though this is where you get too many clear glimpses of Michael as he attempts to stalk in the darkness, the place is shot well overall,

as I mentioned earlier, and Michael does look quite menacing in this environment (I don't know why but I like the idea of a killer like him at a farm). There's one rather eerie moment where Tina chases one of the kittens they find into this shadowy spot, it disappears, and all you hear it meowing in the shadows, while Tina looks up at those shafts of light coming through the wood paneling in the walls, and feels around straw at the edge of the darkness. And again, the misty field and forest around the farm are spooky in and of themselves.

The location that never fails to raise the eyebrows, and ire, of diehard Halloween fans is the Myers house, back for the first time since Halloween II. However, it looks nothing like it did before, nor as it ever would again. Instead of a small, nondescript Victorian house, it's now a large, Gothic-looking building akin to a small mansion, with an old gate that you have to walk through. When I first saw Halloween 5, I thought, "What is this place?", and when I then heard the Myers house theme (I bet they had Alan Howarth play that so people would know what it's supposed to be), I thought, "That's the Myers house?! Holy crap!" By all accounts, the use of this house was totally Dominique Othenin-Girard's call, and he made it clear, both in his audio commentary and Taking Shape interview, that he knew he was going against what had been established before and simply didn't care, as, "I am not a follower. I am a guide." Plus, this house was big enough and had the rooms necessary for the climax he envisioned. However, if that's your reasoning, I'd rather, instead of the Myers house, it be some abandoned place they felt was suitable for trapping Michael. The fact that it's the Myers house has little to no significance in the climax, as Michael only goes there because Dr. Loomis tells him that he'll find Jamie there. Ergo, Loomis could've just as easily told him to go to this random place to find her. Also, not only does is it look completely different but it goes against the point of the original film, that Michael was born into a normal, white-bread American family and grew up in a typical house in an average neighborhood and yet, was pure evil from the get-go; it's not too hard to believe that an evil killer came from this house. Yes, it probably looked better when the family lived there but, even so, you get an overall sinister vibe just from the house's design. And finally, doesn't this mansion-like home feel downright out of place in an otherwise ordinary town like Haddonfield?

All that said, I will admit that the place is effectively creepy-looking, both inside and out. Outside, it's like a classic haunted house, with the rusty old gate, its overgrown nature, and the sound of crows cawing, while on the inside, it's filled with dark hallways, huge empty rooms, boarded up windows, dimly lit pieces of furniture, like a piano and an old grandfather clock, and a laundry chute leading down into the basement, which is permeated with an airflow that almost comes off like Michael's breathing, and is also the setting for

one of the movie's best sequences. When Loomis goes there by himself to search for Michael, the sound of the wind and creaking wood give the place an eerie feel, even though it's the middle of the day. And during the climax, when Michael chases Jamie throughout the house, eventually trapping her in the attic, it is spooky with how dark it is in the hallway that connects to the stairs leading up to it, and the attic itself, filled with the bodies of some of Michael's victims, along with the

expected old junk, has a Gothic feel to it, with all of the candles, the small coffin, and the sounds of wings flapping in the background (though you never see any birds), punctuated by Howarth's music. But, as well done and effective as it is, it's effective in the way that something like Dracula or Frankenstein is, and as much as I love Gothic horror, it goes against what the Halloween movies have always been about.

Fake scares usually suck, and when you have a bunch of them in one movie, they get old quickly and take away from its effectiveness, which just happens to be one of Halloween 5's major shortcomings. Some of them come and go quickly, but then, there's the scene where Jamie looks out the window to see Michael looking up at her from the lawn, before he walks towards the clinic. This prompts her to panic, run out of her room, and, when a shadow appears at the front door, flee down into the basement, followed by a figure whom

you're meant to believe is Michael. It goes on and on, with her running downstairs, through the laundry room, and into the back of the basement, where she hides up in a small alcove. That's when the figure comes in and you see that it's not Michael but a janitor wearing similar coveralls (up until the reveal, though, it actually is Don Shanks), and Nurse Patsey then shows up to comfort her. So, that whole sequence, as well-shot and visually exciting as it was, was a drawn out false scare,

wasting almost two full minutes. And it doesn't even make sense when you think about it, as why would this guy follow her downstairs, through the laundry room, and into the basement without saying a word? Why didn't he say, "Hey, hold on, honey!" or something like that? Why wait until she's cowering in the corner, scared out of her mind, and grab at her a little bit before finally saying something?

After that is when the myriad of quick, cheap scares really start popping up, be it when Dr. Loomis is searching the Myers house basement, opens the bottom of the laundry chute, and a dead possum suddenly drops out, or when Mikey is waxing his car and Tina suddenly pops up from behind it, wearing this weird mask that she got for him. In fact, not long before the aforementioned scene with Jamie, Samantha is first introduced when she sneaks into the Carruthers house, comes up behind Tina, and makes her jump. And right

before that, the doorbell suddenly rings really loud to make you jump (and I must admit, it did work the first time). They come fast and furious when the kids go to the Tower farm, starting with the moment where it looks like Michael is chasing Tina but then, she says, "Take me but spare my friend... she's a virgin," and he responds, "Got her phone number?", revealing it's just Spitz in costume. They continue on when Tina, Samantha, and Spitz go into the barn. First, you've got the  

part when the kitten jumps out of the dark onto Tina's hand (I'd like to think Michael flung it at her), then when Spitz is hiding atop a big bale of hay and scares her by throwing a chunk of it down at her, and after that, Spitz pretends to be Michael again and scares Sam by acting like he's going to stab her. Even though I crack up at Sam's angry reaction to that latter scare, and as much as I like Spitz, that's far too many false scares in a row. By the time Michael actually starts stalking and killing people, you almost don't care anymore, but fortunately, there aren't any more false alarms during the climax.

There are a lot of scenes and sequences that are meant to be either suspenseful or funny but, to me, just drag on until they become boring and/or awkward. Some of these will probably only make sense to me and you may be confused as to what I'm talking about but please, just bear with me. Early on in the first act, Michael stalks outside of Rachel's house while she's inside, getting ready to take a shower. Othenin-Girard goes the typical route of cutting back and forth between what she's doing and Michael's POV as he moves towards the

house, but it just doesn't work as well as it used to. Not only have we seen this time and time again, but it goes on for an eternity, and Alan Howarth's creeping rendition of the first few notes of the Halloween theme quickly loses its effect. Michael takes his sweet time getting into the house, and even when he does, he doesn't attack Rachel right away, as she gets a call from Dr. Loomis, who advises her to get out of the house when she sees that Max, her Dobermann pinscher, is gone. Speaking of which, you never learn exactly what

happened with Max. When she finds he's gone, you'd assume that Michael killed him, but after Rachel runs out of the house and gets the police, who find no trace of Michael, Max suddenly shows back up. Did Michael just let him out of the house? And if that's case, how did he keep him from attacking him? Everything then appears to be fine, but we get a virtual repeat of what we just saw, with Rachel drying her hair and putting a shirt on, unaware that Michael's hiding in her closet, and

when she slips her shirt on, he sneaks out behind her. It's getting really tiresome by this point, and when she hears Max barking again and goes to see what he's barking at, you can't help but roll your eyes. And when she sees him barking at the house, she hears something in the next room and goes to investigate. She finds a picture of Jamie that's been smashed, with blood around the cracks, suggesting it was punched (an unsettling thought and image, granted), and that's when Michael attacks and kills her. As much as I hate that they killed Rachel off, at least something finally happened!

An even more baffling and drawn out scene happens when Tina arrives at the house and starts running around, calling for Rachel. After Michael watches as she walks around the living room and turns off the skipping record player (why was that even on?), she runs upstairs, still calling for Rachel, and then stops in her tracks and gets an uneasy look on her face, as if she senses that something's wrong. But then, she walks on down the hall, deduces that Rachel went off with her parents, and shouts, "Gonna miss you, baby!",

before going into the bedroom... and, once again, she stops and looks around with an expression like she feels someone's watching her. What made her react that way? You can see the shadow of the window curtain rustling in the wind, but surely that wasn't it. She then takes a teddy bear from atop the headboard, lays down on the bed with it, puts it aside, and sneaks towards the vanity mirror, as a sensual-sounding version of the Halloween theme plays. I'm wondering what in the hell is going on,

when the doorbell loudly rings, scaring both me and Tina, and we move on. Again, did I miss something? What was the purpose of that? I guess since, as she and Sam are walking away from the house, she turns back and looks at the window where Michael was standing a second before, it was supposed to hint that Tina had a feeling someone else was in the house with her. But that went on for so long, and there was so much dead air at points, that I was wondering if someone

accidentally left the camera on while Wendy Kaplan just fooled around on the set. And the same goes for the conversation Tina and Sam have about the latter finally sealing the deal with Spitz that night. There are so many silent moments with the two of them just staring at each other, with Tina making a ridiculous face, no less, and the dialogue is delivered in such a forced way it feels like something's off. It's hard to explain in words but it's the actors didn't know exactly what they were supposed to be saying or doing.

The one that really gets me is when Michael pulls up to Tina's house in Mikey's car and pretends to be him by wearing the mask Tina gave to Mikey (does anybody what that mask is supposed to be?). I think this is supposed to be both funny and suspenseful but it just comes across as drawn-out and awkward, and Tina is especially annoying here, with how she says, "Tina, Queen of Room Service," in front of the car, whines when Michael won't let her in, and tries to tantalize him into it. And once he lets her in, we have all this stuff

where she talks to him, actually kisses him with the mask on, and when he takes off down the road, she thinks that "Mikey" is giving her the silent treatment because she wants to see Jamie. They come up on a gas station and Tina says to stop because she wants some cigarettes, but Michael, instead, zooms past it. Tina complains, "I said stop the goddamn car! I want a pack of cigarettes!", and Michael actually does what she says: he stops, goes in reverse, and pulls into the parking lot. Tina gets

out, calling him a "psycho boyfriend," and while she's inside, Michael removes the mask and takes out his true one, no doubt meaning he's now going to kill her when she gets back in. While I do kind of like the notion of him only killing with his preferred mask on, why didn't he just do it before? I know Michael had a playful side to him in the original Halloween, and I said I wanted to see more of it, but here, it was just an excuse to have another section meant to be interesting in some way but, instead, is once again so drawn out that it just falls flat.

When talking about Halloween 5 in Taking Shape, the authors suggest that it works best when viewed in the vein of an Italian giallo rather than an entry in this franchise. They admit it likely wasn't Dominique Othenin-Girard's intention, but the way it emphasizes setpieces and suspense over story is akin to the approach taken by gialli, as are other elements. As I've already mentioned, there are a number of moments in the story that fall apart when you really think about them, though, that also applies to both the previous movies, as we've

discussed, and a good number of slasher movies, in general. And as much as I enjoy a number of gialli, I think that the idea of viewing Halloween 5 as one is a cop-out, as its many flaws are more the result of a rushed, unrefined script being directed by a filmmaker who has very strange ideas about storytelling and often changed things at the last minute. But besides all of the plotholes I've mentioned, and others that I haven't, the biggest problem with Halloween 5's story is how

meandering and fractured it is for the most part. Up until the third act at the Myers house, there's no driving plotline; instead, we have Dr. Loomis' growing obsession to find Michael, Jamie being tormented by her psychic link with him and Loomis trying to get her to help him, Tina and her friends' shenanigans, Michael stalking and killing them one by one, and the Man in Black wandering around town. Once we get to Michael murdering people at the Tower Farm, as Jamie and Billy rush

there to help, things start to become more focused, and the third act centers almost entirely on the attempt to capture Michael at the Myers house, which is blown when the police are called away and Jamie is eventually left defenseless and has to fend for herself. 

But even then, it's problematic, as the film's final thirty or so minutes feel like a double-climax to me. Coming on the heels of his killing Sam and Spitz, the action sequence with Michael driving after Tina, then Billy and Jamie, and the confrontation involving all of them after Michael crashes into a tree, comes off as though the movie is going to be wrapping up soon, especially when Loomis and the cops arrive. But then, after Loomis gets Jamie to help him, and he tells Michael to go to his home, we have another 25 minutes to go,

making the latter part of the third act tiring. What's more, this genuinely exciting sequence of Michael chasing Jamie throughout the house gets interrupted by a cutaway to the children's clinic, where Michael has clearly been on an offscreen rampage. This was alluded to earlier, when Jamie sensed that Billy was in danger, and Sheriff Meeker and the police rushed to the clinic, but besides hurting the climax's momentum, the short cutaway, where we see bodies being removed, also makes the whole thing come off as confusing.

Obviously, Michael did this as a diversion to get the police to leave the Myers house, but who exactly he killed and how is never made clear (we never learn if Billy was among thrm). And where and when did he hijack the police car that he drives up to the house in? All of this is actually the tail end of a deleted sequence where Michael massacred an entire SWAT team stationed outside the clinic, ending with him taking a squad car from one of them. Presumably, it was deleted because of the MPAA, but since they couldn't use it, it might've been best to not include the aftermath either and just stay at the Myers house.

Due to the haphazard way in which it was made, Halloween 5 is also notorious for introducing concepts for no reason other than to create a hook for the next film and leave it to that movie's team to sort them out. Namely, we're talking about the random symbol that would later be revealed as the mark of "Thorn" and the mysterious Man in Black. While never acknowledged, we see early on that Michael suddenly has this mark on the underside of his right wrist, which was originally implied to have been put there by the Dr. Death character as

part of his ritual. You also see it on a wall in the Myers house, the boards on the windows sometimes look like it, and on the Man in Black's wrist in one shot. Speaking of which, this mysterious character, who's sometimes played by Don Shanks, suddenly arrives in Haddonfield early on, dressed in a long coat, hat, gloves, and metal-tipped shoes, all of them black, and carrying around a suitcase. He never speaks, you never see his face, he often has a lit cigarette in his hand, and

he spends the entire film just walking around town, going to the Myers house upon arriving, and ultimately breaks Michael out of jail at the end. The first time you see the movie, his identity, connection to Michael, and motives are an intriguing mystery, but the truth of the matter is that the filmmakers didn't know any of that at the time, either. He was simply added to the movie because it was felt it needed something extra, and since it bombed as badly, fans would have to wait six years for the answer, which was ultimately a major letdown.

Remember when, in my review of Halloween 4, I said that Michael Myers was beginning to feel like a Jason Voorhees clone instead of his own character? Well, that transition is now basically complete, as there's little of that undefinable embodiment of pure evil that stalked Haddonfield in the first two films here. The only scene where Michael even comes close to that is when he's stalking Tina and her friends at the Tower Farm, and even with that, I'm being generous. Otherwise, he's just a typical slasher villain now, and again, the producers made the mistake of casting an enormous man to play him, making him feel even more like a Jason wannabe. I don't want to rag on Don Shanks too much, as he seems like a really cool guy in interviews and commentaries, and one who's very appreciative of the fans. What's more, it does feel like he did what he could with the role (he said in a documentary that they told him not to watch the previous movies), and he's definitely one of the most physically imposing Michaels. But I'm mixed on his actual performance. There are some moments where he is genuinely scary, like when he comes out from behind the door to kill Rachel, when you see him in the barn and woods, and when he's wielding weapons like pitchfork and scythe, and during the climax at the Myers house, a lot more anger and frustration come through in his performance, like when he furiously smashes Loomis into the wall and through the banister after he tries to take his knife away, bursts in and furiously stabs Deputy Charlie after he shoots him, becomes visibly frustrated when he can't open the laundry chute's jammed lid in order to get Jamie, and does everything he can to get her while she's trying to crawl back up the chute. And I also can't deny that, unlike Dwight Little in the previous movie, they definitely go with the notion that Michael is supernatural, in how he survives a car crash and being shot numerous times. But, for the most part, Shanks just lumbers around (though not quite as badly as George Wilbur before him) and attacks people in ways that feel indifferent on his part.

But where Halloween 5's depiction of Michael truly fails is the notion that he's a victim himself and retains a tiny bit of humanity. That was, admittedly, suggested by the moment in Halloween II where he momentarily reacts to Laurie calling his name, but the teams behind both this and the next film, especially the Producer's Cut, take it way too far. As I mentioned before, throughout the film, Dr. Loomis talks about how Michael is driven by an undying rage to kill, and also seems to think that Jamie can relieve him of it, and it's what he truly

wants from her. And when Michael arrives at the Myers house and Loomis confronts him, she assures him that she can do it. Again, not only does this feel so out of character for Loomis, but it completely flies in the face of the original point that Michael Myers is an unfeeling, unsympathetic, murderous embodiment of evil and darkness. Despite the question of whether Loomis is sincere about what he says or is just trying to trap Michael, it's suggested he's right about Michael being driven by some force that he can't resist or control. He

actually manages to briefly talk Michael down to where he lowers and loosens his grip on the knife, drops his head, and Loomis is able to touch his arm. Moreover, Jamie is able to temporarily reach him by calling him "uncle," gets him to remove his mask, and we see a tear going down his face! Michael Myers, the Shape, the flesh and blood Boogeyman who stalks you from the shadows, the physical representation of that thing in the dark you were frightened of as a child, is crying! Granted, he

quickly snaps out of it and attacks again, but that just isn't right. Dominique Othenin-Girard once defended this development by saying he felt Michael would remain frightening if, even with a shred of humanity still within him, he ultimately chooses to go on killing. It's kind of the same in how the idea of him seeking to kill off his family is pretty horrifying in its own right when you think about it, but I still don't like this idea of the Boogeyman being so humanized.


Going back to Halloween 4, I stand by my opinion that the mask there is worse than the one here... but that's not saying much, as this mask is still pretty bad. They had to create a new one because of the difference in size and shape between George Wilbur and Don Shanks' heads, which naturally creates big continuity errors, as this is supposed to be the same mask from before. I used to obsess over that but, nowadays, I'm blase about it. Anyway, while I'm glad this mask doesn't have the same dumb expression as the previous one (it looks

kind of angry in some shots), the face is narrow, with a pointed nose, the neck is so long that it goes down over the collar of Michael's shirt, and the hair is so long and swept back that it almost looks as if he has a mullet! Also, because Moustapha Akkad didn't want Michael's eyes to be visible, they put black nylon stockings over the inside of the eye-holes, and when Michael sticks his head into laundry chute and looks up at Jamie, you can see the netting plain as day. I really don't like that,

either, and I prefer it when they keep the eyes hidden by lighting the mask in a way to where the eye-holes are completely dark. Unlike in the previous film, Michael's heavy breathing returns, but it sounds much more shallow and not as strong as before.

For as hyped up as it was on the back of the first VHS I saw, as well as in the theatrical trailer, the unmasking scene isn't all that amazing, for a few reasons. The main one, which I knew before I saw the movie, is because it's so dark that you can barely make out Michael's face, unless you cheat and turn up your TV's brightness level. Second, putting aside that his face had already been seen at the end of the original Halloween, you get a brief glimpse of it at the beginning, when he wakes up in the hermit's cabin and sits up behind him. Also,

after the unmasking, he recoils into the light when Jamie tries to wipe away his tear and you can clearly see his face for a split second, so the unmasking isn't really that big of a deal. And third, he doesn't at all look the way he should, given the explosion at the end of Halloween II, which is made all the more egregious by Dr. Loomis' retained scars and the burns we do see on Michael's hands. KNB had come up with some scarred makeup for his face in case they wanted to show it full-on, but Dominique Othenin-Girard opted to just keep it in shadow, instead.

That wasn't the only bit of KNB's work that didn't make it to screen, as Halloween 5 was one of the horror movies around this time that really ran afoul of the MPAA. The kills here are fair but none of them are truly amazing, and while I do think there's a bit more blood than in Halloween 4, it's nothing to write home about. The first kill, the hermit, is totally bloodless, and due to the editing, you don't even quite know what Michael does to him. You see him come up behind him, grab his chin, and slam something onto him, but I can't tell what.

Michael stabbing Rachel with the scissors is also bloodless, even though KNB came up with a mechanism that would spew blood. Mikey's death, where he gets a gardening tool to the face, is actually quite good, and it's made even better by Michael first pissing him off by scratching the paint on the back of his car, then grabbing him by the neck when he attempts to fight him. Again, behind-the-scenes footage shows there was more to the gag but it was cut short, although Mikey convulsing on the ground afterward is pretty grisly.

Michael putting the pitchfork through Spitz's back is also cut very quickly, letting you see the penetration on both ends for a split-second, but it's punctuated by blood coming out of his mouth and a nasty death rattle. Sam getting slashed with a scythe immediately afterward happens offscreen but you do see some blood splatter on the straw. When Tina finds their bodies, you get a more graphic look at the punctures on Spitz's torso, but you can't see much of Sam, so she may have been

decapitated for all we know. Michael kills Deputies Nick and Tom with the pitchfork offscreen, with Tina, again, finding their bodies. While her getting stabbed in the shoulder by Michael's butcher knife looks realistic, the blood that drips off of the blade after he pulls it out is a bit fake to me. Eddie, the cop stationed outside the Myers house, dies a painful death when Michael punches through his window, cutting his face up with shrapnel, and then smashes him onto his dashboard, all while Eddie

coughs and yells in agony. And Deputy Charlie gets stabbed a bunch of times, then Michael hangs him outside the window. Up in the house's attic, Jamie finds Mikey and Rachel's grisly corpses, as well as Max (yep, Michael killed another dog). Unfortunately, even though it's onscreen very briefly, they go in too close on the latter's head and you can see how fake it looks.

In the tradition of the Halloween movies, Halloween 5 has a very memorable opening title sequence, one that's just as different from the previous one as that one was to the first three. The credits roll amid the sounds of a whipping knife blade, inter-spliced with quick glimpses of a black gloved hand (Don Shanks, pulling double-duty yet again) stabbing and slicing what, at first glance, appears to be flesh. As the sequence goes on, and both the stabbing and music become more frantic,

you realize it's someone carving a jack-o-lantern, as we get a number of kinetic shots of the knife blade puncturing and slicing into the pumpkin, including one from inside it, and chunks of it falling into a puddle of water. By the end of the credits, we see the jack-o-lantern fully carved, as we hear the sound of police sirens. Like Halloween II, Halloween 5 begins with the previous movie's ending, with Rachel throwing Michael off the top of the pickup truck, slamming into him, Jamie

touching his hand, and Sheriff Meeker and the others blasting him until he falls down a mine-shaft. There are a couple of new shots here, with Jamie recoiling from the gunfire and Dr. Loomis comforting her after Michael has apparently been buried. The movie truly begins with Michael crawling through a tunnel to escape the mine-shaft, just as Meeker and the state police drop a stick of dynamite down after him (that moment was shot for Halloween 4 but wasn't used). Michael escapes into a stream just as the dynamite explodes behind him and is washed down the rapids, before he grabs onto a fishing net and manages to pull himself ashore near the hermit's cabin.

After Michael wanders into the cabin and collapses, the film cuts to the following Halloween Eve, where Jamie is shown to now be at the Haddonfield Children's Clinic. Hooked up to a machine, she relives the moment where she stabbed her foster mother under Michael's influence, and this time, we actually see the stabbing, as Mrs. Carruthers falls into the bathtub, screaming at her to stop (another moment originally shot for Halloween 4; also, Karen

Alston, who originally played Mrs. Carruthers, is dubbed over by Wendy Kaplan). Waking up and letting out a muted scream, Jamie is promptly comforted by Nurse Patsey. That's when we first see the connection between her and Michael, as her hand movements and gestures mirror his, as he regains consciousness at the hermit's cabin. Patsey goes to get the doctor, while Jamie grabs a small chalkboard and writes, "He's coming for me." She then mirrors Michael sitting up behind the hermit

and mimes him grabbing his mask, which is hanging nearby. Once he has it back on, he walks up behind the hermit and brutally murders him, as Jamie goes into convulsions. Patsey runs back in, yells for the doctor, and Jamie is carried downstairs on a gurney, gasping for breath, as they try to get her breathing again. Down in the ER, Dr. Hart prepares to open her trachea, when Dr. Loomis comes in and stops him, insisting she'll stabilize. At first, Hart doesn't believe him, insisting that Jamie's dying, while Patsey gives her mouth-to-mouth.

However, she does slowly stop gasping and her breathing returns to normal. Loomis comments, "She has something to tell us." The next day, after Tina is introduced, someone throws a brick through the window, with a note calling Jamie an "evil child" and that she must die.

Since I've already gone into detail about how I don't care for some of the sequences during the middle part of the movie, we're going to skip far ahead to the section at the Tower farm, when Tina finds Sam and Spitz, as well as Deputies Nick and Tom, dead. Seeing Mikey's car parked nearby, she approaches it, when Jamie and Billy arrive. Michael switches on the headlights and drives after Tina, smashing through a wooden fence that she climbs over and chases her towards a field. He

stops when he hears Jamie yelling at him to get his attention, and when Jamie shouts at him to come after her, he drives after them. He nearly runs down Billy, who jumps out of the way and is grazed by the bumper. Jamie approaches to help Billy, only for Michael to drive after her, chasing her through a field of miniature pine trees and into the woods. After seeing to Billy, Tina desperately runs towards the woods to help Jamie, whom Michael repeatedly comes very close to running over. But then, he

ends up crashing into the trunk of a big tree, with the front of the car exploding. Jamie ducks and rolls out of the way just in time, and as she hears the continuously blaring car horn, she breathes a sigh of relief. She and Tina are about to reunite, when the horn suddenly cuts off (a nicely suspenseful way to get across that Michael isn't dead). The car creaks and Michael rises up in the cloud of smoke beside it. Brandishing his butcher knife, he slowly walks over to the panicking Jamie, who futilely tries to crawl away. He corners and

stands over her, raising his knife, when Tina runs in and grabs his arm. Michael, of course, is far too strong and easily manages to plunge the knife into her shoulder, before throwing her aside. Even in her dying breaths, Tina yells at Jamie to run, but Billy, who gets up and walks over to the scene, has to drag her away because she's so hysterical. They then run into Dr. Loomis, who's followed swiftly by the police, and that leads into their plan to trap Michael.

The climax at the Myers house is definitely the best section of the movie. After Michael has incapacitated Loomis and killed Deputy Charlie, Jamie runs for it and hides in a room with a door on either end. Unable to open the second door, and with Michael approaching, she opens the lid to the top of the laundry chute, climbs inside, and hangs onto the handle on the inside. Michael pounds on the one door until he breaks it open and, at first, walks towards the door across from him. But he

then spies the chute and wrenches it open. Seeing Jamie, he reaches for her, only for her to drop down and hit the bottom in the basement, where the lid is jammed. As Michael walks down there, Jamie stays still and quiet, when he enters the basement. Approaching the chute, he attempts to open the lid, and after becoming visibly frustrated when he can't, use his knife to try to wedge it. She tries to climb back up, when he manages to tear the lid off, then reaches up in there to pull her out.

Unable to grab her, he stabs up into the chute, and when that doesn't work, he furiously stabs through its exterior, managing to cut into Jamie's leg on the first one. Regardless, Jamie, slowly but surely, manages to climb all the way back up and out of the chute. Limping on her stabbed leg, and unable to find a way out, she makes her way up to the attic, which she finds has been creepily filled with lit candles, the bodies of some of Michael's victims, including Rachel, and the little coffin meant for her. Hearing Michael coming up the

stairs, Jamie lays down in the coffin, seemingly deciding to let Michael kill her, but right before he does, she calls him "uncle" and manages to temporarily talk him down and get him to take off his mask. But he recoils when she attempts to wipe his tear away, puts his mask back on, and viciously attacks, stabbing the crap out of the coffin and throwing it against the wall, while Jamie runs for it. Running downstairs, she meets the now deranged Loomis, who uses her to lure Michael into the house's main room, where he drops a chain net onto him, shoots him with tranquilizer darts, and beats him senseless with a wooden plank, before collapsing on top of him.

Unfortunately, the ending is just lame. They've captured Michael, chained him up in the jail (leaving his mask on, for some reason), and wait for the National Guard to transport him to a maximum security prison. At the same time, Jamie is about to be taken back to the clinic. Suddenly, there's an explosion, and the Man in Black appears in the jail, shooting and killing everyone with what looks like a Tommy gun. The deputy who's with Jamie tells her to stay in the police car, as he runs

inside to see what's happening. However, Jamie promptly gets out, walks to the station's front door, as the sound of gunshots ceases, and wanders inside, passing the corpses of the police officers, and discovers that Michael's cell has been blown open and he's gone. Sequel-bait endings can work, but this one feels so tacked on. They could've easily ended with Michael in jail, the cop car driving off with Jamie, and before the credits start rolling, you see the Man in Black walk past the camera. You don't have to necessarily show him go

towards the station (though that would definitely have been intriguing) but, rather, just acknowledge how, even though Michael may be momentarily subdued, there's still something rotten in Haddonfield, if you will. That way, audiences would still be intrigued to find out who this guy is and what happens next, and the ending would also be seen as more of an interesting question mark, like that of Halloween III, than the typical, run-of-the-mill sequel-bait that it is.

When it came to scoring Halloween 5, Dominique Othenin-Girard told Alan Howarth to go more for the piano rather than the synthesizers; according to Howarth, Othenin-Girard was, in general, much more involved with the scoring than Dwight Little had been. However, for the most part, he does little more than either recycle the original themes or play them in new ways, especially the main Halloween theme. You hear it many, many times, and in many different guises, from a repeat of the initial Halloween 4 version when Michael is flowing down the river at the beginning (always thought was an odd place to put it), a low menacing version when he's stalking around outside Rachel's house, and some frantic remixes for when Jamie thinks she's being chased by him in the clinic and when he's trying to run her over, to a very creepy, isolated version of the first few notes when Jamie comes across the attic in the Myers house and at the end when she sees he's on the loose again. The most memorable versions are the one you hear during the opening credits, which starts off slow and methodical, but rises into a frenzy by the end of it, leading into the truck scene from the end of the previous movie, and the very solemn one, accompanied some rather sad undertones, during the moment between Michael and Jamie. For me, though, the theme is used here to the point of overkill, and by the end of a viewing of Halloween 5, I'm genuinely sick of hearing it. 

The Myers house theme is even simpler this time than before, played on one lonely piano key, and it starts and stops rather suddenly and sporadically. You do hear the Shape Stalks theme a few times, like when Michael rises up in the hermit's cabin, very briefly and quickly when he begins to drive after Tina, and another version when he throws Loomis aside in the Myers house and begins walking up the stairs to where Jamie is. Howarth also recycles some of the sounds he came up on previous movies, like one from Halloween II when that brick with the note is thrown Jamie's window, and some of the creepy sounds from Halloween 4's opening here and there. As far as wholly original pieces that Howarth came up with, the ones that come to mind are this low, menacing theme for the Man in Black, which plays whenever he's onscreen, a very creepy male vocalization when you see the mark on Michael's wrist, a sort of electric guitar motif for Tina, and those stupid, ill-advised comic sound effects he came up with for Deputies Nick and Tom; other than that, if he did anything else original, it's not coming to mind. It also doesn't help that there are some rather bad songs on the soundtrack, like Romeo, Romeo by Rebecca Vizcarra, which Rachel listens to while she's preparing to take a shower, and Sporting Woman (Baby, I'm Yours) song, when Mikey is seductively waxing his car. I have a lot of the Halloween soundtracks on CD (I even have the one for Resurrection!) but I steered clear of this one.

While I wouldn't say it's horrible, and it does undoubtedly have its fans (my mom is one of them; she likes this more than Halloween 4), Halloween 5, whether or not you want to call it The Revenge of Michael Myers) is most certainly one of the weaker ones in my opinion. There are definitely good aspects to it, like the presence of Donald Pleasence and Danielle Harris, the mostly nice cinematography and visual aesthetic, some fairly good kills, and entertaining chase sequences during the latter half, but it still has a lot going against it. I don't care for the direction they took Dr. Loomis' character, nor for how Rachel is killed off; many characters are completely disposable, either being annoying or just plain unlikable; there are far too many slasher movie clichés, especially false scares; there's a new slant to Michael Myers' character that I doubt anyone who loves the original will care for; the story elements and concepts are quite under-cooked; the movie tends to meander; the music score has little original material; and the ending is lame. It is watchable, has never been a chore for me to get through, and nothing in it makes me screaming angry, which is why this isn't an installment of Movies That Suck, but I can't deny that it is very lackluster. I would still recommend it if you're a Halloween fan but don't set your expectations too high.