After the... change of pace that was Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the Halloween franchise lay dormant for several years. The creators of the franchise, John Carpenter and Debra Hill, had wanted to continue with the idea of a different standalone story for each Halloween sequel, and had even had the idea that Halloween 4 would be a ghost story. Producer Moustapha Akkad, however, wanted to bring Michael Myers back. In the end, money won out and Michael Myers was brought back from his fiery demise to terrorise Haddonfield once more.
It's October 30, 1988 - ten years since Michael Myers last returned to his home town of Haddonfield to kill a whole bunch of people in his quest to murder his sister Laurie. Since the end of Halloween II, however, Michael has been in a coma after the explosion that Dr. Loomis caught him in, and Laurie has married, had a daughter named Jamie, and died in a car crash. When Michael hears that he has a niece, however, he miraculously comes out of his coma and escapes from the transport taking him back to Smith's Grove, killing his guards in the process, and heads back to Haddonfield again to get his murder on. Meanwhile his seven-year-old niece Jamie has been having nightmares about Michael, who she calls "the nightmare man" - the two appear to have some sort of psychic link. Jamie's foster sister Rachel agrees to take her out trick-or-treating that Halloween, unaware that Michael is heading straight for them. Oh, and Dr. Loomis returns as well, his only injuries from the massive explosion at the end of Halloween II being some facial scars and a limp, and immediately gets back into his role of being one step behind Michael, working with the sheriff to try to stop Michael before he slaughters most of the town.
You know, if I were the town of Haddonfield, and I was hoping to never have a repeat of the worst mass killing in its history or even make mention of it, I wouldn't let the stores sell Michael Myers masks at Halloween (or indeed at any other time of the year). There's at least one death that could have been wholly avoided if the town had followed that plan, and possibly even more. Then again, Haddonfield could at least teach the towns of Springwood and Crystal Lake a thing or two about handling their notorious serial killers - instead of pretending they didn't exist or trying to erase that part of their history, when the residents of Haddonfield hear Michael Myers is back they promptly form up a posse and go hunting. Hey, I'm not saying it was the best plan, just that it's a change to see a more pro-active response in these films.
Of all the Halloween films up till this point, The Return of Michael Myers is by far the one that fit the traditional 80s slasher mould. It's got a remarkably high body count, several teens-in-peril, and most of the deaths are particularly gruesome. I particularly like the impalement via shotgun (and there's probably a study to be had there on the role of guns in 80s slasher films and why the majority of the stalk-and-slashers of that time avoided using them). It's also got a pretty good cast - Donald Pleasence is of course the obvious one here, but Danielle Harris as Jamie in her first film role is also very good. Of course, Harris has also gone on to have an excellent film career in general, and has become something of a horror movie icon as well.
However... Halloween 4 also introduces the supernatural plot element that very nearly killed the franchise stone dead by the 6th installment, and it's not even used particularly well here. The psychic link that Jamie and her uncle Michael apparently share is barely explored except for a brief instance of it near the beginning and the ending stinger, of course - it barely qualifies as Checkov's Sinister Psychic Link. Also, Donald Pleasence is really badly used in this film - he's gone from being the woodcutter of the first two films, coming in the nick of time to save the day, to becoming the series' Crazy Ralph - limping from scene to scene to inform everyone of how dead they'll all be if Michael Myers isn't stopped. The fact that the filmmakers decided to just not even try to explain how both Michael and Loomis survived that explosion at the end of Halloween II doesn't help matters either.
Halloween 4 isn't a bad film - in fact it's above average when you compare it to the fortunes of some other slasher franchises of the same time period - and it must have cheered up the fans who were likely still reeling from Season of the Witch. But it also marks the beginning of an unfortunate downturn in the series' quality, as they start to shoehorn in one of the most unlikely plots to exist in 80s slashers...
Comments