Halloween 1-6: The Night Nobody Came To Read

I'll admit that I'm still a fan of slashers, even if the genre is extremely formulaic to the degree that almost no originality will ever be found. Sure, you can find some unique examples. I mean Alien and Alien 3 are essentially slasher films, they're just done in such a way that it's really easy to forget. Still, even when not original, they can be entertaining, especially with the large number of slasher films relying on meta-humor, like the relatively-recent Hatchet, which is both a large collection of slasher cliches, and many twists, parodies, and outright subversions of them.
Tonight's series is hardly the originator of the genre, in the sense that Parappa the Rapper isn't the first rhythm game, but in the case of both they are easily the solidifiers of the genres they represent. Halloween -is- the quintessential slasher film. Sadly, due to this, it suffers from something I like to call the Lord of the Rings effect. Basically, on release, LotR was extremely original, it was unique, it was something that was full of surprise. Nowadays (though a bit less true thanks to the Peter Jackson films) most people experience other fantasy films/books before they experience LotR, and end up becoming so familiar with the fantasy cliches that LotR invented/inspired the popularity of, that LotR becomes boring because you're basically reading an encyclopedia of fantasy tropes. Halloween is much like this for slasher films. It popularized many slasher cliches that were original or at least seemingly original at the time, but nowadays can be found in just about any slasher film.

We start with the classic 1970's John Carpenter film that started it all.
The film opens with us seeing a Halloween night through the perspective of a child as he walks in on his sister and suddenly, mercilessly, and quietly stabs her to death. Right off the bat you'll notice something that I truly, truly have to praise this film for: It's virtually bloodless. Not to say I'm against blood and gore, or that I dislike them. I just have to praise any movie that can be good -without- them, same goes for any movie that can also avoid having to turn to sex (his sister's topless, and we get a few breast shots elsewhere in the film, but still, at least it tried in one department.)
Flash forward a couple of decades and that child, Michael Myers, is breaking out of the insane asylum he'd been kept in since that night. We're treated to some info from his psychiatrist for all that time, Dr. Samuel Loomis (who Carpenter fans will recognize as the president of the US from Escape from New York, and who MST3K fans will remember as the villain of Puma-Man), who reveals that he'd spent a few years analyzing Myers, and the rest of that time trying to keep him from ever being released.
You see, Myers is... different than a lot of killers. You know that cliche about how slasher villains have to be dead silent? Myers is pretty much emotionless and quiet, which is what scared Loomis. Myers never makes a single peep in this film. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't really react much beyond stumble a bit when attacked. ...but he' s human. That's what I like about it. There's times where he'll just stick around after killing someone and just watch their body. He's not a monster like Jason, he displays some human characteristics rather than just being a mobile killing machine, and that makes him all the more scarier to me. At the time the point was that Myers -was- meant to be a monster, but now that most slasher film villains -are- basically monsters, Myers serves as a nice middleground between sociopath and paranormal killing machine.
Moving along, we find out what Myers has apparently been waiting to return to Haddonfield, his hometown, on this Halloween ever since his imprisonment. While Loomis follows him there, we're treated to some scenes revealing our major cast for the film: typical horny teenagers. Again, it wasn't so cliched at the time. In fact, it's actually handled pretty well in the first two films. It feels less like watching a bunh of people that are going to fuck so we can get a sex scene and more like your typical teenagers that say awkwardly sexual things, although we are treated to a typical slasher film sex scene later in the film.
Topping the cast of teenagers is Activia spokesman Jamie Lee Curtis, who assures us that she'd never be able to outrun psycopaths if she wasn't regular. She actually looks kinda cute here, I'd forgotten what she looked like with long hair, and she looks a lot more feminine than I remembered. Maybe Activia just made her look butch.
The rest of the film takes place entirely on Halloween Night as we watch a few of JLC's friends get stabbed to death. I want to explicitly bring attention to that. Myers isn't some creative killer like we see in a lot of these movies, he doesn't go with any creative or zany schemes or rube goldberg devices like I tend to see. The least normal thing we see him do is put on a sheet, a dead man's glasses, and stand in the doorway looking at said dead man's girlfriend, not moving or saying a word. This... ends up making that scene all the more creepy, because it's the only time we see him playing with a victim. He is a bit slow moving, but that's just because he relies on stealth, which leads me to one thing I fucking love about this film: It follows the Alfred Hitchcock theory of horror. That is, you can -see- Myers in the background, in the shadows. You can see him several times before he actually does anything, and it leaves you scared for whoever else is there. We don't get the music when this happens, that's only when whoever is -there- realizes its Myers, so this can creep out the viewer as well when they just suddenly notice a small bit of Myers mask around the corner, far in the background.
The film comes to a close, not with a finale, but with an ellipsis. JLC's character, Laurie, injures Myers enough to slow him down, Dr. Loomis comes in and shoots him six times, causing him to fall of the balcony. He checks on her, checks back over the balcony... and Myers is gone. That's our ending. No death followed by "or is it." Myers is slowed down briefly. Beautiful.
Seriously, I cannot praise this film enough. I would easily say that this is the best pure-slasher film of all time. The pacing is perfect, it's tense as hell, the characters are fairly likable, there's no humor wedged into the 2nd or 3rd act as many slasher films do. This is easily a must-see to anyone, not just horror fans. Of course, this is only my second favorite Carpenter horror film, I'll go into the first in a later article.
Interesting tidbit about this film. That mask that Myers wears? It's a James T. Kirk mask Carpenter bought and spraypainted. Yes. You just got scared by William Shatner.


The next film picks up immediately where the last left off, sort of. It recaps a few moments, and even messes one up (Dr. Loomis fires his gun 7 times instead of 6, which would be impossible.)
Due to this, I tend to strongly suggest both films be watched together. It's basically one long film that got divided in half.
The sequel focuses mainly on Dr. Loomis searching the town for Myers while Laurie is rushed off to the hospital to recover from her injuries, meaning the bulk of this film ends up taking place in and around the Haddonfield hospital.
This film is... gorier than the first. We see more blood, the deaths are more than just stabbings, and we actually witness someone burn to death after being pinned by two cars.
Still, despite that, it's an extremely good horror film, just not quite as awesome as the first.
Our cast is a bit less likable, the hospital staff is kind of made up of dicks that care more about sex than anything else, so you don't feel -quite- as bad watching them die as you did the teenagers of the first film.
I'll say this, the deaths in this movie, although creative, aren't farfetched. In one scene, Myers witnesses two people nude bathing and preparing for sex in one of those jacuzzi like therapy baths in the hospital, so he turns up the heat. After the male of the two goes off to check the heat and gets murdered by Myers in a more conventional way, Myers dunks the female into the now-boiling water until she either drowns or goes into shock from the horrible burns it gives her. The effect work on this is especially well done, as well.
The pacing on this film feels a lot quicker, partially because there is no "breather period." The first film gave us the day-time scenes where Myers didn't do anything, but this takes place entirely during the night/early early pre-light morning, and Myers never stops. That's further why I strongly recommend watching this and the first film together, as this feels more like the 2nd and 3rd act to the first films's lengthy 1st act.
The film ends, surprisingly, with Loomis and Myers blown to complete bits, and no way for Myers to come back. He wasn't a paranormal entity afterall, so this was... pretty much the complete end of him. Laurie survives, albeit horribly injured, and is rushed to another hospital as the credits roll.
Again, this movie isn't quite as good, but I'd still call this one of the best slasher films ever, easily better than any of the Friday the 13ths, but maybe not as good as the original Nightmare on Elm Street.

Halloween 3 is... Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and clear this elephant out of the room. Most horror fans bash this film for one reason and one reason only. Michael Myers isn't present in it. You see, Halloween 1 & 2 were meant to be the only Myers films, and starting with 3 the films would each be a different story related to/involving Halloween night. I like this idea, Myers should have stayed dead. Sadly, fans were angry at this, and Myers was quickly brought back to "life" in 4.
Am I saying 3 was s good movie on its own, though? Hahahahaha. Hell no. This film's a piece of crap even if you ignore that it's a Halloween movie.
The plot, as odd as it sounds, goes as follows: An evil corporation that makes Halloween masks moved Stonehenge to their factory, and now they plan on making kids heads turn into snakes and bugs as a sacrifice on Halloween, and only a mustachioed doctor and a victim's hot-for-doctor daughter can stop them. ...I'm not making this shit up.
Basically, a doctor with a Magnum PI mustache gets a patient that was assaulted by... someone. They leave him in a dark room unmonitored, and some guy in a business suit comes in and crushes his skull to death, then runs out and sets fire to himself until his car explodes. Great way to start a movie, guys.
Anyway. The doctor finds this suspicious and decides to use the detective abilities his mustache guarantees him to track down the answers to this obvious conspiracy. Joining him is the dead man's daughter, who, like many other women shown in this film, really wants to ride the doctor's mustache. Given that the man looks at least 20 years older than her and is pretty unattractive, I found this to be amusing, and might be why I keep making the mustache cracks. Or maybe it's because the man's mustache gets several hilarious closeups.
Anyway, they somehow tie it to a big mask company run by an old irish guy who behaves like he's got a dark secret, his factory even has its own town-with-a-dark-secret built around it, where everyone that's there behaves like... they've got a dark secret. Seriously, this film uses so many conspiracy cliches it's not even funny. I lie, this movie is so full of intentional hilarity that I love it.
It's also got the most irritating earworm ever in the form of the company's commercial, which gets played at least a dozen times in this fucking film. To the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb: x more days till halloween, halloween, halloween. X more days till halloween. Silver Shamrock. This thing will fucking get stuck in your head and it will never leave, like food crumbs in our hero's mustache.
This film is so fucking awful. The special effects are hilariously bad, including one scene where a man's head is pulled right off and it becomes this fake, cheap rubber mask. Then his body waits awhile before spurting out blood from the neck, like the effects guy missed his cue or something. We also get a hilarious scene where an old woman is shot in the mouth with a laser.
The plot is ridiculous and non-sensical, the actors are horrible, the effects are hilarious, there's a plot twist where randomly the lead girl turns out to be a clockwork machine made at the factory... I can only say three positive things about this film.
1. Despite having a sex scene, we never see the lead guy shirtless. Instead we get old lady getting lasered.
2. The poster is neat, and combined with the tagline, makes me envision a much better film.
3. I like the ending. Our hero screams over the phone for them to pull the commercial that makes kids turn into snakes and bugs, and it cuts to black before we see if the third commercial is stopped.
Only watch this movie if you're the type that loves watching bad movies for the fun of it. Aside from those three things, and comedic value, this film has no positives.
If you want to see Dr. Mustache in a better movie, go rent Maniac Cop. It's got him, it's got Bruce Campbell, and it's got Robert "Catcher's Mitt With Eyes" Z'Darr, and is easily far superior to this shitfest.

Fast forward to Halloween 4. Halloween 4 has... an odd opening that doesn't really tell you anything. The opening credits are seriously just some halloween decorations, in the morning, in some far off rural area. Then it randomly switches back to an ambulance that looks similar to what Laurie was put in at the end of the second film. ...what was the point of the rural place? Where was that? It certainly wasn't the town from the first two films. Well, we never get an answer. What we do find out is that Michael Myers survived the explosion, is in an ambulance, and has murdered the ambulance driver by shoving this thumb through his forehead.
The movie then gives us a warning of how bad it'll be. An annoying little girl that can't act watches the ambulance through her window, and we're treated to some exposition about her being an orphan who lives with a foster family, before we get a really lame nightmare sequence where a bunch of Michael Myers try to kill her using cliche tactics such as hiding under the bed. I guess it can be excused by the fact that it is a child's imagination, but since the film starts us off with this, and it is the 4th film in the franchise, it seems like a god awful way to get us started. This part of the movie feels really, really cliche-filled. It's especially irritating since I saw many of these cliches used back when I watched and reviewed the second Child's Play movie.
It turns out that Dr. Loomis is also alive, only now he's got some scarring, and he uses a cane. He's pissed off because the federal government got retarded and tried to move Michael Myers, which is how he got out at the start of the film. Everyone again acts like Dr. Loomis's fears are unwarranted, because everyone has memory issues. They get a call saying Myers escaped and killed the ambulance drivers, and act surprised. Seriously, why do you people not listen to Loomis? Why? On top of the fact that Myers went on a huge massacre in the first two films, Loomis somehow survived a gigantic explosion, and can still walk and talk. I'd assume the man was a god at that point and take his every word as fact.
Anyway, Loomis goes on his search again. We get to see the ambulance, which is now... uhh... upside down in a puddle? Covered in blood? ...How? How, movie? I saw the scene myself where he killed the ambulance driver, there wasn't that much blood. Myers goe son a killing spree throughout Haddonfield, killing off a bunch of nameless people on his quest to... I guess kill Laurie, is what we'd assume. Loomis runs into him in a gas station-diner hybrid after he kills the people inside of it, he tries to exchange his life for the lives of everyone else before suddenly opening fire on... nothing? Did Myers vanish and Loomis just wasn't paying attention even though it was right infront of him? Is Myers magic? Is Loomis insane? Either way, Myers hops in a truck, collides into Loomis's car making it explode, downs a power line, and speeds off to whereever.
The film then decides that the only way to make this film better is to give us evil kids. Seriously, we get three of the most evil bullies ever. They tease a girl just because she's an orphan. I know kids are assholes but who the hell bullies someone over -that-? She doesn't wear a costume for Halloween, and she's an orphan. How the hell do you make fun of that? I really, really tend to hate bullies in major movies because they never really present them in a realistic fashion, they're more like the by product of that movie where Laurence Olivier fights child Hitlers in South America. Also one of them is wearing a cheap MASK costume consisting of a MASK mask and a shirt with the show's logo. That is a god awful costume. That's like wearing a Batman mask and a shirt that says BATMAN. Still, it made me want to sing "Masked crusaders working overtime, fighting crime!"
The girl (Jamie)'s foster sister, Rachel, takes her to get a Halloween costume to make her feel better. She picks out the most Gacyest clown costume ever. Seriously. I can't look at that clown costume and not think Gacy. Kid, for someone that is so paranoid over Michael Myers, you're really picking the wrong costume. She then has another nightmare where she sees Michael Myers putting on his William Shatner mask, then pushes her into a mirror. ...only it wasn't a dream or something, because we see him too a bit later. Meanwhile Loomis is failing at hitchhiking, and limping along the side of the street when a car full of cheerleaders decides to taunt him. They're totally on his list after Myers.
Loomis eventually gets some help from cops that believe him much quicker than everyone else. These cops are officially the smartest government people we've seen in this franchise yet. Everyone else has been moronic, whine, and generally just too damn dumb to live. It's kind of a trend with anything Carpenter related, though. Makes sense from the man that gave us Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. At the same time, Rachel finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her with another woman, she gets angry, and... ends up losing Jamie, and has to look over town for her.
The film then decides that we need to be teased with more victims for Michael by giving us a bunch of drunk hicks that realize they can't get in contact with the sheriff, so... drive off as a sort of hillbilly militia. I'm reminded of Silver Bullet, that Gary Busey werewolf movie where a bunch of drunk hicks form a militia and get slaughtered in a foggy forest one by one.
Myers seems to have less of a purpose in this movie. He just goes out of his way to randomly kill people in creative ways, like throwing some guy into a transformer so that he electrocutes. ..I don't really get why. He just goes out of his way, whereas with the previous film it at least seemed like he was hunting out Laurie. Also the kid's stupidity is almost adorable. She sees a bush shake, then shouts at it "Whoever you are, I've got a big dog with me and he bites."
Anyway Loomis and Rachel find her, and... we see Michael. And a bunch of Michaels. Only it turns out they're all a bunch of douchebag teens posing as Myers, almost getting shot, just so they can prank the cops. Seriously, maybe we shouldn't care if Michael's killing off the people of Haddonfield, it seems like it's just full of assholes. Loomis and Cop-Friend continue searching around for clues as to where Michael is, only finding more corpses before they run tino Science Hick Militia Gatchamann. They vow to hunt and kill Myers, the cop is angry at Loomis for causing a lynch mob. Honestly, since this town seems to have only two cops, maybe they -need- the redneck A-Team.
Alabaman Mod Squad ends up shooting a gazebo to death, something many Dungeons & Dragons fans should be proud of. They also shoot a bench to death, even if the bench was just minding its own business. Seriously, these guys waste a lot of ammo just shooting a gazebo and a bench. They also killed some guy named Tom Hollister, but for the most part they just shot a gazebo to death.
Meanwhile in Horny Teen Land, some horny teens do what they do best. Have noisy, gratuitous sex, provides us with a shot of gigantic breasts, some gratuitous ass shots, and then... aww. They don't get killed yet. Loomis and Cop Friend pull up, it turns out the Cop's daughter is one of the two horny teens. We also finally get another cop pulling in. They decide to bunker up in the cop's house, handing out a gun to the male of the horny teens, then sends him up to the attic. I'm not sure why this is turning into Night of the Living Dead. "We're the only cops in town, let's lock ourselves inside and let the killer roam the streets." Yes, that's a bright idea. That is the brightest idea ever. These cops deserve medals.
We get some more character development during this portion of the movie. By character development I mean "everyone proves to be more dickish/moronic", like a fight between the Horny Female Teen and Rachel because she was sleeping with Rachel's boyfriend. If it wasn't for Loomis, the only likable and intelligent person in this movie, I'd be rooting for Myers.
Anyway it turns out Myers killed the lesser of the two cops, is now in the house, and... impales Horny Female Teen with a shotgun. Okay then. This scene is handled so damn poorly. Even worse is when Rachel discovers her body, she lets loose a stock scream from over 40 years before this film was made, emanating from a woman that was probably twice her age. Her boyfriend tries to get them out of the house by shooting the front door's lock, only to touch it and exclaim "It won't work, it's metal." after firing a hole into it. She then exclaims "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?"
I repeat. The exchange is. "It won't work, it's metal." "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?" Thank you, movie. Thank you. My room is now filled with the noise of my own brain eating itself in order to survive this movie.
Anyway Myers crushes Rachel's boyfriend's head to death, then chases after her and Gacy-Clown Jamie. They do the smart thing and board themselves upstairs, because heading up stairs is a smart thing to do. Like running into the basement. I still don't get how the front door is going to be so hard to get out of. Is it really hard easy to lock something so well from the inside that it can't be opened from the inside? That takes skill. That's like, worse than locking yourself inside of a car. They get out via an upstairs window, then try to climb ontop of the roof, which... seems extremely fucking dangerous. Also Myers is better at roof scaling than them apparently, as he gets up there in 1/5th time time it took them. Rachael then drops Jamie down the side of the roof to... safety? Oh, she decides to lower her down with a power cord wrapped around her waist. Okay then. She then quickly drops the cord, sending Jamie down really fast in a way that I'm sure would horribly injure any actual kid, if not possibly kill them by doing intense damage to their organs. Rachel falls and is knocked out, the kid then utters the most retarded line of this movie. "COME ALIVE, RACHEL!" Who the fuck says that? Who the fuck words it like that? Was all the dialogue in this movie run through Google Translate through multiple languages or something? Thankfully Loomis is there to save Jamie, by taking her to... school? They're gonna hide out in a school, okay. Look, I'm a big zombie nut, I'm the kind of person that has put a lot of thought into surviving a zombie apocalypse, and holding out in a school just seems dumb to me. Hard to patrol, often they're poorly constructed... They don't even really board up anything either. They just kinda, run around the school. Also Rachel's okay now and she's in there too.
We cut to the angry redneck mob, who has somehow survived this long in the movie, that rescue Rachel and Jamie from the school. Dr Loomis is... uh. Elsewhere? It's so hard not to make a Convoy reference when they're talking into their CB radios. Anyway, a bunch of cops finally show up, heading towards Haddonfield to finally put a stop to Myers. The lynch mob, with Laurie and Rachel, head off in the direction the cops tell them to, when... suddenly it turns out Myers was riding under the truck. He enters the truck bed, murders the rednecks, rips the throat out of the driver, and then attacks Rachel as she tries to drive to freedom with Myers clinging to the truck. This is kinda hilarious to watch, I kinda want Myers to just start screaming "Weeeeee!" as the car shakes him around. She throws him off the front of the car, then speeds into him, giving us a really silly view of Myers kinda flying backwards. Cops come again to save them, I guess hearing the car crash or something, with their super hearing. Jamie gets retarded and walks over to Myers' corpse, holding his hand, before finally running away as Myers stands up and gets shot by like 400 bullets in a lengthy scene by cops and rednecks. ...also the ground collapses under him for some reason. ...we don't get a shot of them examining his body due to this. God damn you, movie.
The film then cuts to an homage to the first film as we see from some masked perspective someone grabbing a pair of scissors from an open bedroom, walking into the bathroom, and killing Jamie's foster mom. It then cuts to Loomis walking up the stairs as he gazes in horror at Jamie, covered in blood, in her clown costume. Yes, this is why you don't let your kid dress up as Gacy, people. She's already a serial killer just because of that. Then it ends as Loomis goes insane, screams "NO, NO, NO, NO" over and over in an unintentionally hilarious way, and attempts to shoot her before a cop stops him. Cut to credits.

Halloween 5 opens with some scenes of someone very mesilly chopping up a pumpkin with a butcherknife. Oooh, scary. It doesn't actually fit into the film at all, it's just the sequence we get for the opening credits. After that we get a recap of what happens at the end of 4, much like how 2 began with a recap of the events from the ending of 1. Maybe this means Halloween 6 will be about some mustachioed detective fighting irishmen at Stonehenge if this trend continues? Is Burt Reynolds available? We could always go the Square Enix route and call it Halloween 3-2.
Anyway in this recap it turns out Myers didn't just fall into the dirt, he fell into.. an underground part of a river, and he gets washed down a creek or something? Okay movie, god damn it you're not winning me over at all and we've only just started. We then get our shot of Myers first potential victims for th emovie... some old hermit that lives in some hovel from a medieval movie. Maybe he's a hobbit, and Myers has found himself in the shire. ..only Myers doesn't kill him, he passes out. Also there's a parrot here that makes some very non-parrot-like noises, it sounds like random robot noises. Like the sound guys just couldn't find a soundclip of a parrot and just went with random noises from the studio.
Anyway, it turns out that Jamie's in some sort of hospital. Also she's got psychic ties with Michael. We also get to see Michael without his mask pretty clearly, and he looks kinda like Puma Man. Suddenly his rivalry with Dr. Loomis makes a lot more sense. Is Halloween some sort of grim reboot of Pumaman, much like Batman Begins was to the Burton-Schumacher Batman films?
Loomis prevents a doctor from helping her while she's seizing, because he... somehow knew she'd stabilize. Maybe I was right earlier in suggesting Loomis now has godlike powers after surviving that explosion. Rachel and her annoying friend from the first film visit Jamie, and everyone seems really, really happy. As if the events of the last film didn't happen. It scares me how fast people can recover and forget things in horror films. We also get a sort of record scratch moment where Loomis breaks up the happy-feely time, everyone goes quiet, and they leave. ...when suddenly a window explodes! Really, a brick with a note hits the window, but my explanation fits better. The window fucking explodes. The note says "The child must die." They make a reference to the fact that Jamie apparently did attack her mother... this makes the happiness even more confusing. Seriously, movie. Was this film made by robots with no understanding of human emotion?
"I got attacked by a serial killer that murdered my boyfriend and a bunch of other people, and my step-sister went nuts and attacked my mom. Boy life is great! I'm so happy and excited!"
We get a gratuitous shower scene as a dog barks at something, and Jamie has some psychic episode involving something bad happening to him. Loomis calls Rachel up to tell her to go check on the dog, and... oh hey, Michael Myers is in the house. Y'know, if my dog was barking that insanely after the events of the previous film, I'd be more worried. I'd also probably have some security with me after that. Loomis does the smart thing and tells her to run out of the house, which thankfully she does. ...without even getting dressed. It's fanservice of course, but... it makes sense.
We see two cops come out of her house after checking it out, and... what the fuck. We get some... Bulk & Skull music for them with clown horns and whistles. ...why. This is their theme music. They don't do anything amusing, we just get that music. -Why-. That was so fucking random, movie. We seriously just get this random clown music playing for two cops for a few seconds, that sounds somewhat similar to Bulk & Skull's theme from Power Rangers. Is Zordon going to send in some teenagers with attitude to stop Myers? With Rita Repulsa make Myers grow? If so, I have high hopes for this movie now.
More gratuitous nudity, as Michael Myers watches Rachel get dressed. Seriously, the actress obviously sees Myers, like. She turns to look at him, then goes back to what she's doing. Is the character dumb or is that just an error on the actress's part? She doesn't react, so I'm guessing the latter. Anyway, Myers stabs Rachel to death with scissors, and... Jamie sees it in her head and enters another seizure. We cut to Loomis trying to get a cop to realize that it means the girl knows something, and we find out that one year has tkaen place since the previous film. We also get a better look at the scarring Loomis received after 2, which looks better done than it did in 4.
Rachel's annoying freind comes back to check on her, and the soundtrack is... replaced by someone furiously humping bubblewrap? The movie excuses this as a record that was left on, but that doens't sound like any noise a record would make, unless the record was, say, some weird album from The Residents or Negativland. "Fun With Bubblewrap!" it would be called. Rachel's annoying friend, heretoafter known as RAF or Raffi, forgets about Rachel entirely, and hangs out with her new blonde friend Tina, who... I guess is our replacement Rachel? She looks vaguely like Rachel, so I guess that's... okay? Raffi dates a Cool As Fuck guy (Caffi) who has 1950s greaser hair, a black leather jacket, a cool car, and dark sunglasses. I can only hope that he's going to tell Michael Myers to sit on it.
We get a shot of Myers in disguise wandering around the town. He steps on a dog's foot for some reason. Also he sounds like he's wearing spurs that go jingle jangle. This is hilarious to me. Loomis wanders around the abandoned Myers home trying to find him... I'm amazed the house is in this awful state that we see it as. Has that much time really passed? We get some more time with our idiotic cast consisting of Tina, Raffi, and Caffi, and now we've got some douchebag with a flannel shirt joining the mix. I don't even know who he is and already I hate him. Thankfully our time with Caffi is cut short, as Myers rakes him in the forehead. Thanks, Myers.
We cut to the mental institution thing where Jamie is, she's participating in a Halloween costume pagent, where some autistic kid gives her flowers. It's actually kinda cute. He also gives her his medical bracelet. I'll admit. This scene is actually pretty damn adorable. At the same time, the older teens are getting ready for a big Halloween party. Michael Myers is posing as Caffy, and Raffy acts really annoying at him. I know what you want to do, Michael. I want you to do it to. Seriously, end her. She's so god damn irritating. You're taking too damn long. Raffy doesn't seem to think it's that odd that her boyfriend is being suprt quiet, but thinks things are getting odd the second he starts speeding off.
At this point we also realize that the evil person in a trenchcoat we've been seeing... isn't Michael. Okay, movie. Maybe you'll actually surprise me. Michael pretends like he's letting Raffy out to get some cigarettes, when... oh. He actually does stop and let her out of the car to get some cigarettes. Maybe Michael's really lonely? Anyway Jamie's having another psychic seizure, and she starts stuttering out words everyone tries to guess. This scene was so moronic South Park parodied it in their LotR episode, with Jimmy stuttering out where the kids are and the adults of South Park make retarded guesses as to what he's trying to say, such as "the video stapler." Anyway the cops stop Raffy, announcing "Tina Williams, if you are Tina Williams stay where you are." She's not Tina Williams, and this seems like a dumb, odd thing for cops to do/say. Also Michael drives away, I guess he's impatient. ...Oh, she is Tina. But.. movie, she called the blonde girl Tina earlier. Do we have two Tinas? Also god damn it Rachel's still gone! Does nobody care!? Did anyone involved in this movie give a shit!? Also Tina/Raffi's actress can't act at all, her crying and her laughing sound exactly the same, like she's just manic depressive or something. We get the two cops again, but sadly the Bulk & Skull music doesn't play again.
Jamie escapes, wanting to find Tina to make sure she's okay, and teams up with the little boy from earlier to go find her at a party. Also we get another shot at the mysterious cowboy person who isn't Michael Myers.
Much like the previous film we get a retarded scene where our three remaining heroes (Tina, Tina, and Blonde Asshole) pretend to be attacked by Michael infront of cops, and almost get shot because of it. Seriously, blow up Haddonfield. Oh wait, Blonde Tina finds a tiny orange kitten and carries it around. Okay, now I have two people to root for against Myers. A kitten and Loomis. Oh hey, more kitties. Alright, this movie is now less bad. We get random shots of cute kittens. It's like the movie realized how mind numbingly god awful it was and decided "Here, have some kitties." It's a step in the right direction movie, and it's more creative than throwing tits my way. ...oh damn they're so adorable. Whose an adorable kitty that distracts me away from the retarded movie? You are! You are!
I always get scared a bit when cats pop up in a horror film. It's funny, I can watch humans get horribly murdered in a horror film, but I get sad when cats or dogs die. I guess because cats and dogs are more innocent, and people in horror films tend to, well... be like these guys. Oh damn adorable kitties, keep distracting me from this movie. Make me forget that my IQ dropped 30 points watching these movies. Make me forget all the bad acting, terrible effects, and god awful writing. You can do that, right? You're adorable and fuzzy, surely you can.
We get a false scare a couple of times where Blonde Asshole, in a Michael Myers costunme, scares Blonde Tina. Seriously, they do this -twice- in this one scene. Fuck you movie. Even the kittens can't make up for this. This of course leads to sex, as most things in a horror film tend to do. Sex in a barn no less. Also this guy makes the least sexy sex noises -ever-. They're like fucking zombie noises. "Nrrrrr. Mrrrrr. Nurrrrrrr." All in this monotone grumble. Thankfully, he gets a rake through the chest before we get anymore of that, and Blonde Tina panics before attempting to rake Myers back (how many rakes are in this movie? That's 3 uses of a rake as a weapon in one film), but instead gets decapitated with a scythe. Myers then drops the scythe, picks up another rake, goes up to Not Bulk & Skull, and hopefully kills them.
Brunette Tina wanders into the barn, tells the two friends that they aren't having se right because she can't hear them, then asks if they'd be up for skinny dipping. She also finds a kitten covered in blood (don't worry, kitten's fine, not its' blood). Obviously the kitten was the real killer. She also finds the corpses of both her friends -and- the two cops. I'm sad, we only got to hear their theme music once this entire movie.
Anyway, Michael tries to run over Jamie and her little friend with a car, which amuses me. I'm not used to slasher villains using vehicles as weapons. Her friend gets injured, but Jamie continues to run away fron Michael as Brunette Tina tries to follow both of them. Michael apparently sucks at driving, as he collides into a tree... and his car blows up. This series really loves exploding cars. They try to throw in a scare here with the horn being pressed down the entire time, when it suddenly goes silent. Then Michael comes out and starts slowly walking towards Jamie on foot. I blame this scene for the large number of parodies we've had since about how damn slow serial killers walk in slasher movies, because nowhere else is Michael this damn pointlessly slow. Brunette Tina sacrifices herself to save the kids by getting in the way of Michael's knife, but thankfully Dr. Loomis and the cops are there to save them! I'm still bothered that Jamie keeps screaming about Tina, does nobody care about Rachel? Nobody at all?
Loomis stays behind in the woods and calls out Michael, like the badass he is. He tels Michael to go back to his childhood home, where Loomis promises he'll be, along with the girl. ...What? Loomis, some cops, and the girl stay at the Myers house and wait for him. This is... an interesting plot, at least. There's a bunch of guys with guns inside and outside the house waiting for Myers to come in.
Myers predictably kills most of the cops, breaks in, beats the living shit out of Dr. Loomis (I should mention Loomis's actor did a lot of his own stunts in these movies. The man was something of a badass in real life, ever since his time at a Nazi POW camp during WW2. Myers kills the final cop, who kinda looks like Porkins, that fat rebel pilot that gets blown up towards the end of A New Hope, and we're just left with a little girl and a horribly injured Loomis against Myers. Also apparently Billy, the other little kid, may have been murdered offscreen, as she had a psychic seizure earlier and she calls his name out, but we don't see anything.
Y'know what's funny? The Myers home was medium sized in the first film, but here in this one it's practically a mansion. Seriously, it looks like some gothic estate from the outside, it has more stories, it has a gigantic basement with a very large laundry chute system leading down to it... it's quite obviously not the same house. Anyway, Jamie hides out in that laundry chute while Myers tries to shake her out or pull her out, but he really sucks at it and it's kinda funny to watch. Finally he realizes that his knife can pierce through the laundry chute, so he begins stbbing through it. Still, he stabs in the same few places, and misses her repeatedly. She runs up to the attic, where she finally discovers that Rachel is indeed dead. Thank you, movie. I thought you forgot about her. Also Brunette Tina's dog's head is up there, I'd almost forgotten about that dog. Myers is about to stab Jamie to death when she calls him... uncle. Okie-doke movie. Myers takes off his mask, and actually cries a bit. ...Fuck you, movie. Fuck you. This is why Myers should have stayed dead. He freaks out a bit, she runs down stairs, then Loomis grabs her and tries to bait Michael with him. Loomis is starting to seem batshit insane. Whatever happend to Laurie exactly anyway? These two films really suck at answering things or trying to connect themselves to the first two. I mean something obviously happend to her, Jamie's looking at her photo in the last film and is really sad over it.
Anyway, Michael Myers is put in prison for life, alive. ...seriously. And we get another shot of whoever the mysterious cowboy is. I'm beginning to care less and less who this guy is, movie. Is it Jamie? Is Jamie a cowboy now? Myers predictably breaks out, and kills all of the cops at the police station. BIG SURPRISE, movie! The film ends there, suddenly.

Sadly, that's just 5 films. There's also 6, H20, Resurrection, and two remakes! Please kill me.

Halloween 6 takes place about six years later, because nobody wanted to give Halloween 5 a direct sequeal. Honestly, why even get 5 a sequel? Why even let the director live? We start off with some cult ritual and someone giving birth, also we get the dark mysterious cowboy from the last film again. For some reason. Also this may just be something wrong with my copy of the film, but it keeps alternating between b-movie film quality and NIN's Broken movie quality as the camera cuts during this opening.
Anyway Dr Loomis narrates some cult ritual, and we're treated to the most retarded thing yet. It turns out that Michael Myers was part of some Celtic druid curse. Thank you, movie. Maybe the quality drop is caused by my own slowly declining sanity as I watch these films? I should mention again that I watch these films in marathon. As in, each film back to back. I'm feeling a bit like Mike Nelson, except I'm also my own Dr. Forrester.
Anyway the woman that just gave birth gets helped by someone else there, and she makes her escape to save her baby from the evil cultists that apparently inhabit this hospital-warehouse hybrid. Also the sound of running water is everywhere, never before has a movie given me such a dire need to pee.
Then suddenly Michael Myers comes out of nowhere and kills the woman that helped the other woman, who is apparently Jamie. Okay, so... Jamie gave birth, her baby's taken by cultists that work at a hospital, and Myes is after her and her baby, which she's just taken back from the cultists that are implied to be responsible for Michael Myers. This is all within a few minutes. Seriously, movie. Seriously. She steals the truck of someone that looks like a mix between Robert Z'Dar and the mustachieod doctor from Halloween 3, and... huh, I guess it is just the movie. The whole "suddenly looking like a shitty grindhouse movie" effect. Seriously, this... god damn movie.
We get a scene where some kid gets told to kill for the mysterious cowboy, who now has a knife. His mom comes in, tells him there's nothing wrong, then leaves. The level of contempt I already have for this movie is pretty big.
We then cut to some blonde chick stripping, a guy peeping on her, making a creepy call to some radio show that's talking about Myers, claims Michael's business in Haddonfield isn't done. We also get Dwayne, who sounds like a hippie conspiracy theorist from some bad 80s movie, the kind of guy that throws "man" into the ending of every sentence.
Also Loomis is still around. His actor is obviously quite old at this point, and it's actually kinda sad to watch. He's obviously having a hard time talking, and he's not wearing the wound makeup anymore, he claims it's from plastic surgery.
Jamie tries to call into the radio station and asks Loomis to help if he's listening, thankfully, he is.
This film reminds me a lot of the third one. It's like a half-baked conspiracy theory film jampacked with more questions than answers. I just want to grab the director, shake him, and ask him to fucking explain this piece of shit movie.
Anyway Michael tracks Jamie down to a barn, injures her but doesn't kill her, and... the baby is missing. Flash forward some amount of time to some guy cutting down a Michael Myers sign some douchebag kids put on his front lawn. We're back in Haddonfield.
Apparently everyone believed Jamie died in an explosion six years ago. ...okie-doke. Also Dr. Loomis is starting to look more and more like Ernest Hemingway, that's kind of awesome.
The plot now seems to surround some woman, the kid she takes care of, and her abusive father. The mysterious cowboy keeps trying to get her kid to kill, and he almost does stab the abusive dad in the gut. Oh boy. The peeping tom caller guy from earlier is now analyzing the tape from that night, and is trying to find out what happend to Jamie that night.
The pacing in this film so agonizing, and the editing is down right awful. I've not been -this- bored watching one of these movies yet. He finds an assload of blood across some bus station Jamie went to, because nobody noticed and cleaned it. There he finds the baby Jamie hid, because it only just then starts crying, at least 12 hours or more later. Seriously.
Back wherever, Jamie's apparently dead, although we didn't see her die. Loomis is investigating it, when he bumps into a Haddonfield cop that recognizes him and wants him to leave before he causes any trouble in the town. Loomis reacts as he always does, with anger at the police.
We also get to see drawings our hero's son has apparently drawn of a bunch of murdered people, alongside some symbol labeled "Thorn." This symbol is apparently Michael's, although it only appears once in a previous film (behind Loomis in the Myers house after the cops are killed towards the end of the last movie.) Of course, the makers of this movie just didn't care.
Creepy Guy takes Jamie's baby to Loomis at the Haddonfield hospital. It turns out Creepy Guy is Tommy Doyle, the kid Jamie was babysitting in the first film.
Loomis breaks into the Myers residence, tells our hero's mom its origin, she gets angry at Abusive Dad over it. Loomis leaves, and... the mom gets brutally killed by Myers after getting a call from the mysterious cowboy.
Tommy breaks into the house as well, and helps our hero look after her kid since both of her parents aren't home. Night falls, and it's just the four of them in Tommy's home, avoiding the Myers residence. Cue... grainy flashback thing of Michael Myers keeping Jamie hostage.
Apparently Jamie actually wasn't dead when we saw her, but she is now, as they quickly cut to her being dead in the hospital. Then cut back to Tommy giving a crappy, inaccurate explanation of rune stones, and goes on about how the Thorn rune on the baby, and that the kid keeps drawing, is part of a curse of Thorn. We get a bunch of bullshit about how people with the curse kill their own family to save everyone else, and Michael considers anyone living in his house to be his family. Also Thorn is apparently a constellation that appears every Halloween night, and it appeared in the sky every time Michael went on a rampage. God damn you, movie. God damn you to hell.
Also a creepy old woman tells the hero's kid the origin of Halloween. ...This movie feels way too much like the third film.
It turns out the old lady is Michael Myers' babysitter, and she tells us that Michael Myers heard voices that night telling him to kill his family, just like this kid keeps hearing. So Mysterious Cowboy is the franchise's real villain. ...Seriously fuck you, movie.
Asshole Dad comes back home to the Myers residence, gets angry that everyone's left, and the power goes out. He goes downstairs, finds that the basement's flooded, and pulls... uhh. Bloody clothes? Human flesh? He pulls something out of the laundry machine before Michael Myers electrocutes him.
A bunch of teenagers are at a huge Halloween party celebrating the first Halloween the town has celebrated since the last Michael Myers rampage. The hero's brother is there with some asshole TV host that lets us really know he's an asshole so the audience will hceer when he dies. There's also some chick that he hits on. Anyway the host finds out the other guy lives in the Myers house, and wants to film it for his show. But, as soon as he gets in his car, Myers kills him.
Some creepy kid sings "Mommy ti's raining, it's raining red" over and over" creepily as blood drops down on her. She asks why the red liquid is warm. ...seriously this kid is retarded. We look up and see that the tv host has been put up where, dead, and covered in christmas lights.
We get some gratuitous nudity as turns out the hero's brother has had sex with Whatever Her Name Is from earlier. He goes off to shower, and... the predictable happens. Michael Myers slits his throat. Seriously, this fucking movie.
A friend links me to some crazy German technopop video with some mullet-mohawk guy dancing with pregnant chicks in revealing outfits to cheer me up. I have odd friends. Still, this doesn't help distract me from how awful this fucking movie is.
Eventually our hero gets back to the Myers house, finds her brother is dead, finds that her parents are dead, finds that the chick her brother banged is dead... This is the second movie in a row to reuse this cliche which is more at home in a Friday the 13th film. She finds her son, Danny, in the home, along with Michael Myers who is playing dead. She steps over him, he grabs her foot, and she tries to run away with Danny... while Michael slowly, slowly, slowly follows them. Dr. Loomis and Tommy are back at Tommy's house, but they seem to have lost the baby. Nice going, guys.
The Mysterious Cowboy summons Danny over to him, and we finally get a good look at him. He's... that doctor guy from earlier. And the old lady turns out to be part of his cult. ...alright. Seriously, movie.
The cult takes the kid off, and Loomis and Tommy are left to track them down back to the factory-hospital-warehouse thing from the beginning of the film. Tommy comes up with a plan to use a good-rune against Michael's evil-rune which just makes me want to shout "Reverse the polarity!"
Loomis finds the doctor who explains what we were told already, that Michael is a tool of sacrifice to save the world or some shit. One of his goons then knocks out Loomis, and he goes off to turn Danny into the new Michael before Tommy and Danny's mom come to rescue him from the cultists.
Tommy then uses some rocks, his own blood, and the magic word Samhain, here pronounced Sam Hane rather than the acutal Sow (like How) In to stop Michael Meyers in place. Tommy and the others, save for Dr. Loomis, drive off to safety, while DR. Loomis goes back into the hospital to try and stop all of this once and for all. Godspeed, Dr. Loomis. Godspeed.
The evil doctor give Dr. Loomis the mark of thorn for some reason. He starts screaming after awhile, then suddenly stops. ...it's kinda weird. Also we get a brief shot of another mysterious cowboy somewhere else, a shot of a lit pumpkin, and... That's it. The film ends, with "In Memory of Donald Pleasence", in much the same way that Street Fighter was dedicated to Raul Julia.

Later I'll be tackling the reboots this film got. H20 and it's sequel Resurrection, which ignore 4-6, and the two Rob Zombie reboots which ignore the entire franchise altogether in favor of a reimagining of the first two films.