Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
“He’ll never die!” – Jamie Lloyd
To be honest, I had no recollection of ever watching this film. But I knew I had, back when it was released, over thirty years ago – I just had no memory of it. For the record, I can’t remember much about the next film along either. (So, watching that’s going to be an adventure.)
I spent the first twenty-five minutes wondering what my problem was, it seemed like a decent film and my hopes were building. I spent the following hour and ten in full knowledge what the problem was.
Halloween 4 left us with a really great twist ending, and one which should have been capitalised on in this. Little Jamie Lloyd had seemingly taken her uncle’s lead and killed her foster mother on Halloween while dressed in a clown trick or treat costume and was last seen standing at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile, Michael Myers himself had been swallowed by the Earth and fallen down a mineshaft after the Haddonfield Police Dept has emptied their firearms into him AND chucked some dynamite after him to make sure he stayed in his hole. Quite the predicament.
The opening scenes slightly reset the narrative. In a scene very evocative of Universal’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) we see that Myers in true Frankenstein monster form, survived the fall. He crawled along a narrow tunnel, escaping the explosion, tumbled down the river bank and fell in the water, where the current swept him away. He came out of the water somewhere downstream, close to a hermit’s shack, where he collapsed and was cared for.
Okay, let’s fast forward a year.
Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) has been institutionalised in a children’s hospital in Haddonfield since being struck mute by the psychological trauma of the events of a year ago, when she attacked – not killed – attacked her foster mother. The foster mother was injured, but survived. Not that she appears in this film, other than one flashback. (I guess she was too scared Little Miss Stabby might take another swing at her.) In fact, the only family member who comes to see her is foster sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) and her wacky friend Tina (Wendy Kaplan).
Well, there is one other visitor. The ever present and highly strung Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), who’s determined to get to the bottom of Myers’ disappearance. (He seems to have no other patients throughout the Halloween films.) He knows about the psychic link between Jamie and Myers and keeps shouting at the child to speak to him. (His bedside manner really needs work.)
So, of course its Halloween – and somehow, Myers is reactivated, fully healed – with homicide on his mind. First victim when he springs out of his bed is the luckless hermit. I thought this was clumsily handled, that we, as the audience, should’ve felt something for the poor guy. But he had so small a screen presence, we had literally no time to build up a modicum of sympathy for him. And even Myers’ rising from the bed had no tension or shock value.
Jamie knows he’s back in action and is headed for Haddonfield for Halloween.
He makes his way there quite easily, and his first victim is Rachel. This seems a waste of time, and her presence in the film is reduced to mere needless padding. She adds nothing to the film, other than a shower scene, followed by a death scene. In fact, despite the fact she’s supposed to go to a Halloween party with her friends, nobody misses her, nobody even notices she’s suddenly dropped from sight.
The death of Rachel marks the end of the part of the film where I had a growing hope that this was in fact a decent entry in the Halloween franchise, and that somehow over the years, I had become a bitter old man judging the film too harshly.
In short, the film becomes a tedious mess.
Myers turns his attention to stalking Tina, killing her boyfriend and stealing his car, and actually his mask so he can masquerade as him while driving. The Haddonfield teens have a Halloween party at a farmhouse, but Myers is killing the horny teens that go to the barn for some fun. Two comedy relief inept deputies (with their own clown music theme, no less) bumble along here and there, until happily, they’re slaughtered.
Jamie finds her voice and escapes with another kid from the hospital to try and save Tina, narrowly escaping being run over by Myers, still in the stolen car. Loomis shows up and challenges Myers to a final showdown back where it started – at the Myers house, where the murder spree started on Halloween in 1963. (I don’t know exactly where he goes, but that doesn’t even LOOK like the Myers house. It’s completely different.) He’ll be there waiting, and so will Jamie.
Myers decoys the army of cops lying in wait at the house to head for the school.
At the house, Myers wounds Loomis kills the one remaining cop, chases Jamie, injuring her – but she stops him by addressing him as “Uncle Boogeyman” and removing his mask. (???) He sheds a single tear as she touches his face, then flies into a rage, chasing her again. She finds Loomis, and they lure Myers into a trap which consists of a steel net being dropped from the ceiling, Loomis firing several tranquiliser darts into him, then beating Myers with a plank until the good Doctor keels over either suffering a stroke or heart attack. (It’s all a bit Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote, to be honest)
Ultimately, Myers is in a cell, manacled, ready to be transferred to a maximum-security facility where he’ll spend the rest of his days.
Except – there’s a guy.
Someone arrives in Haddonfield early in the film, dressed all in black, black cowboy boots, long black coat, black cowboy hat – we don’t know who he is, he just mysteriously pops up, as if more was to be made of him, but his scenes were cut. He has a kind of rune tattoo on his wrist, identical to one that we’ve never noticed on Myers’s wrist until this film AND we see on a wall in the Myers house.
This man in black shows up, there’s an explosion, Myers is missing again, and Haddonfield seems to need a new Police Department because all the cops are dead.
And that’s it. The film ends right there, feeling like half a film.
The next movie better make good on an explanation!