Cast/Notable Credits:
Dwight Little (Director): Anacondas 2 (2004), Murder at 1600 (1997), Free Willy 2 (1995), Marked for Death (1990)
Donald Pleasence (Dr. Loomis): Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 5 and Halloween 6
Danielle Harris (Jamie): Halloween 5 and Halloween, Urban Legend
Ellie Cornell (Rachel): Halloween 5, House of the Dead 1 (2003) & 2 (2005), Room 6 (2006)
Beau Starr (Sheriff Meeker): Halloween 5, The Corruptor (1999), Speed (1994)
George Wilbur (Michael Myers): Halloween 6
Sasha Jenson (Brady): Ghoulies 2 (1987), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
Kathleen Kinmont (Kelly): Bride of Re-Animator, Renegade T.V. Series (Cheyenne) (Pictured right)
Gene Ross (Earl): Friday the 13th Part 4
Carmen Filip (Jack): Alligator 2 (1991), Beverly Hill Billies (1993)
Trailer:
Plot:
Ten years after his Haddonfield massacre on Halloween night, Michael
Myers is still alive but comma-tized in a section of a secure federal prison.Someone decides it's a good idea to transport him back to Smith's Grove Mental Institute (where he was previously incarcerated as a child). During transportation, Michael over hears one of the doctors in the vehicle mention that Laurie had a daughter that lived in Haddonfield. Laurie was his sister...so her daughter is his niece. This triggers Mikey to come out of his coma and wreck some havoc causing the vehicle to crash and allow him to escape.
If you haven’t guessed it already…Michael returns to Haddonfield to kill his niece, Jamie. Emergency response teams to the crash believe everyone in the crash to have died in an explosion...case closed. One person doesn't believe this was a freak accident and believes that Michael still lives and that person is none other than...drum roll please...Dr. Loomis.
Yep. The good ole' doctor returns for the fourth installment of Halloween. Just like Mikey, he was presumed dead in the explosion at the end of Halloween 2. But amazing script writing and ingenuity brought them both back to the big screen.
Dr. Loomis finds out that the feds transported him with out his permission and tracks down the convoy only to be a step or two behind them. He's the only one that believes Mikey lived the crash and will once again return to Haddonfield.
“He’s a monster!” as Dr. Loomis repeats many, many times through out the Halloween movies. We love him...don't we?
Michael returns home to find his niece and promptly kills the local police, knocks out the telephones and power through out the city. Man he’s talented! Haddonfield is now helpless and out of contact with the world as Mikey strolls the streets looking for his niece.
Dr. Loomis arrives just in the nick of time to warn everyone...at least the one's left. Loomis, Jamie, her foster sister (Rachel), two remaining cops, and a couple of token kids decide to barricade themselves in a house while they wait for the State Police to show up and save them from Mikey.
WTF? Two local police “hide” inside a house waiting for back up? It’s called, why don’t you get in your F*CKIN’ cars and drive the hell out of dodge! Or use your training and take the mother f*cker out!
Moving on…Michael picks off the people in the house one by one (funny how that happens) and then Jamie and Rachel flee the house to hide in the local school. Why? I don't know. But guess who tracks them down in the school? Shortly afterwards the action moves on to the road with a bunch of Michael Myers Mob-Lynchers. Before we know it, the escape car crashes, Michael gets run over, shot, and blown up into a mine shaft/hole in the ground…the end. Or is it?
Villain:
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers does what the title says...returns Mikey to the big screen. Forget the P.O.S. (piece of sh*t) called Halloween 3, H4:TROMM brings the franchise back on track. Mikey finds himself back as the headline for part 4 but I have to say, he looked a little different/weird at times in the film.
Actor George Wilbur gets the nod to portray the notorious Michael Myers. Like I mentioned, he looked a little "off" in the film. Mikey is not as scary or creepy as he did in the original two. I think it’s because he puts a new mask on. Studios are always f*ckin' with the designs of the masks. Wilbur kind of looked like Uncle Fester in the shoulders at times.
Just like how Jason became undestructable in Part 6, Michael finds himself carrying that persona in this one. No single bullet can stop him. The only way to defeat Mikey is to out run him.
Cast:
Just when we thought that we had seen the last of Dr. Loomis...they squeezed some more blood from the tulip. Loomis becomes even more over the top "Mikey is a monster!" in this film. I didn't think that was even possible, but Loomis starts to become more annoying as these sequels pile up. Loomis once again is always in the wrong place at the wrong time when it comes to finding Mikey.
Halloween 4 brought in a cheap addition of Mikey's “niece” Jamie, but since it created a role for the beautiful Danielle Harris to blossom in, I gave it a pass.
Harris was young back then (Pictured right), but she grows up fairly well. Jamie's backstory is very vague, leaving us knowing that she is the child of Laurie Strode, who had died in a car accident. Don't worry when H20 comes along, everything about this storyline and past is completely ignored.The rest of the bunch was not too terrible to watch on screen considering the story they had to work with. They were just a bunch of stereotypical "insert here" deaths for Mikey. Instead of the Sheriff Brackett and daughter Annie in the original two, we get Sheriff Meeker and his daughter Kelly. If it looks like a rip off and smells like a rip off then it probably is a rip off.
I also noticed that the character of Brady had a huge uni-brow. That's all I could picture every time he popped up on the screen, I just starred at it in "aw". Uni-brow's suck.
SFX/Gore:
Halloween 4 equaled the total of the first two films by adding sixteen deaths to the total in the film. Not bad. But there were not a whole lot of gore in the deaths or period. Many of the deaths in the film were "off screen" or just “flashed by” (quick glance as they died and camera moved on).
Michael Bay would be proud as the film featured a couple of special effects spectacular explosions in the film...okay just kidding, they weren't anything to get all excited about. In fact they were pretty cheesy in their own doing.
The FX for the film weren't all that great as we see in the roof sequence towards the end. The roof was supposed to be wet from rain and such, but I couln't tell. It was actually pointed out to me when I was watching the "Making of..." DVD extra on the film. If it was pulled off right, the direction of a slick roof was to make everyone's footing hard handling due to the slickness. I guess I completely missed that one. Thank God for DVD extras.
TNA:Halloween 4's eye candy included four hot chicks (Shark Factor)…and a reverse Shark Factor. What’s a reverse Shark Factor? Danielle Harris was like ten in the film, and she’s smokin’ hot now (Pictured left) at the age of 30. She’s similar to my age, so I’ll count her as a hot chick.
The Return of Mikey featured one sex act and a partial set of boobies in it. Kathleen Kinmont from Renegade T.V. series (pictured below) tries to show off her twins, but the lighting and camera work prevents us from getting a good look at them. By the way do you remember the T.V. series Renegade? Lorenzo Lamas, Bobby Sixkiller...ringing any bells?
T.Gun's Take:
Halloween 4 marked the triumphant return of Michael Myers back to Haddonfield to try and kill yet another relative that he wouldn't know what they looked like. How original. At least they tried to fill in some gaps and create a storyline after being away for 10 years...only to say a big "F-you!" when H20 hits 10 more years later.
One of my biggest gripes came with the idea of “shacking up” in a house while they wait for help. Man that was dumb. For crying out loud, hit the road! This was only to be topped by an even dumber move when they fled to the school. Come on, whose gonna hide in a school at ten o’clock at night. School's locked up at night...no one's there! Doesn’t that sound like a trap…one way in, one way out?
I did like the nice twist at the end of the film. It paid some good homage to the original film. The twist also proves a little something about hereditary. I actually didn't expect that from a film that featured countless minutes of B.S.
Hey, at least the franchise got back on track after that P.O.S. named Halloween 3. The Return of Michael Myers wasn't horribly bad, it was just enough to satisfy a little Mikey craving. They did bring Mikey back into the mix and introduced a new character storyline for the next film or two. Really...who didn’t see a sequel coming on?
Misc. Movie Trivia:
- Halloween 4 opened Oct. 23, 1988 and made $17.7 million ($6.8 opening weekend)
- Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the Teenage Witch...pictured below) auditioned for the role of Jamie
- Was filmed in springtime so...leaves were imported and squash was painted orange to look like pumpkins
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