Horror Film Review: Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (dir by Dominique Othenin-Girard)

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh … dammit.

Hi everyone! We are currently in the process of our annual horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens so I thought it would be a good idea if me and some of my fellow writers reviewed all of the Halloween films! Arleigh already reviewed the original Halloween back in 2010 and I took a look at the first sequel in 2012. So, it just made perfect sense to me that we go ahead and take a look at the rest of the films in the series!

Yesterday, Case reviewed Halloween 4 and, later, he’ll be taking a look at Resurrection and H20. Jedadiah Leland is taking look at Halloween 6 tomorrow. So, that leaves me with … *sigh* Halloween 5.

BLEH!

Before we dive into the crapfest that was Halloween 5, let’s take a look at the trailer! It’ll be fun!

The trailer’s actually fairly effective. I have to wonder how many people, way back in 1989, were fooled into seeing this film as a result of this trailer? I imagine probably more than who are willing to admit it. Paying money to see Halloween 5 doesn’t seem like something anyone would want to brag about.

Halloween 5 is the one that has the dumb cops. Now, I know that every Halloween film seems to feature at least a few dumb cops but the ones in Halloween 5 are really dumb. And they get their own theme music! That’s right — whenever these two dumb cops show up on screen, comedic circus music plays. Needless to say, it’s woefully out of place in a horror movie. I read that this was apparently meant to be an homage to the dumb cops from the original Last House On the Left. This despite the fact that … EVERYONE HATED THE DUMB COPS IN LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT!!! Even Wes Craven later said that the dumb cops were a mistake! If you’re going to rip off (or pay homage) to another movie, don’t pay homage to the part that sucked!

Anyway, you may remember that Halloween 4 ended with Jamie (Danielle Harris) attacking her mother and holding a knife. Uh-oh, looks like Jamie’s going to be a murderer! Well, no — that would have been too interesting. Halloween 5 finds Jamie being committed to a mental hospital for a year while Michael Myers (Don Shanks) is in a coma. Michael eventually comes out of his coma and starts stalking Jamie all over again.

Once again, Dr. Loomis (a depressingly frail Donald Pleasence) is one of the few people who realizes that Michael is still alive and once again, nobody is willing to listen to him. Here’s the thing: Dr. Loomis may be kinda crazy and yes, all the scars are kinda disturbing but he’s been right every single freaking time in the past. I understand that the people of Haddonfield are kind of in denial about Michael but this is just getting ridiculous.

Rachel Carrathurs (Ellie Cornell) returns for this movie but she gets killed early on. Apparently, she was killed so that the audience would know that anyone could be killed and that nobody was safe but Rachel was such a strong character and Ellie Cornell did such a good job playing her in the previous film that you really feel her absence in Halloween 5. Her death leaves a void that the film fails to adequately fill. Add to that, if you insist on killing a kickass character like Rachel, at least give her a memorable death scene. Don’t just have her blithely wandering around the house half-naked until she suddenly gets stabbed, as if she was just some generic slasher victim and not the lead of the previous movie.

With Rachel dead, it now falls to her amazingly annoying best friend, Tina (Wendy Kaplan), to serve as Jamie’s protector. Tina is hyperactive and talkative and quirky and blah blah blah. Basically, she’s like that person who is really annoying but since you’ve known her since the third grade, you feel obligated to hang out with her.

It all leads to another big Halloween party and few rather bloodless deaths. It’s all pretty boring, to be honest. There is one good scene where Michael chases Jamie in a car (the headlights cutting through the darkness create a wonderfully eerie effect) but, otherwise, it’s depressingly generic.

In the end, Michael is captured and put in a jail cell. Fortunately, a mysterious man in black shows up and breaks him out. Gee, I wonder what that’s about?

Halloween 5 is undoubtedly the worst of the Halloween films.

Bleh!

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers; ALT Title: Anybody seen my pants? Really, I’m cold.

Posted on October 26, 2016 by casewright

halloween-4-return-of-michael-myers-poster

We open in rural …. Iowa? Illinois? Middlewest? We see lots of ramshackle farms and shitty halloween decorations, but that’s not all… there’s also a prison for the criminally insane. Apparently, it’s time to move Michael Myers from his basement asylum Hell to somewhere….else. MM is put in an ambulance for transport and proceeds to wake and stick his thumb through a man’s skull. I get it- MM is pissed, but why didn’t he use his thumb powers to get out of the prison basement?! Oops, I forgot to take my stupid pills….ahhhhh…. this is GENIUS!!!

We are in a suburban home and we meet Jaime who is the orphaned child of Jamie Lee Curtis AKA MM’s Niece. She is having all kinds of disturbing hallucinations of MM coming to get her. Her adoptive sister Rachel is not much help. She whines about babysitting her sister Jaime because she wants to be the latest conquest of the massively eye browed Brady.

Enter Donald Pleasance (DP). He’s all scarred up from his previous MM run-ins and limps his way to the Prison Administrator. They go back and forth: DP: MM is evil. Administrator: No, you are. DP: He’ll kill everyone. Administrator: You’ll kill everyone. DP: I’m evil. Administrator: No! MM is evi…. You got me! Phone Rings: MM has escaped.

MM has found a Diner/Gas Station who’s decor is wall to wall Abe Lincoln pictures. MM who is evil, and apparently a closeted supporter of John Wilkes Booth, kills everyone there. Donald Pleasance arrives and tries to kill MM and fails. MM steals a tow truck and drives off to Haddonfield, Illinois to purportedly kill his niece Jaime. DP is stranded and is forced to hitch rides.

Jaime is being bullied at school. Rachel picks her up to get a costume for Halloween, which you’d think would be this town’s least favorite holiday, but NOPE. They arrive at a drug store where one of the clerks is Kathleen Kinmont- the Sheriff’s daughter- who really really wants to sleep with Brady and Rachel is oblivious to this.

Rachel takes Jaime trick or treating and Brady decides to pork Kathleen Kinmont (KK) and gets totally busted when Rachel rings the bell and KK answers the door for some reason and for another some reason doesn’t have any pants on! Brady is in the background and no one seems phased that KK is without pants for 45 more minutes of the film. This cheating distracts Rachel, leaving Jaime on her own.

DP goes to the Haddonfield Sheriff and convinces him that MM has RETURNED!!! He lets the town know and a beer addled Drunken Posse forms. These men are beer fueled, shotgun toting, drunkards going on an MM hunt!!

The Drunk Posse thinks they’ve spotted MM, but they just shot up and murder a sleeping drunk guy. OOPS!

The Sheriff and DP find the police station filled with dead cops. They go outside and find Jaime and Rachel. They take the remaining police force to his house to make a last stand. This is where is gets weird…. Brady and KK are trying to pork and are interrupted by her dad the Sheriff and his deputy. KK never puts on pants even when her dad and his co-workers arrive. It could be a pants allergy. The Deputy proceeds to sit in a rocking chair…yep…a rocking chair. Huh? I was in the Army for a long time; I learned how to breach a building, hold a fixed position, and look awesome in Green, but I was never taught the Rocking Chair maneuver. Maybe, that was just for Delta Force guys.

Brady tries to board up the house a bit. KK checks on the deputy, but he’s dead. Looks like Myers did kill the DEP U TEE!!! [sung] Then, MM kills KK- She’s now pantsless forever with the angels in heaven. Jaime is upstairs with Rachel and MM goes after her. Brady tries to stop him, but MM kills him too. MM has more urge to kill than a person who had to sit through a 3 hour timeshare presentation.

The girls manage to escape: Jaime by being lowered slowly down from the roof and Rachel much more quickly by falling off the roof. They run for the school and MM pursues them. The Drunken Posse arrives and manages to not kill themselves or others for this scene only. They take the girls in the truck and drive away to safety …. or so they think!!! MM climbs up from under the truck Indiana Jones style and kills all of the Drunken Posse. Rachel takes the truck and slams on the brakes to get MM to fly off of the roof of the truck. She then runs him over. The Sheriff and some extras arrive to shoot up MM. Jaime goes to the now deceased MM and touches his corpse.

They go home and Jaime dresses up as a clown like MM did in Halloween 1 and stabs her adoptive mom to death. The End.

This is the most analysis this film has ever received or should, but it’s Halloween time. Thanks for enjoying this terrible film with me. Remember, as always, if you like my work, tell my boss Lisa Marie Bowman!!!

halloween-4-the-return-of-michael-myers-jamie-michael

Horror Review: All Souls Day (dir. by Jeremy Kasten)

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Arleigh

All Souls Day was part of the wave of zombie films that continues to flood the direct-to-video (and at times straight to cable) market. This particular zombie movie was written by Mark A. Altman who also wrote the campy and very B-movie-like House of the Dead 2. This was a zombie flick which actually improved on Uwe Boll’s own House of the Dead that doesn’t really come as a surprise. All Souls Day was Altman’s second try at another zombie movie and while this second attempt wasn’t as fun as his previous one it still managed to be a watchable and interesting zombie movie.

The film’s set in a dusty Mexican town that hides a dark secret from its past. A young couple (played by Marisa Ramirez and Travis Wester) happen upon what seems like an abandoned town. They soon come across a funeral procession and when they inadvertently interrupt the ritual all hell literally breaks loose. It doesn’t help the couple that the only person who seems to be real in this town was the sheriff whose own past ties in with the secret of the town. It was very good to see genre veteran David Keith in the role of the town sheriff. His limited time in the movie was pretty good.

When the town’s people (who by now have shown themselves to be zombies) begin to lay siege on the young couple in the town’s only hotel the rest of the movie gradually shows more of what made this particular Mexican town a death trap for any passerby who happen to come across it on All Souls Day. Soon enough help comes in the form of the young couple’s two friends who arrive in town only to get themselves stuck in the same dire situation the original couple find themselves in.

The resolution of the movie was handled well and it brought a nice supernatural origin and reason as to why the town’s population has turned into flesh-eating zombies. The performances in the film could be seen as being mixed. The more veteran performers like Jeffrey Combs, David Keith, Danny Trejo (as the town’s manipulative patriarch) and Laura Herring perform their roles well without being too over-the-top. The actors playing the pair of young couples on the other hand go from very good to awful in the span of moments in some of the scenes. It’s really this mixed bag in the cast’s performance which keeps All Souls Day from turning into one of those hidden gems in a hill of crap that most zombie flicks turn out to be.

The gore effects in this film was pretty good in the small amount of sequences where the zombies end up doing what they do best once they get a hold of someone. While I was hoping for more of the grue in this particular zombie movie I wasn’t too surprised why it didn’t have more. Other than the pair of young couple there really wasn’t much living people for these zombies to munch on. The film itself show’s it’s low-budget origins in that it looks like something one would see premiere on a random Saturday night on the SyFy Channel. The film actually did premiere on that channel when it was still called SciFi. It’s a look that says TV instead of film, but despite that little nitpick it doesn’t distract much from the experience.

Now, most zombie films of the low-budget variety tend to just have badly done make-up effects. With All Souls Day the filmmakers seem to have done an end-around that budgetary problem by taking a page out of the classic Italian zombie flicks of the 1980’s by making these undead dry, decayed creatures. It’s something that worked well for the Fulci zombies and here it works as well.

All Souls Day was not a great zombie film by any stretch of the imagination, but it had enough entertaining moments and some genuine scary sequences to make it an enjoyable hour and a half of horror viewing on any October night.