Trick or Trailers: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Even though the original Halloween was still regarded as the gold standard of the slasher genre, by the late '80s the competition had left Michael Myers behind. While the Halloween franchise had spent most of the decade languishing, Jason and Freddy had racked up body counts, sequels and multiple Fangoria covers. But for the tenth anniversary of Carpenter's classic, producer Moustapha Akkad was out to reestablish Michael's boogeyman cred. In the fall of '88, the long-awaited return of Michael Myers was finally due to hit theaters.

When the trailer was released, it had everything that fans had been waiting for, save for the return of Jamie Lee Curtis. The message was clear: Halloween was back, with none of that Silver Shamrock crap.  

 

After so long away, having a "real" Halloween movie again, with Michael back as the OG slasher was cause for celebration. While the fact that he kept coming back eventually made his return a case of "beware what you wish for," back then it was a legitimate thrill when 4 was released. All the better for the fact that 4 felt like it was assembled with real care rather than being just a crass cash in.  

After 4, the series frequently struggled to maintain the same level of quality but back in October of '88, it was exciting to be a Halloween fan. At the time, returning to what made Halloween work felt as natural as Loomis slipping back into his familiar trench coat again. 

Phantom Of The Oscars

Somewhere along the way, the Oscars lost me. I'm not just talking about last night, I mean years ago. I don't know when it happened but while I used to look forward to the Academy Awards each year, now I can't be bothered with them and it's been that way for so long I can't even remember the last time I watched the Oscars out of any personal interest. This year, as with the last few years, my job at a TV station put me in front of the Oscars, rolling local commercial spots, but when my shift ended, my time with the Oscars was over and I didn't care to turn on the end of the broadcast once I got home.

Instead, I put on Scream Factory's new Blu-Ray Special Edition of 1989's Phantom of the Opera - because as far as I'm concerned, no Oscar winning film (well, no Oscar winner in 2015, at least) can hold a candle to a Robert Englund-starring Phantom. Sorry, Birdman!

With today's independent horror scene comprised largely of micro-budget found footage pics, it's almost a shock to be reminded of how lavish Phantom is, with its handsomely rendered period setting. Even great indie horror films today don't have the resources to look this rich anymore. If we ever see anything extravagant, it has to be a big budget enterprise, like Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Crimson Peak.

Watching Phantom also makes me miss the days when Robert Englund was a regular presence on the big screen. As much as I love him as Freddy, I love his turn as the Phantom even more. It's a shame this didn't become a new franchise for him as I believe the '90s would have been dramatically improved had Englund and director Dwight H. Little been able to re-team for even just one more Phantom film.

It's clear that Englund relished the role and the opportunity that it provided and I love how, in every scene, he tears into it. Rather than pulling out his tried and true Freddy mannerisms, with his role in Phantom he was able to indulge in grander melodramatics, play a more romantic side, and - for lack of a better word - be more operatic. He's hammy and over the top but in all the right ways.

Englund knows exactly what he's doing and everything about his performance is done with the knowledge that this character inhabits a heightened, unnatural world so whether he's simply entering a room or blowing out a candle, there's always an extra flourish to it.

While it's a safe bet to say that Robert Englund will never be called onto the Oscar stage and it's an unfortunate fact that a film like Little's Phantom will never garner any industry accolades, history shows us that even minor genre works tend to endure far past the point where films that were more celebrated and honored in their day have faded from popular memory. Awards are fine but on the grand scales of time, for a film to be remembered and appreciated many years after its release is something that out weighs Oscar gold.

Trick or Trailers: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

The fact that this year marks the 35th anniversary of John Carpenter's Halloween has been just cause for celebration. However, the fact that this year also marks the 25th anniversary of Halloween 4 hasn't gotten nearly as much notice. Subtitled The Return of Michael Myers, this was an effort on the part of Moustapha Akkad to save the series, after the Michael Myers-free Halloween III: Season of the Witch had been roundly rejected.

From a commercial standpoint, going back to basics was an excellent call on Akkad's part and while subsequent entries might've made fans wish that Michael could be permanently retired, 4 was a very good effort all around. For me, it's the pinnacle of the Myers sequels. Director Dwight Little is no John Carpenter but he did an admirable job just the same. The atmosphere is dead on, the suspense is effective, and there's a clear reverence for the original.

Alan McElroy's script picks up where II left off, building on the familial aspects that Carpenter's screenplay introduced in II, but without burdening his screenplay with the kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo that 5 & 6 went for. And the cast is terrific, populated with a set of genuinely likeable young protagonists (why Ellie Cornell's career never took off, I don't get) and topped by the irreplaceable Donald Pleasence.

I'm predisposed to having fond memories of 4 because it was the first installment of the series I was able to see in the theater but I think by any objective standard this remains the gold standard of the series. If they were going to continue the saga of Michael Myers, this showed how to do it right and bringing back Pleasence as Loomis was the real masterstroke. While it would've been easy to leave the character dead, having Loomis miraculously survive an explosion that should've reduced him to ash was the smartest decision anyone involved in this film made, giving it a stamp of legitimacy. As soon as you saw Pleasence ranting about Michael in the trailers and TV spots for this, you knew Halloween was on again.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

John Carpenter's Halloween may have made the slasher franchises of the '80s possible, but by the mid-'80s, the slow-steppin' Michael Myers had been outpaced by the likes of Freddy and Jason. Showing an uncommon aversion to commerce, Carpenter and producer Debra Hill tried to end the Shape's saga with 1981's Halloween II and their stubborn attempt to continue the Halloween brand name without any of the familiar elements of the first two films - 1983's Halloween III: Season of the Witch - left fans outraged. But with the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films being such reliable earners - for Paramount and New Line, respectively - it was inevitable that Michael Myers would be groomed to reclaim his throne as the slasher genre's premiere icon. Once producer Moustapha Akkad took control of the series again, plans to put Haddonfield back on the map in time for the ten-year anniversary of Halloween were made. For a brief moment in 1988, Slasher Nation had good reason to be happy.

Taking a straight-forward approach, Alan B. McElroy's Halloween 4 script (delivered under the gun of a writer's strike) is respectful towards the first film, eschewing II's attempts to explain Michael's supernatural abilities through the myth of Samhain (as in the first film, Michael is now simply regarded as Evil incarnate with no arcane explanations necessary) and director Dwight H. Little creates an efficiently scary mood, evoking the dark autumnal menace of the original with the proper Midwestern ambience (and composer Alan Howarth effectively reprises the famous Halloween theme). With Jamie Lee Curtis having gone on to A-list projects by this time, her character of Laurie Strode was written out of the new film (dead in a car crash, we're told) leaving a young daughter in her wake. In tribute to Curtis, her onscreen daughter is named Jamie (played by the appealing Danielle Harris) and Jamie lives in the care of her adopted family, the Carruthers, which includes an older sister named Rachel (Ellie Cornell).

While a comatose Michael is being transported from the sanitarium that he's been incarcerated in for the last ten years (this move is being attempted, of course, during a thunderstorm on the eve of Halloween - how about a pat on the back for whoever planned this fiasco!) an ambulance attendant who clearly takes his life for granted carelessly lets slip in Michael's presence that Michael has a niece alive and well back home. Mad Mike immediately emerges from his catatonia and does what he does best, slaughtering the ambulance crew. With Michael loose again, it's up to Dr. Loomis (the returning Donald Pleasence) to hunt down his old quarry. Given that Michael is famous for his one track mind, Loomis doesn't waste any time heading to Haddonfield.

As Loomis tries to stop Michael from reprising his rampage of ten years ago, Halloween 4 quickly reveals itself as an amped-up remake of the first film only now instead of Donald Pleasence simply crouching in the bushes with Charles Cyphers scaring kids away from the Myers' house, Loomis has some real back-up in place. Which is good, because Michael is pressing his attack harder than ever this time around. On the way to Halloween 4's climatic face-off, Little delivers several well-conceived action scenes, including an extended roof top chase and an attack on a speeding pick up truck. While some may feel scenes like these take some of the Boogeyman element out of Michael, there's still a number of moody scares to be found - in fact, Little stages one of the creepiest kills in the entire series featuring a bit of misdirection involving a rocking chair and a cop on late watch against Michael.

As much as this was billed as the Return of Michael Myers, this was also the Return of Loomis. Unlike Jason and Freddy, who squared off against succeeding rounds of disposable teen opponents, the Halloween series was always distinguished by Loomis' Ahab-like pursuit of Michael. Ever since Loomis uttered the lines "He's escaped! The Evil has escaped!", the chase was on and much of the appeal of the series lay in Pleasence's comfortingly hammy portrayal of Loomis. Having Loomis around to describe Michael as evil on two legs is what made Michael more than just a thug with a knife. This wasn't Charles Durning chasing Tony Beckley in When A Stranger Calls. You'd never hear Loomis talk about Michael in psychiatrict terms. From Day 1 Loomis was trying to send Evil Itself back to Hell - an element that turned what could've been mean-spirited set of films into something more akin to classic monster movies with Loomis serving as a determined Van Helsing. If the makers of Halloween 4 deserve credit for anything, it's for bringing Loomis back, when it would've been easy to just have let the character go.

Following Michael's latest spectacular demise, as he goes down in a hail of bullets (again making this film a more elaborate replay of the original - now instead of Loomis putting a few rounds into Michael, a entire firing squad is there to execute him), Halloween 4 offers an epilogue that for many may have seemed like an incredibly obvious turn of events but it managed to catch me off guard back in '88. And while some may have scoffed at this final scene as an obvious sequel set-up, I honestly think it could've functioned as a satisfying close to the series, bringing events full circle. If this had been the last Halloween, I would've been ok with that. It leaves the Loomis character in such a psychologically tortured place that it seems like a bitter but fitting end.

Like most sequels, Halloween 4 is largely a middle-of-the-road effort but in an age where most horror franchises now revolve around unlikable characters subjected to extreme torture (the current success of Saw V proving that this trend is far from over) and when even the Halloween series itself has taken an ugly turn (thanks, Rob Zombie!) it's worth appreciating what Halloween 4 represents - a time when even horror's heavyweights didn't have to be such jaded enterprises to prove their credibility.