I remember I actually had the poster for Halloween 4 which I seem to remember came free with either Fangoria or Gorezone which I used to buy religiously back in the day. This was way before the film would actually be released here in the UK. The poster looked so cool and I was intrigued to see what the film would be like with Mr Myers returning to the fold. The imagery of the poster was very evocative of the original film and so I was moist with anticipation.
The first Halloween film I ever saw was Halloween 3: Season of the Witch which I loved and continue to love to this day. The fact that Myers wasn’t in the film never even occurred to me until I started to read angry fanboy reviews years later.
In fact, fans of the franchise were so incensed by Myers’ exclusion from H3 that it bombed at the box office even though it’s a great film. But this points out something very telling about horror sequels. Fanboys of the Halloween series are happy as long as a) Micheal is featured and b) he’s killings loads of people in really gory ways. And that’s it. The fanboys don’t care about a fantastic plot, a brilliant soundtrack, gorgeous cinematography and amazing direction. They just want to see The Main Man killing anyone he crosses paths with.
And this is exactly what the makers of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers sought to accomplish. And do they? Yes. The film is a series of kills with the odd reference both plotwise and through the soundtrack to the original.
But all of the dare I say, art and style of the first two films (the first especially) has been gotten rid of. Halloween 4 feels like a TV movie that feels nothing like the first two films and is instead an exercise in giving the fans what they want.
The loose plot involves Myers being transferred to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium but disposing of the ambulance workers escorting him on his journey so that he can return to Haddonfield and wreak more havoc. Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before…
The subject of his ire, in this case, is his niece Jamie who is the daughter of Laurie Strode and must be done away with because of this. And what an irritating character she is. In fact, she’s one of the most unlikeable characters I think I’ve ever had to endure in a horror film.
Everything the Myers fans wanted from Halloween 4 was delivered on point. Everything that fans of decent, suspenseful horror movies wanted and expected after the first three Halloween movies were left disappointed.
But the film was a huge hit at the box office which is all that matters when it comes to cynical and stale filmmaking. The budget for the film was $5m (it looks like it had a budget of a fraction of that) and it made $17.8m at the box office. Kerching!
In a parallel universe, Halloween 3 made a ton of money at the box office and the Halloween franchise was reinvented as an anthology series with different stories, different and interesting characters and all of the brilliance of H3. Now, how do I get to this parallel universe?
The Halloween franchise died for me after Halloween 3. And with Halloween Kills being as abysmal as it was, it’s in rapid decline. But hey, it made lots of revenue at the box office!
Grade- E+
meathookcinema.com 