HALLOWEEN 4: THE
RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS
The best of the sequels, at any rate
(Brian's note - no positive review from me has received so much derision as this one, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I change but one word, which I agreed even then might've been excessive - it's not a GREAT effort, I mean, c'mon, The Thing was a great effort. Halloween 4 is a FINE effort.)
It is not without a little trepidation that I decided to give each of the Halloween sequels its own review. I did all nine Friday The 13th movies in one big post, to avoid a huge stack of Friday The 13th threads that none of us crusty alt.horror oldtimers want to see. Why do this differently? Aside from the obvious need for the original film to get its own review, there has always been something oddly compelling for me about even the weakest sequels here, although part 4 is the last of the bunch that I'd actually recommend. The Halloween series has seen its ups and downs, and I can't honestly say I'm looking forward to an EIGHTH installment (although I dig the tentative title, H2K), but there's something here. Maybe it's that this is one series that never - at least intentionally - descended into self-parody; all the installments were honest (if often crass and clumsy) attempts to be horror movies, which is a refreshing change from most Nightmares on Elm Street. Maybe it's because of the ludicrously vague and convoluted "Thorn cult" aspect introduced late in the series, which might be absurd and would make John Carpenter spin in his grave if he were dead, but hell, I think it's a hoot. And maybe it's just Ellie Cornell. Rggggellllle!
1981 saw the release of Halloween II, the last Carpenter-created slasher installment in this series. Michael Myers, burnt to a cinder and shot in both eyes, looked like he was down for the count, but who are we kidding? Since then til 1988, there had been seven Friday The 13th movies, four A Nightmare On Elm Street movies, two Silent Night, Deadly Night movies, and another Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was only a matter of time until Moustapha Akkad and co. figured out that there might yet be some box-office life in our favorite serial-killing mime. And thus comes Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers, which was the slasher genre's last gasp at credibility.
It's ten years after the events of the first two films (just pay no attention to that Part III behind the curtain). Michael's been kept in a coma in the basement of one of those mental institutions whose bottom floor is a multi-caged hive of maniacs and gibbering idiots; the attendant calls it "where society dumps its worst nightmares". Laurie, meanwhile, is quite dead, for reasons unknown, but she left behind a little girl: seven-year-old Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris, whose official website has a hilarious page where she bashes just about everybody she's ever worked with, burning bridges left and right). Guess she'd married a guy named Lloyd. Jamie's been adopted by the Carruthers family, in Haddonfield, natch. And on the tenth anniversary of Michael's escape from the mental institution at the beginning of the first film, he's scheduled to be transported to...well, not like it matters where, does it? 'cuz you know that transport ain't gonna make it. The rest of the setup for the film you can piece together yourself.
That setup might be simple, but what unfolds is, incredibly, a plot. Myers' pursuit of the girl, Loomis' pursuit of Myers, a sheriff's department that (for once) actually believes what's going on and a whole town full of gun-toting, drunk, vigilante rednecks more likely to shoot innocent bystanders than what they're after...these weave together for a fun story with lots of variables and conflicts bouncing around to be explored, with varying degrees of depth. There are some rather inane contrivances (like how Myers - in one case, accidentally - cuts off long distance and power service to the whole town!), but there's actually something going on here for once; it's nice to see a slasher movie that doesn't just plonk people down in an enclosed space and let them get whittled off.
Donald Pleasance is back on board as Loomis, sporting a limp and a scar for his 100%-surface-area burns at the end of Halloween II. You might call that getting off easy. Pleasance was reportedly conned into accepting the role; he was told that Carpenter himself had read Alan B. McElroy's script and called it the best script of the series. Carpenter never read it. (not that it matters; Pleasance should've been able to judge for himself what a good script is, and besides, in terms of script, it probably IS the best of the series, the original not being a movie whose script ever comes to mind when one thinks of its myriad merits) No matter though; Pleasance turns in my favorite performance of his in the series; he's a little more overtly nuts than he was in the first two films. Think less Van Helsing and more Captain Ahab. I just love the guy's lines in this movie: "We are not talking about any ordinary prisoner...we are talking about Evil on two legs!" "You're talking about him as if he were a human being. That part of him died years ago." This is the kind of script that Halloween II should have had.
Danielle Harris - who has since turned into a bit of a fox - is wonderful as this frightened, confused little girl who misses her mother, is scared shitless of her uncle and blames herself for her adoptive family's conflicts. No, she's not one of those stupid, annoying kids which musters up inhuman levels of courage and resourcefulness in the last act, making the adults around them look like cowardly idiots. She's a kid, and yet (like with Newt from Aliens) she's not made out to be an undue burden (y'know, other than the fact that she's the reason Myers has his ginch in a twist this time 'round).
And yes, oh, be still my beating heart, this movie features the big-screen debut of little-seen superfox Ellie Cornell, as Rachel Carruthers, Jamie's teenaged adoptive sister. I'll be honest with you. Ellie could be reading excerpts from the Yellow Pages and I'd still be enthralled. (I remember my girlfriend at the time asking me who else I thought was pretty, typical insecure-chick bullshit. She basically had to beat it out of me after several game "None of them are half as pretty as you" responses; I know better than to volunteer that kind of information. When she saw her, she was rather non-plussed, Ellie being in most regards her exact opposite)
Ah, Ellie, Ellie, where have you gone? There was this, a bit part in Married To The Mob, Halloween 5, and a little-seen TV movie called Chips: The War Dog in 1993 (which, yes, I got a friend to tape simply because he got that channel and I didn't). She's been MIA ever since. After a six-year screen absence, Ellie returns this year in Free Enterprise, that movie where William Shatner plays himself and raps. I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait.
The rest of the cast mostly does their jobs (really, do we have any doubt about the fate of Rachel's cheatin' boyfriend and the town slut who he's shacking up with?), but there are a few more shining lights in there. Like Carmen Filpi in a brief, delightful role as a mad, cross-country-traveling preacher who gives Loomis a ride ("You can't kill damnation, mister! It don't die like a man dies!"), and Beau Starr as the town sheriff who takes Loomis totally seriously, and has to make a hard choice in how to fulfill his duties. And really, while Kathleen Kinmont doesn't take it all off, even just the bra puts a smile on my face.
The character of Myers is a little sillier here than in part one, but no moreso than in part two. He exhibits super-strength (watch out for that shotgun murder, it ain't what you think!), but then, this is the same guy who lifted up a nurse with one arm way out at arm's length. He can see awfully well for a guy who got shot in the eyes last time 'round. And that mask of his seems a little too, uh, white. But that's okay, it is, after all, a new mask (splendidly doomy scene where he gets it, too).
I know what you're wondering, and I don't blame you. Does he do...The Fade (TM)? Well, yes and no. There are a couple of scenes where you think you might see him, but just when you think you've focused on him, he disappears. One of these scenes, in the attic of the sheriff's home, looks so dim on videotape that it may be one of those things that eventually push me into buying a DVD player.
The script is mostly well-done, with a scene of childhood taunting that's so hilariously cruel that it actually sounds like something real kids would say, not to mention one of the world's most dangerous Halloween pranks (good way to get yourself shot).
All of it adds up to a really fine effort, far better than anybody could have expected, but there are some things that pull this movie down away from being a real standout. One is the ending; not that it's bad, but the movie simply runs out of steam in its last ten minutes with a climax aboard a truck, and we all have a fairly good idea where things are going anyway, so long is the buildup to it. And the other is that it has some awfully big shoes to fill; director Dwight H. Little is no John Carpenter. And while neither was Rick "Halloween II" Rosenthal, at least his movie managed to pretty well re-create the look and mood of the original. Such a thing would be awfully hard to pull off here, and probably not really appropriate; it is, after all, ten years later, and things are different. So, perhaps unavoidably, Halloween 4 isn't quite as scary and moody as Halloween II, even though in every other regard it's immeasurably superior.
Still, after the wheezy climax, we get a great little denoument, setting up another sequel in a way I hadn't anticipated (well, I had, but it's telegraphed so early on with so long in which nothing was done with it that I was convinced they weren't going to go with it). Too bad that when Halloween 5 actually came to pass, it didn't take this tack, and stuck with pretty familiar turf, up until a way-out-there ending.
Halloween 4 did fair business and has attracted over the years a kind of respect from slasher fans almost never afforded this kind of thing. It didn't take the slasher genre anywhere new; it's just a superior example of the form, with respect for what made the original film work (even throwing in appearances by the now-teenaged kids Laurie babysat). At a time when slasher flicks were gory without being suspenseful, and loaded with cheesy FX and worse one-liners, this movie, for all its flaws and traditional slasher trappings, was a refreshing change of pace: a slasher film that took itself, and its audience, seriously; the last of its kind.