Thanks a lot, AMC...when you still did HorrorFest properly.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is a film that I do personally enjoy but, because of the aforementioned re-runs of it by AMC, it's not a film that I revisit in the franchise very often. But for Horror Month 2017, I have decided to brave it once again, and I can tell you that it isn't bad. It is a good movie, but...it's not really anything new, even by the standards of 1988 or the Halloween franchise as a whole...which is to its detraction, frankly.
To summarize the plot, it's been ten years in the town of Haddonfield since the babysitter murders of 1978. Young Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) is living with her adopted family after the death of her mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a car crash. I'd say that her father (Lance Guest) died there, too, but we all know what happened to him. She has incredibly vivid nightmares of her uncle whom she's never met, gets bullied by kids at school for being the niece of the boogeyman, and gets the distinction of living in actual Illinois instead of California, like her parents!
Naturally, we know it's Illinois and not California because of the lack of palm trees and all the corn!
Meanwhile, rather than being several piles of gory spaghetti as he was at the end of Halloween II, it seems that Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) has been in a coma after receiving only mild redness and irritation (if the later Halloween 5 is to be believed). Much like in the original, Michael escapes upon hearing that his niece is alive in Haddonfield. This is, of course, despite the instance of Dr. Sam Loomis (once more played by Donald Pleasence) that he be locked away.
With the authorities once more not believing him, Loomis runs off to Haddonfield in pursuit of Michael. Getting together with the Sheriff (Beau Starr) who initially does not believe him, Loomis combs Haddonfield to either find Jamie or Michael with the hopes of stopping the latter and...are you starting to see the problem here? No? Let me elaborate.
Halloween 4...follows almost the exact same notes as Halloween. Not just in plot, but also in invoking the imagery and themeing of the original.
A child is tormented by a group of children about the boogeyman while leaving school. Like Tommy Doyle in the original, so is Jamie tormented here.
A young woman runs through a neighborhood screaming for help while being pursued by a psycho killer, and nobody comes to her aid because they either went to Chicago for the night or are dicks. Laurie Strode in the original, Jamie in 4.
A mute child puts on a clown costume and stabs a family member to death but is only revealed at the very end. Michael in the original, Jamie in 4.
And as a weird aside, why does Haddonfield still carry the same Halloween costume that Michael Myers committed a grisly murder in back in 1963?
Another weird aside, why does Jamie have a picture of Michael that was clearly taken on that night in 1963 when he killed his sister?
Dr. Loomis reaches Haddonfield and is met with skepticism by the authorities - as previously stated - about Michael Myers until the shit begins hitting the fan. Kind of like that Halloween 1978 that went totally well for the fourteen people who were killed off horribly.
However, there is a reason for all these similarities, and it's a very simple one: Halloween III. Yes, I waited until this long to talk about it because Halloween III is really not as bad as people like to complain about it being. It's gotten a better reputation in more recent years and it's got its own laundry list of things we could go over that deserves its own review. However...it was an attempt by John Carpenter and Debra Hill to break the formula and go with an anthology series, and the movie going public did not go for it.
Thus, the long-standing executive producer of the series Moustapha Akkad decided they need to go back to what worked before. Halloween 4 had a massive ad campaign to assure the public that, yes, Michael Myers was back - right up to the film's subtitle. Needless to say, it worked. The fans came back in droves and the franchise continued for an additional four films before Rob Zombie came along.
...and we all know how well that turned out.
And while that might have worked at the time, the question remains if this was a good idea as a whole. Sure, we did eventually get H20 because of this decision (and yes, we'll be getting to that one), but we also got a lot of crap...and the Rob Zombie remakes. But let's look at the film itself, on its own merits.
As discussed, Halloween 4 repeats a lot of the same beats as the original. The plot is a shameless recycling. There's repeated themeing and dialogue. But it misses out on the suspense, which is a really bad thing to do in a Halloween movie. For example, in the original, Michael stalks Laurie and her friends for some time after she visits the Myers House to drop off a key, building up the tension and making the pay-off all the better when the killing starts. Loomis literally does not cross paths with Laurie until the very end of the film, swooping in at the last minute to save the day in what is one of the most iconic scenes of that film, using a magical six-shooter that shoots seven bullets to subdue Michael.
...hehe, editing errors!
In Halloween 4...Loomis runs into Jamie fairly early. In fact, Loomis seems to have the power to be conveniently wherever he needs to be for the plot. It's really quite remarkable and proves he's mastered some kind of dark sorcery in order to combat Michael and be wherever its convenient to the plot. But she's in a dangerous situation...and then Loomis and the cops immediately pull up and take her away to safety. Amazing how they show they can hold on the tension for a whole thirty seconds!
But there's really no suspense to speak of here. The few times it comes up, it's not concerning any of the characters we care about (of which there are all of three...and one of them is the killer). Halloween 4 has a lot of asshole victims, too. As much as I like watching horror movies to watch stupid people die from bad decisions...I don't really want to be rooting for people to die if that makes any sort of sense. Michael Myers is not the hero, he's the guy I want to see defeated by the people who are the heroes.
See also: Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Charles Lee Ray, Pinhead, et al.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people?
However, it is still a Halloween film and, in comparison to the confusing mess that is Halloween 5 or the complete steaming pile that is Halloween 6: The Origin of the Curse of Michael Myers Super Special Awesome Maxi Special Director's Cut Edition, it's not entirely bad. You really could do a lot worse...and believe me, besides just the aforementioned two films, they really did. It's only real crime was that it took out the suspense to a winning horror formula and didn't try to do anything new with that formula: it was safe, it was marketable. It was what the fans wanted.
And we all know that the fans getting exactly what they want...doesn't always go exactly how they want it to.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is now available from Universal.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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