Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

However good the idea John Carpenter had of a continuing anthology of films centred around supernatural events happening on Halloween, the audience were having none of it. No matter how intriguing and original the concept of microchip witchcraft as seen in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, audiences wanted Michael Myers wandering around with a big knife. But he’d been killed off, once and for all. But the tenth anniversary of that first film was looming. So…

Carpenter had no involvement with this one, except for the occasional use of his iconic theme music. And it shows. My critical overview is that it’s largely tepid and lacklustre, but there are a couple of good things going for it that save it from being a total write-off. But let’s be fair, Halloween itself is a tough act to follow.

The title sequence is actually very good, eliciting a sense of the season. Abandoning the carved pumpkins we’ve been accustomed to, we see a montage of exterior rural shots with some seasonal decorations that effectively set the scene and mood.

Then, it’s immediately over to the Ridgemont Federal Sanatorium, where a comatose patient is being sent back to Smith’s Grove Sanatorium. But they’re in kind of a hurry, because they need to get him out of there before his Doctor arrives.

So far so good, right?

It’s a very stormy night, the patient in question is Michael Myers, he’s been comatose since being burnt to a crisp at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital ten years earlier – and it’s October 30th. What could possibly go wrong.

Well, they manage to put him in an ambulance and he promptly escapes and makes his way back to Haddonfield, ten years to the day. But whoa, how did he survive the burning? You’d never know it from watching this movie, but a bridging scene was filmed to explain that, where firefighters are seen extinguishing the flames engulfing him at the hospital, while a badly burnt Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance) protests and insists they let him burn. This pivotal scene would’ve made a big difference to this largely indifferent film, but it was left out of the release print.

So why Haddonfield? What draws him there?

Laurie Strode, we’re told, has passed away in a car accident along with her husband, eleven months before the events of this film. Their orphaned daughter Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris in her film debut) is living with her foster family. So, Michael Myers has a niece. His only link to his original intended victim, his sister. Whether this is what triggers and reactivates him, we don’t know. But Dr Loomis does – and pursues him to Haddonfield once again. He knows he’s on the right trail when he encounters the butchered staff at a diner/service station on-route and is almost run over by Myers in a stolen tow truck – though no report of this is ever made to the police.

Jamie is around nine or ten, has heard about Michael, but doesn’t realise that it’s him that haunts her nightmares, even though she sees him pretty clearly in these dreams despite never having actually seen him in real life. His kinds of hints at some sort of psychic bond, which explains how he finds her, I guess. But maybe I’m putting too much thought into a film that is actually pretty mindless.

Halloween night arrives, little Jaime wants to go trick or treating with her foster sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell). She’s dressed in a clown outfit, in an eerie echo of the way Myers was dressed when he murdered his sister in 1963.

So, it’s Haddonfield, it’s Halloween. Myers is in the area, as is an increasingly deranged and hysterical Loomis, as Donald Pleasance, bless him, chews up every piece of scenery in sight, rolling his eyes manically. Myers on the other hand had absolutely lost all sense of relentless menace. His mask alternates from making him look quizzical to startled. His walk isn’t the same casual though purposeful stroll – he walks, pauses to take a look (or catch his breath, I don’t know) and walks a bit more. The notion of him being this unstoppable cypher is missing. He’s literally just a guy in a mask who kills people.

As Myers cleaves his way through the population, there’s even a redneck lynch mob looking for him. This lynch mob help Rachel and Jaime leave town for the night and off they go in the mob’s pickup (the vehicle of choice for redneck lynch mobs) but (somehow) unseen by everybody, Myers is hanging on to the tailgate of the pickup and slaughters the rednecks. Taking the wheel, Rachel swerves to try and shake Myers off, and does do, also ramming him with the truck to make sure.

Obviously, she doesn’t know what she’s dealing with. As Myers lies in a ditch, Jaime touches his hand, and he revives. But the rest of the lynch mob arrive, repeatedly shooting Myers until his bullet riddled (again) body tumbles down an abandoned mine.

Okay, there’s not a great deal to latch on to and like so far – right? It started well, then lost every shred of momentum it had. It’s tepid, half-hearted and listless. (It’s not one I tend to watch often, to be honest) so other than the opening, what’s good?

The ending. (No, that’s not me being sarcastic – it really has a kick-ass ending)

Loomis, the Sheriff, and the girls are back home after the trauma of the evening. Jaime’s stepmother decides to run the kid a bath. We hear a struggle. Loomis, Rachel and the Sheriff are frozen at the bottom of the stairs. We see what they see. Jaime in her clown costume, wearing the mask that came with it, holding a blood-stained pair of scissors in the same pose as Michael did back in 1963.

Loomis is prevented from shooting her on the spot and sinks to the floor wailing in despair as the horror is beginning all over again. It’s worth sitting through the preceding 85 minutes just for this scene – this alone saves the movie.

“Ten years ago, he tried to kill Laurie Strode. Now he wants her daughter.” – Dr Sam Loomis