The fine and upstanding Cates family have recently inherited a mansion and are eager to move in. The only problem is that the mansion is already inhabited! Not only has a gang of street punks declared that the mansion belongs to them but the house is also home to the ghost of Tyler Walker (Jonathan Chapin). A great actor, Tyler committed suicide after being swindled out of his possessions by the love of his life, Myrna. After the Cates family plays an elaborate practical joke on the street gang (and the joke simply has to be seen to believed), the gang declares that they will take revenge. Because the Cates’s daughter, Robin (Jill Whitlow), is dead ringer for Myrna, Tyler’s ghost decides to help take out the street punks. Death by shotgun, dirt bike, and dumb waiter follows.
The two Cates children are played by Jill Whitlow and Tom Bresnahan. Whitlow and Bresnahan ended up dating after they finished shooting the film and their obvious chemistry brings an apparently unintended subtext to all of their sibling interactions in Twice Dead. Jill Whitlow also appeared in Night of the Creeps and, with her ability to be both sexy and wholesome at the same time, was one of the first crushes of many an 80s and 90s child.
A mix between The Amityville Horror and Death Wish 3, Twice Dead was one of the many horror films to come out of Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures in the 80s. It’s dumb but it has both Jill Whitlow and enough of a sense of humor to be entertaining. The street punks, who all have names like Crip, Silk, Stony, and Candy, are all annoying so you don’t mind seeing them get killed in various ways. Todd Bridges proves that the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum by playing a Petie, a friendly guy who likes to hang out at the library, while the amazing Charlie Spradling, who appeared in several films like this back in the day, plays a member of the gang. Sadly, neither one of them comes to a good end.
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 