Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers
The fifth entry in the series takes some MAJOR risks, and many of its ideas are hit or miss, but this entry seems almost refreshing after the dead weight of Part 4, because it feels like they tried something different. After making us ludicrously believe Myers spent a year lying in some homeless guy’s shack without being detected, he returns, but with a somewhat different strategy, instead targeting the people Jamie cares about instead of Jamie herself. Like I said, not everything works here (the idiot cops “slapstick” music, Wendy Kaplan going WAY over the top as Tina), but when it hits on something fresh (Michael disguising himself as Tina’s boyfriend, also named Michael, kittens lapping up blood after a kill, Michael hesitating to kill Jamie, The Man In Black), it helps distinguish it as one of the better and underrated later sequels in the series, though I wonder why they had to kill off Ellie Cornell twenty minutes in (bad move), or why Myers seemingly has to murder a dog in all his movies (what a pussy), or WHERE OH WHERE did they find that horribly bad actress to play the head nurse at the clinic?? However, we do get well-acted scenes between Donald Pleasence’s Loomis and Danielle Harris’ Jamie (which Part 4 lacked), and the little girl manages to hold her own with The Legend pretty well. Myers’ change in strategy keeps the viewer guessing (while chasing Jamie and a little boy in a car when the children separate Myers chases down the little boy and runs him down instead. That’s coldblooded). Tamara Glynn is hot and sexy enough to make any hetero man’s blood boil. And the end confrontation between Loomis and Myers is just kickass, as any self-respecting Pleasence fan should be pumping their fist watching Michael get what’s coming to him. The final scene is confusing as fuck (did Meeker finally die a well-deserved idiot’s death?), and sadly set up the mediocre Part 6. In the end, underrated, and deserves a better reputation…
7/10