Ranking the "Halloween" Movies: #7 - "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers" (1989)

Twenty-one days away and we're cranking! Not cranking strong, but still cranking!

#7 - Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

I have a psychic link with the producers. This movie is just going to disappoint.

Imagine what would happen if Marvel or Star Wars movies came out year-after-year. Hahahaha...oh, wait. Well, that wasn't always the case back in the day. Gone are the days where studios take time and patience to produce quality sequels. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers had been released in 1988 and was both a critical and commercial success. It breathed new life into the franchise that was all but abandoned after Halloween III: Season of the Witch in 1982. Due to the immense success of Halloween 4, producer Moustapha Akkad fast-tracked Halloween 5 into production at lightning speed and had it out in theaters no more than a year later...and it shows. Boy, does it show.

"Loomis, look at me when I'm talking to you!"

Jamie's in a catatonic state after killing her foster mother at the end of 4. Instead of following through with Jamie being the new killer, which wouldn't have been all that believable anyway, the story changes gears back to the recycled way of doing things, which is just to have Michael return after a supposed death and stalk a member of his family again. Nothing new, business as usual. But, wait! There's a twist this time! As it turns out, Michael has a psychic connection with Jamie and he was the one who made her stab her foster mother. So, ipso-facto, Jamie's innocent again! Hooray! This psychic link also proves advantageous to the tired and decrepit Dr. Sam Loomis, played once again by Donald Pleasence. Loomis is upset because they keep dragging him back for sequels that don't make any sense and are nothing more than recycled jargin, but he could use the retirement funds so who's fooling who? So Loomis decides to use Jamie's psychic powers for the forces of good and to work with the Haddonfield police department to predict where Michael is or is going to strike next by having Jamie tap into her sudden psychic potential. "Are we really doing this?" is a question you'll be asking yourself constantly.

But I digress; Michael survived the gunshot barrage at the end of 4, and barely escaped a dynamite explosion to go live with a hermit in a coma for the next year. The hermit nurses Michael back to life (again, over the course of a year), but Michael then reawakens and kills him. Michael's an ungrateful little shit, isn't he? Michael then returns to Haddonfield and begins stalking Jamie's foster-sister Rachel, killing her by stabbing her with a pair of scissors. Why? Good question. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers teaches us that Michael must kill all members of his family, suffering from the affliction of the curse of Thorn. Rachel isn't even his family though, so he's getting kind of sloppy. The new characters besides Rachel? Suck. They're obviously nothing more than fuel for the fire, or in this case, bodies for the meat wagon. The only one that's even remotely tolerable is Tia, and she's obnoxious. Her blonde friend and her blonde friend's stooge of a boyfriend both suck balls. The audience will surely rejoice at their demise. On top of them, there's two bumbling, comedy-relief cops. The soundtrack makes cartoon noises whenever they're on screen, so you wonder if they're even in the right movie. Sure, the movie could use some levity, but these guys are a tad over-the-top.

"I sure hope I don't come back for more of these movies after this"

This movie is riddled with the fake scares. You know the kind. A horror movie will be building suspense, making you watch and wait with anticipation that some shit's going to go down, but then nothing does or something totally whacky goes down instead. This movie has quite a few of them, and each and every subsequent fake scare robs from Michael's presence more and more whenever he does finally show up. By the time he shows up in the barn to kill the two kids with a scythe, we don't even give a shit anymore. Even some of the purposefully suspenseful situations are lame. The scene where Michael's chasing Jamie, Tia and Billy in a car, Michael drives like five miles per hour and has trouble keeping up with little children who have to run through fields! In a car! Come on, Michael. Do you want Jason and Freddy to look more badass than you? Step on the gas! Run these little bastards down!

Another goof that fans love pointing out is the Myers house. It looks nothing like the original Myers house. It's not even the same constructional categorization. The old Myers house looked suburban and simplistic, but the new one looks old-fashioned and Elizabethan in a way. It's got a very retro style construction, and it's at least another story taller. It makes the final chase more exciting, sure, but it takes continuity out back and shoots it in the face. Then there's the scene where Michael unmasks himself. He corners Jamie in the attic and takes off his mask for her at the mere mention of "Uncle". You don't see anything except what you do see is Michael's eye shedding a tear. Also strange, considering Laurie shot Michael's eyes out in Halloween II, but that would also render Halloween 4 mute as well. These movies despise continuity, I tell you.

"If you blow me, you can be in Halloween 6."

The ending isn't bad, but it could've been much better. Let me back up. Throughout the movie, we see a man in a black trench coat appear in Haddonfield and even show up at the Myers' house. He follows the action around throughout the entire movie.The end of the movie sees Michael chase Jamie through the Myers house following a failed coupe by the Haddonfield police force. Loomis then grabs Jamie and uses her as bait, because he's finally given up on life, love, protection, all that shit. He lures Michael into a room where he drop a chain net on him and proceeds to not only pump three tranq darts into him, but then he beats him with a wooden 2x4 repeatedly. Loomis, then realizing that Halloween 5 will ACTUALLY be released, faints in despair and passes out on top of Michael's unconscious body. The next we see of Michael, he's chained up in the police cell as Sheriff Meeker and Jamie look at him. Meeker says he'll remain locked up "until the day he dies", which Jamie chillingly replies with "he'll never die". Just as another officer prepares to take Jamie home, the man in black appears and shoots up the police station, killing several cops and breaking Michael out of jail. The last we see of Jamie, she's looking on as the cell door keeping Michael locked up has been blown open. That's it! That's the cliffhanger we get. Not only do we get zero explanation throughout the entire movie as to who the man in black is, but he's the one that busts Michael out of prison and keeps the series alive. Even the writer's didn't even know who he was. Don Shanks, who plays Myers in this movie, reported that he played the man in black in most scenes because the writers were still trying to figure out the man in black's identity. Personally, I think the movie would've ended far more creepily if it just ended with Jamie's line of "He'll never die", leaving Michael's fate unknown. Breaking him out of jail after a movie-long crusade to capture him is so cheap. Now you know there's going to be a sequel, and no sequel is going to be strong enough to adequately cover all of the loose ends.

Tia speaking with "Indiscriminate Female Victim #1"

I'll say one thing. Michael's mask is much scarier looking than in the previous film. We haven't talked about Halloween 4 yet, but just know for now that the mask looks much better. Plus, the eerie atmosphere that was present in Halloween 4 is kept intact. Halloween 5, while not being a very well-made piece of art, is at least creepy in the sense of how it feels. The movie's filmed in a way that makes it feel rustic, quaint and eerie. It's not par with the atmosphere of Halloween 4, which is downright award winning in my opinion, and it still feels like an October movie. One of my favorite scenes is after Michael kills Tia's boyfriend (also called "Mike") and appears in Mike's car wearing a caveman mask. That scene is extremely suspenseful and very-well paced. Tia gets in the car with Michael, has him drive her halfway to a barn party, and drop her off at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. When she's found by the police thanks to Jamie, Michael speeds off, much to her confusion. She even kissed him on the cheek, and Michael allowed it. We're lucky Michael has such patience or else she would've been dead the instant she got in the car. If Michael were Jason Voorhees, he'd probably smash her face in the dashboard repeatedly or in the door frame of the car itself...repeatedly.

To sum it up, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is definitely weak. It's not bad, but it can be pretty dumb at some times. Tia's friends suck whenever they do anything and Rachel's death goes the same way as Laurie's in Halloween: Resurrection. It drops the whole "Jamie is the new killer twist" in favor of the psychic thing, which bodes well for the whole "war on Michael Myers" aspect of the film, but considering what we get next in Curse, (Jamie not posessing psychic abilities) we really don't get a whole lot of payoff. Plus, the ending isn't satisfying at all. Same deal as Curse. You can watch it only if you REALLY want to know what happens after 4.

Next in the Halloween twist: Michael Myers is actually a cyborg sent back through time to kill members of the Strode/Lloyd family.