Saturday, July 14, 2018

Horror Movie Mini-Reviews: Halloween 5 (1989) and Halloween 6 (1995)

* Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers


Jamie is back on year after Halloween 4. She can no longer speak and lives in a children's hospital with round the clock care due to her trauma. Michael has been in a coma for a year after falling into a mineshaft and wakes up exactly one year later on Halloween. He kills the nermit who has cared for him and continues on his homicidal rampage.


Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is where this series starts to fall apart (not that 3 o 4 were that good to begin with). This is the first film to attribute supernatural elements to Michael and Jamie in ways that aren't fully developed and honestly don't really make sense. Michael has a rune on his arm that isn't explained until the next movie and Jamie somehow has a telepathic link to Michael, but only when he's killing. There is no explanation for this link or why Jamie can suddenly, conveniently speak halfway through the movie (after faking not being able to very badly). The good counterpart (all dressed in white of course) to Michael seems pretty evil what with kicking an innocent dog and doesn't really do much. He doesn't return for the next film either.


This film is a mess through and through. The only remotely creepy part is Michael playing cat and mouse with Jamie's sister Tina in her hous. The acting is bad. Bad dubbing is everywhere. The supernatural elements don't make sense. To top it all off, the ending is ambiguous so you have to wait until the next movie to see who lives and who dies or what happened to Michael. The only saving grace is Donald Pleasance as Dr. Loomis giving this piece of garbage his all.

My rating: 1.5/5 fishmuffins

* Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers


Six years after the previous film, pregnant Jamie is in the clutches of a dark cult. She has her baby and escapes with Michael steadily following. Tommy Doyle, the boy who Laurie Strode babysat in the original film, is a grown man obsessed with Michael Myers and lives across the street from the remaining Strode family living in the Myers house. He and Dr. Loomis join forces to protect Jamie's baby and the Strode family against Michael.


Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Meyers is a little better than the previous movie in the series. The kills are so much better. I didn't remember any from 5, but this one had some good ones. There are several allusions to the first Halloween like a broken pumpkin, somone being impaled on a wall followed by Michael's patented head tilt, and Michael among hanging sheets. Donald Pleasance is back as Dr. Loomis outacting everyone as usual. He wrote a book to dispel himself of all things Michael only to be sucked back in trying to protect Jamie's baby and the Strode family. Paul Rudd has his first movie role as Tommy and he's a little shaky. He seems to be trying to suppress his boy next door charm and charisma to be socially maladjusted Tommy and it's not very convincing. Compared to the others, he doesn't look half bad.


The druidic cult stuff is back and I hate it so much. The newly created lore has Michael having power and needing to sacrifice people on a specific day due to Thorn, an ancient curse. He's supposed to kill his next a kin, but so many other people are killed that it doesn't make sense. Is there some sort of benefit to this? Why are there still active members when it seems to be no benefits that are shown? The baby is supposed to be the new Thorn victim unless the others save him. Again, the ending is ambiguous and it was Donald Pleasance's last film before his death. While I didn't like the supernatural lore at all, the rest of the film is just a fun, gory slasher where awful people are killed in spectacular ways. The head explosion is by the far the best kill, but others were still decent. I would place this below the first and second Halloween in terms of quality with all the others beneath it.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

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