Thursday, September 27, 2012

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)







     After being shot with about a hundred rounds of ammunition and falling into a mine shaft, Michael Myers slides down a water stream. He ends up collapsing at some old hermit's house out in the middle of bum fucked Egypt.  The old hermit for some fucking reason lets Michael sleep at his place for an entire year. Halloween Eve comes around, which causes Michael to wake up from his year coma and put on a shitty looking blank white mask. He kills the old hermit guy and heads to, you guessed it, Haddonfield to finish stalking his niece Jamie Lloyd. Jamie is now in a clinic for mentally disabled children. She hasn't spoken a word since she stabbed her foster mother with a pair of scissors the Halloween before and is now sensing and seeing what Michael sees.   Everything seems quiet and everyone involved with last year's Halloween encounter with Michael such as Rachel, Jamie, and Dr. Loomis are paranoid that Michael will return to finish what he started.  Michael returns, kills off Rachel, and proceeds to stalk Rachel's annoying as fuck best friend Tina and her three high school dumbass friends.  It is up to both Loomis, Sheriff Meeker, and Jamie to stop Michael for good. Meanwhile, a mysterious man has appeared in Haddonfield too that has the same mark on his wrist as Michael. Will Michael finally be stopped or will things take an unexpected turn for the worst for little Jamie Lloyd?






            In 1988, executive producer Moustapha Akkad brought Michael Myers back to Haddonfield in the franchise's fourth entry, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.  The film did so well at the box office and made the fans very happy to see Michael back as well as the awesome twist ending that gave everyone a nice surprise.  Fans were curious where Akkad and company would take the fifth installment with a great twist ending like that.  I'm sorry for spoiling the ending of Halloween 4 for any of you who haven't seen it, but since I'm reviewing the sequel to it then I can't skip over talking about what it was. Halloween 4 ended on a high note with Jamie Lloyd picking up a pair of scissors and stabbing her foster mother as she was about to give Jamie a bath. It ended with Jamie standing at the top of the stairs wearing her clown costume and holding up the bloody scissors as Loomis starts to scream, "NOOO!!!!!! NOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOO!!!!".     It was implied that when Jamie touched Michael's hand near the end that his evil was passed on to her and that she would pick up possibly where he began at six years old back in 1963. Unfortunately for us Halloween fans, none of that happened.  Instead of working off that idea for the fifth film, Akkad rushed Halloween 5 into production before the screenplay was even completed.  Exactly a year later in 1989, one year after the release of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers was released to the theater. Most fans left the theaters unhappy and majorly disappointed back in 1989.  Halloween 5 also didn't do that well at the box office.






           I will say it now. I hate Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.  For me, it is the worst installment in this series. Halloween Resurrection takes second place and Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009) in third.   Let's start out talking about the script. Wait, there's a script for this? Yes, someone actually wrote this thing. Oh, not someone, three someones wrote this film.  Michael Jacobs, Dominque  Othenin- Girard, and Shem Bitterman wrote this thing called Halloween 5.  I will give them some credit for not having Michael karate chopped by rapper Busta Rhymes, but that however does not excuse writing  the most giggly annoying and fucking unbearable swat named Tina.  Oh my God!  I would rather watch Spongebob Squarepants run around in his whitey tighties laughing like he just inhaled Helium than to watch this bitch on screen for one second!  While Tina is the worst part of the film for me, yes, there's other people and things that leave this toilet backed up and ready to overload into a fucking shit Fountain of Youth.  There's some annoying stuttering kid named Billy, who is probably related to Jake from Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning.  The only good part about him is when his stupidity gets him hit by a car.  We get two goofy cops that do nothing except act like idiots and get killed by Michael. If I wanted to see goofy cops acting like idiots in a horror film then I would simply watch The Last House On The Left '72 thank you very much!













        We get introduced to Tina's boyfriend  and two of their friends, who I could really care less about.  All I can remember about them is that the one chick looked like Tara Reid dressed in a Devil costume. The only characters that are back from Halloween 4 are Rachel, Jamie, Dr. Loomis, Sheriff Meeker, and of course Michael.   Another thing that I absolutely hated aside from shitty new characters is that Rachel gets killed off. A character that I and the other Halloween fans came to love in Halloween 4 gets killed in the first like 10-15 minutes. Wow, what a big fuck you!  Oh well, the same thing happens with Jamie in the next installment and again with Laurie Strode in Halloween Resurrection.  If you are going to kill off characters, kill the supporting characters or the super annoying ones. NOT THE HEROINE OR HERO! That would have been like if they killed off Tommy Jarvis in one of the Friday The 13th sequels.   That's just one thing I absolutely hate about many horror movie sequels is killing a character I have come to love and enjoy watching.  The only time that it didn't bother me was in A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors because then we already had a new heroine (Kristen), but then she got killed off in the next film.  Only do this if you have set up a good new hero/heroine for the villain to battle or it serves good purpose to the story.







           Jamie is mute for a great portion of the film. I didn't really like that direction either even though I think I know the reason why. Michael went totally silent after killing Judith, so it is either to be similar to that case or that she was just in a bit of catatonic shock from what happened.  The Michael Myers mask looked like shit. Definitely the worst mask in the franchise.







          The whole bit at the beginning with Michael sliding down the stream made me laugh because it looked so ridiculous.  I'm surprised since he fell into a mine shaft that he didn't try to find his buddies Harry Warden or Jason Voorhees for help.  Dr. Loomis seemed a bit more crazy than usual in this film. Probably because Donald Pleasence realized how much the writers and director sucked ass.   I still find it funny that the old hermit dude at the beginning let Michael sleep in his house ALL YEAR LONG! How could he survive not eating or drinking anything for a full year? Oh yeah, I guess Human needs don't apply to Boogeymen.  The whole man in black part and the flag sign on the wrists of both the mystery guy and Michael were weird. We do discover what all of that means in the next installment though.












      The special -FX were alright by KNB. I heard the film got butchered by the MPAA and had to cut some stuff out.







            The music by Alan Howarth was pretty blah. Definitely the worst by him. I don't blame Howarth though, I blame the shitty director.








             The direction by Dominque Othenin- Girard was horrendous. That's what you get when you get the hack director from Omen IV: The Awakening to direct your movie. I saw some interviews with this guy on the Halloween 25 Years of Terror documentary and he is such a hack and doesn't know shit about what makes a good horror film. I also heard how he treated special-FX artist Greg Nicotero on the set of making this film. Nicotero suggested an idea for a specific FX and this hack job told him, "What do you know? You're just the make up-FX guy."  You know what Dominque Othenin-Girard? FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! And...FUCK YOU!  I haven't worked in the actual film business, but have made short films. But, if I had some ass clown like this on my set, his ass would be fired and thrown to burn in the pits of Hell.











         The acting ranges. The actors returning such as Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd, Ellie Cornell in a small return as Rachel, Beau Starr as Sheriff Meeker, and Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis were the best they could be considering they had a shitty script and director to work with. We wouldn't see Danielle Harris back in the Halloween franchise until 2007 with Rob Zombie's remake where Harris plays Annie Brackett. The new actors however were pretty terrible. Wendy Kaplan as Tina was annoying and too giggly. I'm not sure if it was the actress too or just the shitty director and script. I've never seen this actress act in anything else.  All of the other actors were just forgettable and annoying as Hell. I thought Don Shanks was "okay" as Michael Myers, but his mask looked like shit. I also HATED the fact that Michael actually cries at a point in this film. I'll take him wearing a dusty Santa Claus beard and screaming "DIE!" to Loomis before I would have him crying like a baby.






            Overall, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a terrible movie. It is the bottom of the barrel for this franchise in my humble opinion.  Sure, Resurrection blew, but at least Busta and Tyra didn't annoy me to the degree that Tina did. Yes, Zombie's H2 (2009) was a clusterfuck but I give the man credit for at least attempting something different. But, this, this one just angers me every time I watch it.




                       GRADE
                           D




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