Halloween 4

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Directed by: Dwight H. Little
Written by: Alan B. McElroy
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, Beau Starr, Sasha Jensen, Kathleen Kinmont, George P. Wilbur, George Sullivan, Patrick Cranshaw

The second sequel to Halloween following Halloween 2. As I've discussed previously, Halloween 3 has nothing to do with the rest of the series. And John Carpenter had nothing to do with this movie.

In the last movie, Michael Myers and Donald Pleasence were killed in a fire. This time, it turns out that they survived to fight another day or something. When Mike is being transported from one hospital to another, he awakens from his comatose state and runs off to kill again. It seems that Jamie Lee Curtis wasn't ready to do another sequel, so he goes after her young daughter (apparently Laurie Strode is dead, but I don't believe it) who is living in foster care and hasn't had the sense to get out of Haddonfield. And Donald Pleasence, still alive but very badly burned, limps around after him, raving about evil and stuff like that.

Oh yeah, and a bunch of people get killed. Notably the fornicating teenagers (only two this time).

The movie isn't bad. The acting is sub-par and it's the whole thing is really unbelievable, but the same goes for the first one. This one really just lacks originality. The slasher genre was exploding by this point, and this one doesn't really have anything new going for it.

Actually, the only things going for it at all are the music (which didn't bother me this time) and Donald Pleasence being weird. And the ending was pretty good. It's almost exactly the same as the opening scene in the first Halloween, only instead of Michael Myers, it's the little girl he was stalking all through the movie, wearing the same clown costume. I feel bad for Dr. Loomis - now he has to deal with two of them. Poor bastard.

Anyway, with those burn scars on his hands and arms, Michael Myers is starting to look eerily like Freddy (a big, silent Freddy with a mask and no stripy sweater, but Freddy none the less). That bugged me. They were already up to Nightmare 4 by 1988.

But despite all of that, it was still so much better than Halloween 2.

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