Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Halloween 5 picks up events a year after the last outing. The now mute Jamie is being treated by Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield to find her, naturally he slays anyone who gets in his way. This sequel features a distinctly muddled plot and feels like a cop out after the ending of part 4. The script is terrible, there are too many irritating characters and this was obviously rushed out of the studio door.

The action opens by revealing that Myers escaped from the mineshaft he was blown down at the end of part 4 and recuperated with a hermit until Halloween came round again. Why the hermit decides to remove Michael Myers' mask and care for him for a year is beyond me, especially since his reward is to get murdered. Meanwhile Jamie is writhing in the hospital and while she has gone mute she also now seems to have some kind of telepathic link with her psycho uncle.

The film is full of red herrings and undeveloped plot points, for example what does the tattoo mean? Who is the mysterious man in black who seems to be watching events unfold? Why does Jamie have a telepathic link to her uncle? These questions are never cleared up.

The fact that the teen cast are so annoying makes their murders all the more enjoyable but although the body count is high the gore is lacking. Apparently the director wanted more but was overruled by producer Akkad. Akkad's plan was to release a new Halloween film to coincide with the holiday each year but after this one flopped he dropped the idea.

As usual Donald Pleasance is the only real actor in the cast and in fact this film features some of the most irritating characters I've ever seen in the slasher genre which is awash with irritating characters. While Pleasance does his best his character Loomis is really going off the rails in this film and he seems to have lost all sense of perspective in his desperation to defeat Myers. He is even prepared to use the young Jamie as bait in order to capture Michael.

The direction from Dominique Othenin-Girard is actually pretty skilful so it's a shame the material is so bad. The wedged in elements of humour are dumb in the extreme and they destroy what could have been a dark and foreboding mood completely. The murders themselves are lacking imagination; Myers even takes a leaf from Jason Vorhees book at one stage despatching coupling teens with a pitchfork. However the director does his best to introduce some tension and the scenes where Michael is coming for Jamie actually work quite well.

Still there is no escaping the fact that this effort sucks balls. It can't really lay claim to title of "worst in the series" but it definitely comes close and it has a spectacularly idiotic and bizarre ending. Fans of the series had to wait six years for the next film which provided some explanations but the fact that the big budget Halloween H20 which arrived three years after part 6 completely ignored this plot line is a clue to how bad it is.

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