Well, apparently good ol’ Michael Myers (played here by yet another stuntman, Donald L. Shank) didn’t die when he fell into a deep well at the Peckinpah-esque climactic shootout of "Halloween 4." He just scurried alongside a near river, where he was nursed back into good health by a kind old man that apparently didn’t bother to dress him or shower him for an entire year. It also turns out that Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) didn’t really slice-and-dice her mother with a pair of scissors the same way uncle Michael did in 1978. As 1989’s "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers" establishes (AKA weasels out of the hole the writers of "Halloween 4" left the series in), it was all a bad dream that Jamie is having on the eve of Halloween a year after the incidents portrayed in "Halloween 4." The movie also establishes through ominous cross-cutting between Jamie and Michael (along with too-frenetic-for-their-own-good camera angles) that the two are psychically connected. Jamie is living at the Haddonfield Children’s Clinic under the supervision of Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence, yet again reprising his most famous movie role), but step-sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) and her best friend Tina (Wendy Kaplan) come to visit and wish her well.
Michael, who blazes through Haddonfield’s streets during the daylight this time around on Halloween day (!), centers his attention on Rachel, Tina and their boyfriends. Why he doesn’t go straight for Jamie at the Children’s Clinic, where she’s completely vulnerable (again!) is never fully explained. Maybe it has something to do with the unspoken rule of horror movies about horny teenagers dying horrible deaths and little children not being affected. In fact, after Michael dispatches Tina’s boyfriend with a nice rack to the face (see picture on the right), the serial killer makes himself comfortable driving around the guy’s black muscle car with a hideous mask and almost getting away with killing Tina very early in the film. Despite still being the two most important characters in the movie, Dr. Loomis and Jamie Lloyd spend an enormous portion of the film’s 97 minutes off-camera. That leaves "Halloween 5" viewers stuck watching secondary and undeveloped (not to mention dull and uninteresting) characters go through the getting-naked-and-leaving-ourselves-exposed-to-great-danger routine for what seems like forever.
Like Paramount’s "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning," one isn’t quite sure if co-writer/director Dominique Othenin-Girard (who?) is playing it straight or flirting with doing a tongue-in-cheek parody of the indestructible-psycho-killer-on-a-rampage clichés that the series helped cement in the minds of its viewers. One moment "Halloween 5" trots two inept deputy police officers (complete with wacky cartoon sound effects!) finishing each other’s sentences. A few moments later poor Jamie is squeezing through a laundry chute in Myers’ old home (which looks nothing like the house in the first two "Halloween" movies) while trying not to be knifed to death my uncle Mike. One moment Jamie is running for her life in the basement of the Children’s Clinic she’s living in, but then we’re shown a mysterious man dressed in black (who looks an awful lot like the lead character in "Vampire Hunter D") wondering around Haddonfield as an unannounced (and never introduced) angel of death... or something like that.
The body count is higher than in any of the previous "Halloween" flicks (18 total deaths, versus "Halloween 4’s" 14). Yet not even the torturous hell that Jamie and her best friend Billy (Jeffrey Landman) go through when being chased by Michael’s car, nor Pleasence’s still-creepy pronouncements about Myers’ perpetual anger, can save "Halloween 5" from disappointing. It leaves one as empty and saddened at the wasted potential on display here as with the first "Halloween" sequel back in 1981, although the scene where young Danielle Harris (still the standout performer) lays in a coffin asking her uncle why he wants to kill her is among the best in the entire series. File this one under the ‘watch along with the prequel or don’t even think about wasting your time watching it’ category.
The Disc:
The quality of "Halloween 5’s" Widescreen Anamorphic (1:85:1) Video Transfer seems to have received a slight bump in quality from Anchor Bay’s similar work for "Halloween 4." Colors are brighter, skin tones more prominent and compression artifacts less noticeable; the film de-emphasizes shocks from dark places of the screen (of which there don’t seem to be any in "Halloween 5"), so the filmmakers concentrated on making the flick look good instead of menacing. Oh well, the remixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 makes the most out of loud sounds, screams and the forgettable dialogue the characters are asked to utter with a mostly-straight face. The music in "Halloween 5" doesn’t come across as moody or menacing as in "Halloween 4," but there are a few moments (like Jamie running through the basement of Haddonfield Children’s Clinic to a solo piano rendition of Carpenter’s classic theme) in which the sounds are more scary than anything happening in the actual film.
No subtitles are offered, but there are a few extras to get through. The movie’s Theatrical Trailer is here, along with an Introduction by Danielle Harris & Ellie Cornell to the movie that neatly ties in with the new ’Inside "Halloween 5" Documentary Anchor Bay has commissioned. Like "Halloween 4: Final Cut," emphasis is placed on cast & crew members commenting on the creation of the movie over filler material like movie clips; the discussions about how the filmmakers tried to shield young Danielle Harris away from as much trauma and psychological harm as possible were particularly fascinating. It’s a shame that the young actress’ efforts were wasted on a horror flick with such a mediocre attempt to keep the "Halloween" saga going for a few more sequels.
bottom line:
Despite another tour-de-force performance by then-young Danielle Harris and a still-able-to-scream Donald Pleasence, "Halloween 5" is a noticeable downgrade from the previous chapter of the Michael Myers saga. For everything the movie does right (Michael driving his own deadly car) it pulls something desperately wrong (the inept duo of deputies) that backfires badly. The ‘to be continued’ ending unfortunately ties "Halloween 5" directly to the next sequel, which is by far the worse entry in the series. Picture, sound and extras live up to Anchor Bay’s respectable DVD standards, but this one is only worth seeking if you’re a diehard "Halloween" completist or a fan of young Danielle Harris’ film work ("Halloween 4," "The Last Boy Scout," etc.).
By - J.M.'The Horrormeister'Vargas
1/2
