Happy Halloween Weekend, my dearest of Enemaniacs!

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that October is a big deal with B-Movie Enema. It was in October 2014 that the blog was started. When the blog returned in 2016, I always tried to have some sort of theme (be it loose or a tight theme) each October. I’ve also treated Halloween itself as a kind of big deal. In fact, that SERIES has been visited and revisited a few times over. It started in 2016 when I covered the absolute worst of the series. Then, in 2017, I talked about the one that gets the most misunderstood hatred in the series.

After 2017, I took it kind of easy on the franchise, but last year, I returned to the series with the movie that brought ol’ Mikey Myers back to the franchise after that misunderstood entry. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers wasn’t just a return to the series after six years of the franchise being completely left in the past, but it also kicked off a trilogy of sorts. Today, we follow that up with that movie’s direct sequel and the middle chapter of this sort-of trilogy with Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

I don’t argue with people when they talk about the quality of this movie or the way that the series got a fresh shot at being a viable franchise with Return. It’s a little unfortunate how the original movie was truly something special in the thriller and horror franchises and then devolved with its sequels. It’s why I love Season of the Witch so much because it didn’t just turn into an attempt to do something different, it was entirely conceived as something different to begin with. All the other original sequels made between 1988 and 2002 weren’t really doing anything new or fresh. It was either like the second entry, heavily borrowing from the new slasher subgenre that the original helped create, or the fourth, that was just aping off its own original film, or H20 that was heavily borrowing from Scream. There really wasn’t much you can point to in the entirety of the Halloween franchise after the first film that felt uniquely interesting, except for that third movie which was a heavy departure. In a way, the franchise was more modern exploitation than anything else.

The David Gordon Green trilogy that just wrapped up last year is a whole different story that I might someday visit, so table that for now.

Even as a kid, I knew Halloween 4 wasn’t really doing anything brand new with the series. I also realized Halloween 5 wasn’t that good. I think the average horror fan who also likes this series will give the fourth film a pass. They will also come down fairly hard on this fifth film we’re going to dig into here in a moment. I think it was clear at this point that there was not much more you could do with Michael Myers aside from making him something of a Jason Voorhees clone. That, in and of itself, is a fascinating concept to think about too because it’s very obvious that Jason takes a lot of notes from Michael. A not-insignificant percentage of horror fans view Halloween 5 to really be the start of a pretty steep decline in the series. There are three of the following four films in the franchise that consistently rank at the bottom of just about everyone’s list of best Halloween movies. So, yeah, this movie is a clear indicator that the gas tank was already empty halfway through the preceding entry in the franchise.

The Rob Zombie duology is a whole different story that I might someday visit, so table that for now.

But here’s the thing about Halloween 5. I kind of love it for completely different reasons than its quality, its plot, its characters, or its decisions. Halloween 5 seems to be the one movie during the month of October that I see the most, and dammit if I don’t get sucked into it each time, on AMC’s Fear Fest lineup. Like, it’s always on. I would legitimately get rather upset if I didn’t see that movie at least three times all the way through during Fear Fest. It may be a bad movie, but a lot of it takes me back to 1989 when I was 12 and devouring as much horror as I could with the help of my older brothers and their ability to help get me into the theater to see these movies before anyone else at school.

So, yeah, Halloween 5 is some pretty shitty schlock, but it also holds a great deal of nostalgic value for me. It’s like a warm blanket, a shawl if you will, that I can wrap myself in on a chilly October night. It’s a pretty spectacular shitty schlock shawl for me to slide into.

It’s also important to understand why this movie was 1) made and 2) shit. First, Halloween 4 was a fairly decent success earning back three times its budget. There was some appetite for Michael Myers to be seen in film again. Also, Freddy and Jason were beginning to wind down themselves (a fact that the makers of this series should have seen as an ominous sign as well). Considering Halloween 4 left the door open for Michael to survive because, let’s face it, he survived being blown the fuck up, why wouldn’t he survive mob justice and falling into a hole in the ground, it definitely would not be difficult to bring him back for a fifth movie You know, that whole falling in a hole in the ground thing is a whole other conversation because unless that was a bottomless pit, why would anyone think that was the end of Michael Myers? Ehhhh anyway, I digress.

The troubles start with Halloween 5 right out of the gate. The movie was basically immediately greenlit. That means that there was only a little bit of time to get a script written, get a production crew in place, bring back any returning characters, and get the thing going so it could be released on Friday, October 13, 1989. Unless stuff started ahead of the release of the fourth film, that’s a tough and tight schedule to work with. The fourth film’s writer and director team of Alan B. McElroy and Dwight H. Little were approached to do the fifth film, but they both declined. That only exacerbates the tight timetable. The new director would be Swiss filmmaker Dominique Othenin-Girard. He had made a horror film in the mid-80s over in Switzerland called After Darkness. So he was brought on and got some writing credit along with Michael Jacobs and Shem Bitterman.

It’s said that Othenin-Girard had a whole energy about him that some of the crew and actors didn’t quite get but just kind of chalked it up to him being European. But also, with that European attitude, it also makes the movie feel weird at times. I think it was sort of meant to have some Last House on the Left influence with goofy cop characters maybe? But then there’s this whole other supernatural element that maybe was meant to take some influence from that Jason movie in which he fought the girl with telekinesis powers? I dunno. We’ll definitely get into all of that shortly. What the movie would ultimately have is this incredibly disjointed feel with new things introduced that make little to no sense in the grand scheme of things and just make this movie a mess.

A loveable, nostalgic mess.

Our fifth installment of the Halloween franchise opens with some credits that also feel as rushed, if not more, than the movie as a whole. First of all, the title comes up only as Halloween 5. No The Revenge of Michael Myers included. It makes one wonder if the decision to have the subtitle came later in the marketing push after the film was already completed. But there’s no pumpkin like in the first three movies or the atmospheric calm before the storm of the fourth movie. None of that. Instead, the credits basically have a butcher’s knife stabbing into something like a pumpkin without actually showing us what it’s stabbing into. I think someone had to finally step in and say that they need to have something there to make any kind of sense because we’re already off to a rough start. So they inserted a weird zoom-in on a pumpkin. It looks kind of cheap if I’m being honest and comes across almost like a direct-to-video movie by the way it looks.

But then we go into the final moments of Halloween 4. Michael is trying to get Rachel and Jamie in the pickup truck they took off with from the yokel mob. The police are in hot pursuit. Jamie approaches Michael and has a moment with her uncle. Then Michael stands up and is blasted by Sheriff Meeker and he falls into basically a mineshaft. I don’t think we knew it was a mineshaft in the fourth movie, but anyway, for good measure, the mob and cops toss some dynamite down the shaft but Michael has already crawled away to a nearby stream(?!?) and is able to float away.

Now, falling into a mineshaft that we didn’t really know was a mineshaft and his ability to escape via rushing rapids might seem completely and totally out of leftfield and insane for this movie, but that doesn’t compare at all to what happens next.

Michael is then found by a hermit who lives off the grid (as hermits often do). This hermit sees this guy who’s been shot many times by police rifles and wearing a scary Michael Myers mask and decides to help him out. Michael will convalesce for the next 365 days with this hermit. Not once did the guy call for actual medical help for him nor did he think that it’s normal for him to keep this guy in a coma sleeping on his couch for a full year.

Do you see what I mean by this moving having some really weird choices which cause it to delve into the territory of being shitty schlock?

Something completely tossed away from the previous movie is the next thing we’re shown. The big twist ending of Halloween 4 was that Jamie attacked her foster mother similarly to how Michael did his own sister, Judith, 25 years earlier. The thought was that if a fifth movie would be made, Michael would indeed be dead and Jamie would be this murderous little moppet. Or… I should say that’s what Danielle Harris, the actress playing Jamie, wanted. I agree. It would have been so much more interesting to have Michael’s return be ended by his final death. If the writer and director of that movie came back for this sequel, I’m sure we would have gotten more of that. But here, not only is the heel turn by Jamie done away with, but so are her foster parents. They make no appearance in this movie, nor are they even really referred to beyond a mention that they are on vacation and a couple mentions of Jamie attacking the foster mother. That’s all done early on and dropped quickly.

Okay, so Jamie has been struck mute by the trauma of attacking her foster mother. She is now at least mostly permanently living at a Children’s Hospital where she often has nightmares of attacking her foster mother and has to learn a new form of communication due to no longer being able to speak. However, we begin to see that as her hand moves, as does Michael’s hand. She is now able to experience what he sees and even has some mild paranormal connection to his movements as well. But this is when we see something we have not ever seen before in the Halloween films… The mark of the Thorn Cult.

That’s an ancient symbol for “thorn” and I’m not sure if this was always the plan to have this be a part of this trilogy or if it came from the new team brought into this production that created this idea, but here we go. I think when I was a kid, I just thought that this was, like, a tattoo he had while in the mental hospital back in the 70s or what. I know that doesn’t make any sense because that doesn’t operate like a jail, but I think my 12-year-old brain had a better explanation for why he has that symbol than what we’ll really see in the next film.

Regardless, I do think dropping the idea of Jamie becoming the killer coupled with this cult shit killed this franchise – at least to the point that it needed to have two reboots to build a more cohesive narrative throughout the entire franchise.

So, anyway, on Halloween Eve 1989, Michael awakens from his yearlong slumber and kills the hermit. Does Michael Myers only move about on October 30th, 31st, and November 1st? Does he then hibernate like a bear? I kind of love that idea. Jamie has a seizure-like episode that nearly ends with her trachea being surgically opened. She’s saved by everyone’s favorite crazy person, Dr. Loomis (and trust me, Donald Pleasance is untethered to sanity in this movie) who tells the doctor she will indeed stabilize and does not require surgery.

On the morning of Halloween, Rachel is with Jamie. On the way out, she first tells Jamie that “Mom and Dad send their love” which is the only other mention of the Carruthers for the rest of the series. She then has a conversation with Loomis about feeling guilty for leaving for the next two days. Loomis tells her Jamie will be taken care of and everything will be a-ok.

Anyway, everything is not a-ok. Upon getting home, Max, the family rottweiler owned by Rachel and the Carruthers family starts barking at the bushes. Rachel ignores the warning and hurries him inside so she can get ready for a farm party for Halloween. She gets in the shower and Jamie begins seeing what Michael is doing and scrawling out a message for Loomis. What’s about to happen is one of the major things this film gets fairly derided for. Loomis calls Rachel to have her check on Max. She sees that he has been let out of the house and is missing. He then tells her to get out of the house and get help which she does.

The goofy cops I referenced earlier show up and tell her the house is clear. Max even returns home. So it seems like everything is cool, and Rachel returns to getting ready for the party she’s going to with her friends. It’s then Michael attacks. He stabs her basically right in the heart and kills her. First, Ellie Cornell, the actress who played Rachel pretty much hated going out this way. She was capable and ultimately took charge of getting rid of Michael in the fourth film. On top of that, she was maybe one of the most perfect girl next door leading ladies in all of horror history. She was cute and capable. That should make for a multiple-movie heroine, but not here.

Here, she has plans to go to a Halloween party to probably hook up with a guy and drink beers. She has more than one implied topless moment. She has a shower scene and comes out soaking wet and only wearing a towel when she has to leave the house. When Michael attacks she is wearing only a long sweater. She became sorta sexualized beyond being an audience crush and dies for it. It’s maybe the lowest point the Halloween franchise ever stooped.

Yes, even lower than pretty much anything in Halloween: Resurrection.

Jamie’s reactions to Rachel being attacked which is very similar to violent seizures has Loomis concerned. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know know that Jamie is psychically linked to Michael, but he’s got some pretty good instincts that something is obviously up. So, he goes to see Sheriff Meeker whose daughter was killed the year before in the previous movie’s rampage. He wants the cops to be on alert and basically be out in force to keep Haddonfield safe. Meeker isn’t so sure.

That’s when Donald Pleasance has the best line of the entire franchise – “I prayed that he would burn in Hell, but in my heart, I knew that Hell would not have him.” When another deputy comes in to tell Meeker that he’s needed at the cemetery, Loomis’ instincts really kick up a notch and it sure seems like there is another massacre coming this Halloween.

Earlier in the movie, we met Rachel’s friend Tina. Tina is played by Wendy Kaplan. Now, Wendy is a pretty girl. I remember thinking she was one of three (well, technically four because I also had a huge crush on Danielle Harris when I was a kid) really good looking ladies in this movie. However, Tina is a point of issue for many fans of the franchise. She is always and all of the following: 1) REALLY high energy and almost comes across as completely coked out all the time. 2) A complete moron most of the time. 3) Nearly irredeemably irresponsible.

Tina has a boyfriend also named Michael. He’s a massive douche. Mikey must have a massive hog or I’m giving Tina way too much credit when I say she’s irredeemably irresponsible because Tina was on her way to visit Jamie at the hospital with another friend, Samantha (Sammy). Boyfriend Mikey rolls up in his muscle car and Tina fucks off with him even though they were literally already at the hospital when he drove by and Tina flagged him down. Rachel’s little foster sis who has had a rough go of it for the past full year? Yeah, that’s great, losers, I’m gonna go see my dirtbag boyfriend so he can plug my lady hole instead of visiting the lil sis of my best friend for a couple minutes.

Later, her irredeemably idiotic irresponsibility gets even worse around the douchebag boyfriend.

The next, and last, important element of Halloween 5 arrives on the bus from wherever. Basically named “The Man in Black” he’s a guy with black boots, black slacks, and a black duster who deboards from the bus and kicks a dog before continuing down the sidewalk. In 1989, we collectively thought, “Who’s this guy?” and “This doesn’t seem like a thing a Halloween movie would have.” This ties to that whole Thorn symbol on Michael’s wrist, but we don’t really know anything about that at this point, nor do we know who the Man in Black is during the runtime of this movie. That comes later and it’s a real stupid reveal that doesn’t make much sense. All we know at this point is that the Man in Black and Michael are both in Haddonfield and Dr. Loomis is completely off his rocker and desperately trying to find Michael.

Speaking of Loomis, he’s gone to the Myers home to try to find Michael. He doesn’t know the Man in Black is also there watching him. Speaking of people watching people, Michael is in town watching Tina, Sammy, and Mike. Also in town is Sammy’s boyfriend, Spitz. Spitz is kind of a doofus and he has the hottest girlfriend this series has ever fucking seen in Sammy. After Sammy loads the beer into Mike’s car, Michael uses a gardening tool to scrape into Mike’s car’s paint job. Mikey, well, you gotta give it to him, he does try to retaliate with Michael, but, instead, he gets throttled.

The evening is fast approaching. The dumb young adult characters are getting ready for their party out at the old farm. In the children’s hospital, the kids are having a Halloween costume party too. There’s a little boy who likes Jamie and gives her some flowers in exchange for a cute little kiss on the cheek. It’s cute. If it weren’t for where this series decides to go, I’d be rooting for these two kiddos.

Michael (Myers) picks up Tina to go to the party while the Man in Black watches on the side of the road. Because Jamie is having another reaction to her uncle’s actions, Loomis figures out where Tina is and Meeker sends some cars to pick her up and bring her to Jamie to protect her. She’s safe, but Michael drives off to go to the party where there could be a whole bunch of kids to kill. Jamie speaks for the first time in a year by saying Tina’s name. That’s a real fucking bummer that Jamie’s first word in a year is to say Tina’s fucking name. Not Rachel. Not her foster parents. Not Dr. Loomis. Not Michael Myers. Not that little boy who crushes on her. Fucking “Tina.”

What does Tina do in response? Tina fucks off. No, really. This is that irredeemable irresponsibility cropping up again. She tells Jamie that sometimes you just feel a certain way about a guy and that becomes more important than anything else. Or, well, I guess more important than a traumatized little sister of a friend who just spoke for the first time in a year and the word she spoke was her name. Fuck, Tina is irredeemably, irresponsibly idiotic in this movie. Not only that, as she leaves the hospital, she’s crying (obviously knowing that something major happened) and tells Dr. Loomis to leave her and Jamie alone because he’s being creepy. Yeah, Loomis, who is crazy to be sure, is the bad one here. Loomis tells Tina that he’s only trying to protect her and that she needs to be sensible. Her response is, “I am never sensible if I can help it! Giggles LOL Byeeeee loser!”

Good news is that Tina will be dead soon.

Jamie sneaks out to help Tina because she knows Uncle Michael is on the way to the Tower Farm Halloween Party. In fact, she finds out exactly where she’s headed because her little crush, Billy, also followed her out and knew they were going to Tower Farm. The two goofy cops who responded to the call earlier to help Rachel are hanging outside the party to keep an eye on things. Tina, Sammy, and Spitz, all morons, decide to play a prank on the two dummy cops by Spitz dressing as Michael Myers and chasing after the two girls. They are fortunate they weren’t all shot by the dummy cops.

It’s like this Swiss director thinks that people aged, oh I dunno, like, 17 to 25 are all idiots on Halloween. Like they are all afflicted with moronic impulses and idiocy. It’s the only reason I can think of for the characters to act the way they do in this movie. No characters were like this is the last movie. Sure, there were pranksters who dressed as Michael Myers at one point, but they weren’t main characters. Tina is an awful example of anything approximating a real adult person. Sammy and Spitz are also idiots who come up with the plan to prank the idiot cops who could have very easily blown their asses away. It’s just wild to me how totally stupid the characters are in this movie. Loomis and Jamie are basically background characters when they need to have a far more active role in what’s going on here.

They will eventually step up in the third act, but this movie follows all the wrong people and killed the most capable person in the event of a Michael Myers attack way back in the first act.

It’s possible that the most favorably looked upon element of this movie is that of Tamara Glynn playing Sammy. She’s easily one of the most easy-on-the-eyes things in this movie. She and her boyfriend Spitz are finally going to have sexy times. I think it was alluded to earlier that they had yet to have sex and she thought tonight was gonna be the night. Makes sense. Halloween means she can dress up as a sexy devil lady and get into the mood with all the other sexy costumes everyone’s in at the party. Makes perfect sense. I’m beginning to realize that maybe this movie had some sort of effect on me where I began thinking that Halloween costumes for girls are only sexy and nothing else.

Anyway, of course, Michael Myers is roaming around the barn with the young lovers. As Spitz penetrates Sammy while on top, Michael sneaks up from behind and penetrates him with a pitchfork. Sammy actually gets a good idea for a character in these types of movies and tries to use the pitchfork to defend herself. This fails miserably when Michael just grabs it and then uses a scythe to kill her. The goofy cops, thinking the Michael Myers exiting the barn is one of those damn kids from earlier, call him over to give him a dressing down for carrying around a dangerous tool like a pitchfork.

Meanwhile, the party is starting to wind down as everyone is planning to go skinny dipping. Tina goes to the barn to get Sammy and Spitz but only finds their dead bodies, a bloody scythe, and a kitten that is playing in the blood. She goes outside to get help from the dummy cops, but they are killed too. Michael then uses Tina’s boyfriend’s car to try to run her down, but Jamie arrives with Billy to distract Michael.

Michael then chases after the kids and nearly runs over Billy but he’s able to get out of the way. Michael chases after Jamie, but I guess Tina should have tried to be a little less sensible when she had a chance because Michael is about to kill Jamie when Tina sacrifices herself to save the little girl by jumping in front of Michael just as he’s about stab Jamie. This gives Jamie and Billy the time to escape and be found by Loomis.

Finally, Jamie agrees to help Loomis. Loomis calls into the woods to tell Michael that this rage of his will consume him just as it does his victims. He tells Michael to return home where the rage began. He tells Michael to go home where not only he but also Jamie will be waiting for him. So, yeah, Loomis’ big plan is to use Jamie as bait at the Myers residence where he thinks he can kill Michael. Or… or something.

Basically, I think the movie just wanted to have a big climax in the Myers house.

Okay, well, pretty much Jamie, Loomis, and long-time character actor Troy Evans are inside the Myers house. Every single cop that has ever been wished into existence for Haddonfield is outside the ol’ Myers place. I’m a little foggy on exactly what happens here, but Jamie has a vision of Billy so it’s thought that Michael is going to the children’s hospital. All the cops except for Troy Evans and a guy outside keeping watch book it over there. I think this is misdirection? Loomis feels like Michael will definitely come now there is no one else getting in his way. Loomis, because he’s utterly insane in this movie, also refuses to allow Troy Evans to take Jamie anywhere and locks the three of them in Judith’s room.

It also turns out that Loomis was correct about his hunch. Michael did come home and killed the cop outside. The final showdown is here. Troy Evans wants to call Sheriff Meeker, but Loomis grabs his radio and smashes it to shit, and pulls a gun on the cop. He tells Troy Evans that Michael Myers is downstairs and he wants to go see him while the copper protects Jamie inside the bedroom.

Loomis tells Michael that Jamie can help him relieve the rage. I’m not sure what the idea here is. Michael initially does not attack until he nearly gets the knife away from Michael. Then, Michael slashes Loomis in the torso and throws him around a little bit. Loomis is a tough bird. This isn’t the end of him.

Hearing the scream of anguish from crazy ol’ Loomis, Troy Evans tosses a rope out the window for them to repel down. Michael busts through the door and Troy Evans tries shooting him but that goes nowhere. Michael basically beats the hell out of the cop until he wraps a rope around the cop’s neck and throws him out the window to hang him. Jamie goes deeper into the house where she locks some doors to barricade herself. She decides to get in a laundry chute to the basement to hide from Michael as he busts through the doors. Michael immediately finds her so she slides all the way to the basement, but the bottom part of the chute is locked shut.

Michael uses the knife to pry the door off at the bottom of the chute. He then tries grabbing for Jamie and stabbing for her, but he can’t reach her based on how high she is able to pull herself up. He then decides to stab at the flimsy metal that makes up the chute. She climbs all the way back up and out of the chute and finds her way to the attic where she finds a coffin, Tina’s dead boyfriend, and, unfortunately, her dead dog and Rachel.

You know what really irks me… Only twice before did a surviving heroine get killed in a horror movie follow-up (if the follow-up even attempted to bring anyone back). The first, and most notable was Alice from Friday the 13th. She survived the original film, and died in the cold open of the sequel. Okay, there’s a whole other real-world story around Adrienne King and her troubles with stalkers after the success of the original Friday movie that is a separate topic altogether, but still… Killing her off was not necessarily a precedent. It was a reward for the audience who saw the first one and came back a year later for the sequel. That’s all really. The other notable returning heroin who died was Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street. She died while saving the day in the third movie. The rest of the survivors of the third movie were killed off in the opening to the fourth, but there was some narrative reasoning behind that.

Again, there were really only three instances before this that indicated that returning heroines died in horror franchise sequels. Now, Randy from Scream would have you believe this happened in every single movie sequel in a horror franchise. That’s just not so. It never happened in Hellraiser. The Chainsaw films didn’t have recurring characters (generally). So, yeah. This is not a real “thing” in horror sequels. That means, honestly, there was no reason for Rachel to die. She could have been hurt and sent to the hospital where she remained for the rest of the movie. She could have just been where her parents were vacationing. There is no narrative or good reason to have her die and for Jamie to find her. That poor girl has had it rough enough. To lose her dog and all her closest friends and guardians is awful.

And they will not do her any better in the follow-up to this movie.

Michael comes up to the attic and Jamie lies in the coffin where she is able to briefly stop him from killing her by calling him uncle. She convinces him to remove his mask to see his face. You can’t see it super clear, though it was a little clearer when he woke up in the hermit’s shack earlier, but it’s a disappointment. He’s just… a guy. There’s nothing special about him. He should have scars and burns. Remember, Laurie shot out his eyes in the second movie and then he got blown to shit and lit on fire moments later. He shouldn’t look like a normal guy. I don’t need Michael to be a beefy and imposing person. His mask and knife are imposing enough. But I would like some continuity up in this bitch for once.

The moment passes when Jamie tries to wipe the tear from his face and he’s spooked by the casket falling over. Jamie runs away again only to run into Dr. Loomis who, again, uses her as bait. He yells to Michael that if he wants her he can come and get her. But, in reality, he’s leading Michael into a trap where he’s caught in a heavy net. Loomis then hits him with several tranquilizer darts. Michael still doesn’t go down until Loomis beats him with a 2×4. Loomis, exhausted collapses on top of his longtime patient. Meeker and the deputies return and arrest him.

Meeker says the National Guard will be there in the morning to transport Michael to a maximum security facility where he will rot until the day he dies. Jamie says the thing that is always on the mind of whatever Akkad is still kicking, “He’ll never die.” Before a deputy can return Jamie to the children’s hospital, the Man in Black finally springs to action. He begins shooting every cop in the station and when Jamie goes back into the station to see what happened, she’s horrified by the sight of Michael no longer being in his holding cell.

Despite this movie being full of near-Italian level of bonkers decisions and plotting ideas, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is still, as it always has been, incredibly watchable, if still incredibly dumb. Sometimes you want a thought-provoking thriller like the original Halloween. Sometimes you want the full 80s vibe of Halloween II or Halloween 4. But sometimes you want something that is playing in the background while you cook dinner or, I dunno, do your taxes and shit. And you want that thing playing to be something you don’t need to put any extra work on acknowledging or anything like that. Halloween 5 is your pick for that kind of scenario.

I know I’m in the minority there, but, as I said, it does fill me with great pleasure to watch this movie.

That is not so much the case for what’s coming next. So, Tuesday is Halloween. It is tradition for me to always bring you a new special article for the occasion and I’m doing that yet again. Not only that, but it’s also the 400th review article ever released at http://www.bmovieenema.com. I knew I needed to find something that made a lot of sense for me to champion for that milestone review. With that, I think we could do no better than to go ahead and finish this Jamie Lloyd trilogy of Halloween films. Oh yeah, I gotta go there. I gotta talk about the cursed sixth film in the franchise, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

So, join me back here in just a few days to learn more about the Man in Black, the sign of the thorn, what the fate of Jamie Lloyd will be, and be enchanted by the grown-up Tommy Doyle (a character who had previously not appeared since being a major part of the first movie) played by the dreamboat that is Paul Rudd!