The family and I are off to a haunted fire station! Did I ever tell you how much I love the Halloween season? And speaking of Halloween, let's talk about...
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
The movie opens right where the last one ended. Well, it opens a few minutes before the last one ended. Michael Myers gets shot up by the posse and the police and falls down a hole. Except this time, we see him crawl through an opening just before they toss down a stick of dynamite to finish him off. Near death, he crawls and comes across a hermit's shack and tries to kill him before he seems to fall into a nearly year-long coma. Continuing Michael's streak of being the absolute luckiest serial killer ever, the hermit takes care of him for 364 days before Michael wakes up and immediately murders him. So much for gratitude.
Awake and with the juices flowing again, Michael goes to tie up some loose ends and once again tries to murder his young niece Jamie Lloyd after failing the year prior. While the last one had set up Jamie to be evil, this one hand waved it away and instead made her unable to speak because of the PTSD, something actor Donald Pleasance who plays Dr. Loomis, was not happy about, he thought they should have explored making Jamie the villain more.
This is going to sound weird to describe a horror movie this way, but the best word I can use to describe this one would be cruel. I know it's horror, but everything just seems so mean spirited. For one, Rachel, the babysitter from number four gets murdered in the first 20 minutes, Michael beheads a dog and keeps the head as a trophy, there's a surprisingly long sequence where Michael is trying and failing to run over 12-year-old Jamie in a car, and then Dr. Loomis is a raving lunatic in this one. He spends most of the movie yelling at Jamie and then gleefully uses her as bait while they're trapped in the old Myers house. I know how it sounds, but it's kind of uncomfortable to watch at times. Then when you find out what Jamie went through in the next movie before she gets murdered, you begin to think someone REALLY hates her.
There are things I really liked in this movie though. Jamie is ostracized and picked on at the hospital she's at, but there's a really sweet relationship between her and a boy named Billy that's just so cute you can't help but root for them both. Donald Pleasance's Loomis, despite being unhinged, is really good. No matter how much the new Halloween movies try to talk about Laurie Strode's obsession with Michael, it never comes off as genuine as Loomis' does. He's literally Captain Ahab and Michael is the white whale. While I'm glad the series has continued, there has been no better ending to any of these movies than both Michael and Loomis going up in a ball of fire. They were meant to die together and it's a shame we never got that.
The absolute highlight of the movie though is the chase scene at the end. I liked the scene where Jamie tries to reach Michael and manages to get him to de-mask. This is the only time in the series you see Michael's humanity and it's as nice as it is fleeting because he snaps out of it and practically throws the mask back on his face. While I'm on the subject, I'm glad you don't get a good look at Michael's face, it's one thing I've always appreciated about these movies. Anyways, that chase also leads to an awesome scene where Jamie is hiding in a laundry chute. It's so good and it's as tense a scene as you're gonna see in a horror movie, and to think it's set up in the beginning makes it all the better! It's easily the best part.
While there are things I liked, it's not as good as part four. While Loomis directly makes his case to Michael multiple times, it doesn't come close to his pleading with Michael in the gas station during part four. Also, a lot of the characters are just bad. Rachel's friends range from over-the-top to cartoon characters with nothing in between. One couple thinks it's a good idea to dress up as Michael and pretend to murder some friends right in front of officers. Like, did they not remember what happened to Ben Tramer?! On that note, what the hell is with the people of this town dressing up like Michael? Especially when in the case of these three, he tried to murder two of their friends the year before. Don't they know the only named character to dress as Michael and live is my man Freddie Harris?
