Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Dwight H. Little
"Goddamn you."
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Dominique Otherin-Girard
"He'll never die."
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
Joe Chappelle
"Michael Myers is my business."
I am going to cheat today for a few reasons. One: it's far too nice of a day to type out three separate reviews, two: these movies suck, and I can't possibly devote that much energy to each, and three: they're kind of one movie, since 5 and 6 are direct sequels of 4. So we're going to kill three dumb birds with one very low-effort stone.
First things first, I absolutely love John Carpenter's Halloween. I'd go so far to say that it's in my top five horror films ever. It's so moody and atmospheric, the soundtrack is amazing, and it's a great premise for a slasher. Michael Myers in that film is just a man, but his insatiable drive and the brutality of his crimes is what makes him scary. His costume is simple (because the budget was so low), but it's way more effective that way. Just a lovely film.
I've never been a fan of Halloween 2, because it feels so much like a cheap cash grab sequel (which is what it is). Still, inadequate sequels come with the slasher territory, so whatever.
Halloween III, which we looked at last year, is so fucking fun. Michael Myers is gone, and in his place you get an evil toy company run by an ancient druid cult whose evil plan is to turn every child in America into snakes and bugs using masks powered by a television commercial. And the hero of the film is a drunken Tom Atkins. It's beautiful and too weird not to love, but the teeming masses hated it because it didn't feature Michael. Different is bad when it comes to box office take, I suppose.
And that was it. That was my experience with the "franchise" up until this week when I subjected myself to this terror (I saw Halloween H20 in the theater but have absolutely no memory of it). I didn't know what to expect, but I guess I should have expected crap. Lots and lots of crap.
What they're about: Get ready for this: Michael Myers is back baby!
4: Forget what you know about the ending of 2, because Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers did not die in the massive hospital explosion that obviously killed them! Instead, Dr. Loomis just has a small scar on one side of his face (that changes shape throughout the film), and Michael's hand is a little melted. Michael escapes from his sanitarium during a poorly planned and executed prisoner transfer. During the ambulance ride he hears that he has a niece, the daughter of the killed-off-screen Laurie Strode from the first two films. This means he has more killin' to do, so he gets away, steals a car, finds the exact same jumpsuit and mask he wore years earlier, and starts terrorizing Haddonfield, Illinois once more. Oh, and they drag Donald Pleasence out of the mothballs and make him run around to his obvious great chagrin.
5: After Michael is shot approximately 850 times by the cops at the end of 4, he slides down a hill and into a river. He is nursed back to health by a blind homeless man (a tip of the cap to Bride of Frankenstein, maybe?), but Michael kills him and intends to keep hunting down his niece. She is now in a mental institution herself, because they share a psychic link after she touched his hand, and he (possibly) made her stab her foster mom with scissors at the end of 4. Oh yeah, and now she's mute for no reason, except that goes away when it is no longer convenient to the plot. Donald Pleasence is once again made to debase himself, and is somehow even more checked out this time around. Luckily Dr. Loomis VERY CLEARLY dies at the end, so he can retire in peace. Michael is taken to jail, but soon after he's locked up, a mysterious man in a weird hat shows up, machine guns all of the cops, and busts Michael out of the jail. There is no explanation for any of this. It just ends.
6: Six(!!!) years later, we get another sequel to tie up the loose ends nobody cared about. It seems that Michael was busted out of jail by a clan of secret evil druids (not the ones from III, unfortunately) who recognize him as a child cursed by the "thorn" rune or whatever the fuck. Michael's niece, who was 9 years old in #5, now appears to be 30 years old and has just given birth to a baby in the druid's secret underground bunker that also used to be the mental hospital where Michael spent most of his life (this is not a joke). She gets away, Michael chases her, kills her with a wheat thresher, and the story invariably leads back to Haddonfield, Ill. There, we discover that the little boy from the first Halloween has grown up to become Paul Rudd (credited as Paul Stephen Rudd), and is obsessed with Michael Myers. A bunch of incomprehensible things happen that involve Michael and the druids. Oh, and yes, they dangled another paycheck above Donald Pleasence's head, because why not. This time though he must've had a "I'm not wearing any god damned makeup clause" in his contract, because his scars are mysteriously gone. He died like a month after filming wrapped, but I assume they're still somehow making him do Halloween sequels in the afterlife.
What's interesting: Not a lot, unfortunately. The little girl who plays the niece is a pretty good child actor. It's fun to see Paul Rudd, age 25, look exactly like Paul Rudd, age 49. And I really do love Donald Pleasence, so I'm glad he was able to make a little scratch at the end of his life.
4 is easily the best of the bunch, so if you're curious to watch any of these, that's the place to start and stop. It's at least a cohesive narrative, and there are parts that make you think there was some intelligence behind it. Plus the best character of any of these sequels is in this one: Officer Exposition. I have dubbed him that because at the beginning of #4, after years away from Michael Myers' loving touch, the filmmakers thought it would be a good idea to get people caught up. So, on an elevator ride down to the bowels of this sanitarium, Officer Exposition gives the most awkward and shoehorned-in rundown of the entire mythos to a couple of EMTs (and the audience).
It's literally three uninterrupted minutes of: "Aw gee whiz, this guy gives me the willies. Yep, Michael Myers, the kook who murdered 16 people one Halloween night a few years back is here at our facility. Yep, tried to kill a babysitter, who turned out later to be his sister, and a bunch of folk at a hospital. His psychiatrist tried to kill him, if you can believe that, but he escaped the explosion too." This unnecessary babbling gave me a lot of early hope, but it's all downhill from there...
And just so I'm not going to be completely negative, I give it to the producers of #6 for trying something so off-the-wall bizarre. It didn't work, and was a horrible disaster that damaged the franchise so badly that they had to retcon everything just four years later for H20, but at least they tried goddammit.
Other films I thought about: John Carpenter's Halloween, mainly because they use his soundtrack throughout the films. In #1, it was a minimalist theme to build tension as Michael quietly and methodically stalked his victims. By #5 the song is played as Michael Myers chases his niece through a forest in a 1988 Dodge Challenger. In #6 they chopped and screwed the song to fit in with the industrial music scene of the mid-90's. Awful.
Miscellany: Don't watch these movies. But there's a new one coming out in a week or so. Go see that.
Recommendation: If you are extremely bored, watch 4. It's pretty funny, there are still vestiges of goodness sprinkled around, and you'll get a kick out of it if you like dumb movies. If you just can't resist, I guess watch 5. It's a far more aggravating experience, but it's tolerable if you drop your standards to nothing. Fair warning, though: after the ending of 5 you're going to be be compelled to watch 6 just to make sense of things. That's when it's time to seriously rethink your life decisions.
4: Eh
5: Ugh
6: ...
First things first, I absolutely love John Carpenter's Halloween. I'd go so far to say that it's in my top five horror films ever. It's so moody and atmospheric, the soundtrack is amazing, and it's a great premise for a slasher. Michael Myers in that film is just a man, but his insatiable drive and the brutality of his crimes is what makes him scary. His costume is simple (because the budget was so low), but it's way more effective that way. Just a lovely film.
I've never been a fan of Halloween 2, because it feels so much like a cheap cash grab sequel (which is what it is). Still, inadequate sequels come with the slasher territory, so whatever.
Halloween III, which we looked at last year, is so fucking fun. Michael Myers is gone, and in his place you get an evil toy company run by an ancient druid cult whose evil plan is to turn every child in America into snakes and bugs using masks powered by a television commercial. And the hero of the film is a drunken Tom Atkins. It's beautiful and too weird not to love, but the teeming masses hated it because it didn't feature Michael. Different is bad when it comes to box office take, I suppose.
And that was it. That was my experience with the "franchise" up until this week when I subjected myself to this terror (I saw Halloween H20 in the theater but have absolutely no memory of it). I didn't know what to expect, but I guess I should have expected crap. Lots and lots of crap.
What they're about: Get ready for this: Michael Myers is back baby!
4: Forget what you know about the ending of 2, because Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers did not die in the massive hospital explosion that obviously killed them! Instead, Dr. Loomis just has a small scar on one side of his face (that changes shape throughout the film), and Michael's hand is a little melted. Michael escapes from his sanitarium during a poorly planned and executed prisoner transfer. During the ambulance ride he hears that he has a niece, the daughter of the killed-off-screen Laurie Strode from the first two films. This means he has more killin' to do, so he gets away, steals a car, finds the exact same jumpsuit and mask he wore years earlier, and starts terrorizing Haddonfield, Illinois once more. Oh, and they drag Donald Pleasence out of the mothballs and make him run around to his obvious great chagrin.
5: After Michael is shot approximately 850 times by the cops at the end of 4, he slides down a hill and into a river. He is nursed back to health by a blind homeless man (a tip of the cap to Bride of Frankenstein, maybe?), but Michael kills him and intends to keep hunting down his niece. She is now in a mental institution herself, because they share a psychic link after she touched his hand, and he (possibly) made her stab her foster mom with scissors at the end of 4. Oh yeah, and now she's mute for no reason, except that goes away when it is no longer convenient to the plot. Donald Pleasence is once again made to debase himself, and is somehow even more checked out this time around. Luckily Dr. Loomis VERY CLEARLY dies at the end, so he can retire in peace. Michael is taken to jail, but soon after he's locked up, a mysterious man in a weird hat shows up, machine guns all of the cops, and busts Michael out of the jail. There is no explanation for any of this. It just ends.
6: Six(!!!) years later, we get another sequel to tie up the loose ends nobody cared about. It seems that Michael was busted out of jail by a clan of secret evil druids (not the ones from III, unfortunately) who recognize him as a child cursed by the "thorn" rune or whatever the fuck. Michael's niece, who was 9 years old in #5, now appears to be 30 years old and has just given birth to a baby in the druid's secret underground bunker that also used to be the mental hospital where Michael spent most of his life (this is not a joke). She gets away, Michael chases her, kills her with a wheat thresher, and the story invariably leads back to Haddonfield, Ill. There, we discover that the little boy from the first Halloween has grown up to become Paul Rudd (credited as Paul Stephen Rudd), and is obsessed with Michael Myers. A bunch of incomprehensible things happen that involve Michael and the druids. Oh, and yes, they dangled another paycheck above Donald Pleasence's head, because why not. This time though he must've had a "I'm not wearing any god damned makeup clause" in his contract, because his scars are mysteriously gone. He died like a month after filming wrapped, but I assume they're still somehow making him do Halloween sequels in the afterlife.
What's interesting: Not a lot, unfortunately. The little girl who plays the niece is a pretty good child actor. It's fun to see Paul Rudd, age 25, look exactly like Paul Rudd, age 49. And I really do love Donald Pleasence, so I'm glad he was able to make a little scratch at the end of his life.
4 is easily the best of the bunch, so if you're curious to watch any of these, that's the place to start and stop. It's at least a cohesive narrative, and there are parts that make you think there was some intelligence behind it. Plus the best character of any of these sequels is in this one: Officer Exposition. I have dubbed him that because at the beginning of #4, after years away from Michael Myers' loving touch, the filmmakers thought it would be a good idea to get people caught up. So, on an elevator ride down to the bowels of this sanitarium, Officer Exposition gives the most awkward and shoehorned-in rundown of the entire mythos to a couple of EMTs (and the audience).
It's literally three uninterrupted minutes of: "Aw gee whiz, this guy gives me the willies. Yep, Michael Myers, the kook who murdered 16 people one Halloween night a few years back is here at our facility. Yep, tried to kill a babysitter, who turned out later to be his sister, and a bunch of folk at a hospital. His psychiatrist tried to kill him, if you can believe that, but he escaped the explosion too." This unnecessary babbling gave me a lot of early hope, but it's all downhill from there...
And just so I'm not going to be completely negative, I give it to the producers of #6 for trying something so off-the-wall bizarre. It didn't work, and was a horrible disaster that damaged the franchise so badly that they had to retcon everything just four years later for H20, but at least they tried goddammit.
Other films I thought about: John Carpenter's Halloween, mainly because they use his soundtrack throughout the films. In #1, it was a minimalist theme to build tension as Michael quietly and methodically stalked his victims. By #5 the song is played as Michael Myers chases his niece through a forest in a 1988 Dodge Challenger. In #6 they chopped and screwed the song to fit in with the industrial music scene of the mid-90's. Awful.
Miscellany: Don't watch these movies. But there's a new one coming out in a week or so. Go see that.
Recommendation: If you are extremely bored, watch 4. It's pretty funny, there are still vestiges of goodness sprinkled around, and you'll get a kick out of it if you like dumb movies. If you just can't resist, I guess watch 5. It's a far more aggravating experience, but it's tolerable if you drop your standards to nothing. Fair warning, though: after the ending of 5 you're going to be be compelled to watch 6 just to make sense of things. That's when it's time to seriously rethink your life decisions.
4: Eh
5: Ugh
6: ...
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