10 Worst Horror Films I Have Ever Seen.

There have been so many dreadful horrors that it was almost impossible for to just settle on ten. However, after thinking about it for a few days (I have no life), I narrowed my list down to these ten titles. There are many of bad horror films I have yet to see, so this list could easily change in the future.

10) Halloween II (2009)

Dir: Rob Zombie.
Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Taylor Mane, Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, Sheri Moon Zombie, Margot Kidder, Mary Birdsong, Bea Grant.
Running Time:  105 min.

I absolutely loathed Rob Zombie's remake of Hallween, the only reason it isn't on my top 10 list is because Halloween II is infinitely worse. Slasher films aren't exactly high works of art, but even the bottom feeders tend to have at least one character you an empathize with...... not so with Halloween II. For instance, I enjoy the first four entries in Friday the 13th series, largely because the characters are at least fun too watch. Sure, their main function is to meet grisly ends, but at least they are pleasant company. They are the kind people you would want to be on a weekend get away with. In Halloween II, everyone is miserable. 

I like Rob Zombie, his music is entertaining for the most part and he comes off as being highly intelligent in interviews, therefore it's complete shame that this film is mind numbingly awful. Zombie is more of a "shock" director than an actual "horror" director. Meaning, he'll lull you into a hypnagogic state, only to jump out and scream "BOO" at you! Take for instance the death of Laurie's friend, Harley. She is at a costume party, dressed up as Dr. Frank-N- Furter (from The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and is fixing to fornicate in the back of a van with a guy wearing a werewolf mask! UH-OH! The guy, however, ask to take a leak first and is dispatched by Michael, while he is urinating on a tree. Then Michael crashes through the back window of the van and snaps poor Harley's spine. It's an extremely violent moment, yet it's not in the least bit scary, and eventually the shock value wears off on the viewer.  The original Halloween slowly builds to it's inevitable climax, the audience is constantly in a state of unease, wondering when Michael Meyers is going to strike. In Halloween II, we don't really care, we just want the damn movie to end. 

9) Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

Dir: Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso.
Cast: Margit Evelyn Newton, Franco Garofolo, Selan Karay.
Running Time:  101 min.

My summary of Hell of the Living Dead: Endless bickering among the characters, endless nature stock footage, and lots of cheap looking gore. Rinse. Wash. Repeat. The zombie make up looks like play dough, and is often on the verge of falling off the faces of the poor extras. It's a third rate Dawn of the Dead, which is probably giving it too much credit.  The hilariously awful dubbing is amusing for a little bit, but gets old after awhile. 

  

8) Maniac (1934)

Dir: Dwain Esper
Cast: William Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller (not the comedienne), Theo Ramsey.
Running Time: 51 min.

Maniac is about a hammy ex-vaudeville actor Don Maxwell that finds himself an assistant to Dr. Meirschultz, a mad scientist experimenting on resurrecting the dead. Maxwell kills Meirschultz and covers up his crime by impersonating the mad doctor, driving himself insane in the process. Maniac is noteworthy in that in tries to pass itself of as an educational film about mental illness; there are inter titles scattered throughout explaining what the main character is experiencing. To visualize Maxwell's descent into madness, director Esper superimposes footage from the Benjamin Christensen classic Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages over his face. By posing as an educational film it gave Esper leeway to show woman in the nude, as well as get away with extreme violence; at one point Maxwell plucks out a cat's eyeball and eats it. It's a horrible film to be sure, but probably the only film on this list that is remotely fascinating, given the era that it was made. 

7) Jaws:The Revenge (1987)

Dir: Joseph Sargent.
Cast: Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young, Michael Caine, Judith Barsi.
Running Time: 90 min.
Jaws is one of my favorite movies. Jaws: The Revenge, on the other hand, is pure schlock, only good for a few unintended laughs. Whereas Jaws kept the shark off screen for the majority of the movie, The Revenge makes the mistake of showing too much.In one laughable bit, the shark jumps out of the water and devours a  woman that is sitting on top of a banana boat.

Lorraine Gary returns as Ellen Brody, who constantly has flashbacks to the first film. In fact, she some how able to remember events that she wasn't apart of, like Martin Brody disposing of the shark in the first film. Gary tries her hardest, but the material lets her down. Apparently, some genius decided that if the Great White Shark roared like King Kong, it would be much more scary. Thankfully, we were spared a Jaws 5: In Space. 

6) The Snow Creature (1954)

Dir: W. Lee Wilder.
Cast: Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, Teru Shimada, Rollin Moriyana, Darlene Fields.
Running Time: 70 min.
A real snoozer! W. Lee Wilder is name that completely gets overlooked in the “Worst Director of All Time” conversation, possibly because his films are so boring that they are easy to forget. He sneezed out three non classics in the 1950s: Killers From Space (with Peter Graves), Phantom From Space, and The Snow Creature. Amazingly, he was the older brother of Billy Wilder, quite possibly the greatest director in Hollywood history. The Snow Creature is not only hampered by a low budget, the same shot of Yeti walking towards the camera is recycled throughout the film, but by an incredibly dull cast.

It’s an incredibly uninvolving and joyless film; when a Himalayan village is attacked by a Yeti, the main character shrugs with complete indifference.  It also blatantly steals the plot from King Kong; the Yeti is captured and brought to Los Angeles, where it escapes and runs amok. There are better ways to spend 70 minutes.

5) Zombie Lake (1981)

Dir: Jean Rollin.
Cast: Howard Vernon, Pierre-Maris Escourrou, Anouchka, Antonio Mayans, Nadine Pascal, Youri Radionow.
Running Time:  90 min.
A squad of green skinned, bugged eyed Nazi zombies arise from the bottom lake and terrorize a French village that murdered them years ago. Their main victim of choice: curvaceous, female skinny dippers. There's also a "heart warming" subplot in which one of the zombies is reunited with his daughter, the product of an affair he had with a local woman. The fact that he is able to recognize his daughter is, in itself, a mystery, considering he was killed before her birth. This subplot also highlights just how incompetent of a film Zombie Lake truly is; his daughter is roughly ten years old, which would put the setting of this movie some time in the mid 1950s, yet the fashions, hair styles, and technology place it in the late 70s/early 80s. The filmmakers were to lazy to replicate a 1950s setting, which makes everything more confusing. Not to mention, director Jean Rollin seems to have confused zombies for vampires; the undead Nazis bite the necks of their victims and suck their blood.

4) Monster a-Go Go (1965)

Dir: Bill Rebane, Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Cast: Philip Morton, June Travis, George Perry.
Running Time:  70 min.

Monster a-Go Go is about an astronaut that crash lands on Earth and has been transformed into a deformed, radioactive monster. This idea was done before in The First Man In Space (1959) and The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), but while those films were actually interesting, Monster a Go-Go is 70 minutes of pure boredom. There's lot of narration and very little characterization. It's also extremely disjointed; characters often disappear without explanation. It also is extremely anti-climatic; the military follows the monster into the sewer, only to find that is has disappeared.  We are then treated to this mind blowing piece of narration:

As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called "Douglas" to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

Brilliant!

3)The Creeping Terror (1964)

Dir: Vic Savage.
Cast: Vic Savage, Shannon O’ Neill, William Thourlby, John Careisio.
Running Time:  75min.
The soundtrack to The Creeping Terror was supposedly erase during post-production, so instead of dubbing over lines, the filmmakers opted to go with an omniscient narrator that never shuts up. The narrator constantly reaffirms things that are being shown onscreen, "The military was called in....," etc. The terror is essentially a walking carpet with a tip shaped like a piece of asparagus that meanders across the countryside and devours people that get in its path. The deaths in this film could easily be avoided if the monster's victims, instead of just lying perfectly still waiting to be devoured, got up and walked a way at a leisurely pace. Every horrific moment consists of the monsters very slowly crawling towards its next meal, while the person just lies there helpless, never once thinking to get up. The camera also lingers on the behinds of the monster's young, female victims as it gobbles them up.

2) Curse of Bigfoot (1976)

Dir: Dave Flocker.
Cast: Bob Clymire, Bill Simonsen, Jan Swihart.
Running Time: 88 min.

Here's a typical moment in Curse of Bigfoot:
Two lumberjacks are driving through the woods in a pick up truck, when all of a sudden Bigfoot runs across the road. One of them (wearing a wool hat) goes into the woods to investigate, while the other one waits at the truck. Wool Hat Man walks through the woods and then is attacked. Sounds exciting, right? Well, the scene in question goes on for nearly seven minutes and the attack in question happens off screen and is signified by a scream. It's a film that builds up to nothing! There's never any real sense of danger,because we're never shown an actual murders.  It doesn't help that the Monster suit looks like it came from a kindergarten pageant.

It's a tedious film that desperately apes the Howard Hawks film The Thing From Another World, but fail miserable. A nice cure for those who suffer from insomnia. 

1) Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Dir: Harold P. Warren.
Cast: Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Diane Mahree, Harold P. Warren, Jackey Neyman.
Running Time: 74 min.

It's only 74 minutes long, but it's the longest 74 minutes you'll ever experience. Manos: The Hands of Fate is quite possibly the most inept movie ever made. Supposedly, it was made on a bet between director Harold P. Warren and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, in which the former bet the latter he could make a movie for $19,000. It was never stated that the movie actually had to be good, so Warren won the bet. It's obvious that Warren is not familiar with the concept of editing, as there are scenes where characters stand around awkwardly staring blankly into thin air, as if awaiting their cue from the director. In another scene, the hillbilly satyr Torgo gets a bit touchy feely with the lead actress, who responds by staring in abject horror, then after enduring this abuse for about two minutes finally yells at him to stop.

In another famous moment, two cops hear a gun shot in this distance and decide to investigate. They get out of their squad car, take a few steps into the desert, scan the area for a few seconds, and then call it a day. Exciting! 

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Halloween 4?! Surely, this is a mistake. Why would you want to devote an entire review to an unnecessary sequel to a classic horror film? Why not just review the original one instead?  I tell you why, my incredulous readers, because Halloween has been written about so many times that there is really nothing more I can say to it.  Halloween 4, on the other hand, is essentially up for grabs, because despite a strong cult following, it has essentially been overlooked by the critics.  It’s also the best of all the Halloween sequels; its gore is kept to a minimum and the characters are fairly likable. It’s definitely a mixed bag, but compared to the awful horror sequels that saturated the market in the 80s, it comes off rather well. 

Despite the 4 in the title, it is actually the third film in the Michael Myers saga; Halloween III: Season of the Witch had nothing what so ever to do with the character (except for a brief clip of the first Halloween playing on the television), instead it revolved around a plot by a Druid cult to take over the world through the use of Halloween masks and a television signal, or something to that effect. As you can imagine this didn’t go over so well with the Halloween fan base and when Halloween 4 rolled along, Michael Myers was back, giving free reign to once again terrorize the small town of Haddonfield. However, the filmmakers couldn’t get Jamie Lee Curtis to return, so instead they introduced the character of Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the daughter of Laurie Strode (Curtis’ character from the first two Halloween films).  The filmmakers did manage to Donald Pleasence to reprise his role as the slightly crazy Dr. Sam Loomis. It must be said that Dr. Loomis is one of the most resilient heroes in cinema history; not only does he survive a stab wound, but a fiery explosion as well. At the end of Halloween II, Dr. Loomis sacrifices himself by blowing up the hospital room him and Michael Myers are trapped in. Or so it seemed, because he’s very much alive in Halloween 4. 

The film does reference the explosion by having burn scars on Loomis’ face and hands, he also walks with a limp, but otherwise he’s doing fine. As is Michael Myers, who apparently has the ability to regenerate his eyes; at the end of Halloween II his eyes were shot out by Laurie. Continuity has never been the strong suit of any horror franchise, especially if it gets in the way of making a profit. We clearly saw Michael Myers blinded and burnt to a crisp at the end of Halloween II, but thanks to the magic of the movies (and ticket sales) he is alive and in the best shape he’s ever been; some how he’s managed to bulk up, despite being in a coma for ten years.

I mentioned before that Halloween 4 is the best of all the sequels and that is largely due to two things:

1)      The silliness is kept down to a bare minimum; it exists, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it is in other horror sequels. The characters don’t wander down dark alleys, asking, “Who’s there?” At one point, the heroine Rachel is looking for Jamie and wanders into a junkyard. She’s sees a shape heading her way and rather than asking useless questions, she instead runs away. It turns out to be a false alarm as the shape is a prankster dressed up like Michael Myers.  The only head slapping moment is when Rachel and Jamie are running up a flight of stairs and Rachel turns around and screams, “Why don’t you leave us alone?”  As if somehow Michael will realize the error of his ways, apologize for being mean, and then go straight on home. On top of that, Rachel gives away their location.  Other than this blooper, the characters behave in a pretty consistent manner. There’s (thankfully) no scene in which two random characters decide to have sex in the least likely of places;   Halloween II has a scene in which a curvaceous nurse and an ambulance driver decide to get it on in a hot tub inside the hospital. And not surprisingly, they both meet a rather untimely and fairly grisly end. The nurse gets her face scalded off. There is a mild sex scene between two characters, but it occurs inside a well furnished house, and is promptly interrupted by the arrival of the town sheriff (who is the woman’s father). It’s played for laughs and only lasts for a few seconds.

2)      An attempt at character development. 

      The characters of Rachel and Jamie are far more complex than the genre dictates, but more importantly they are likable. You genuinely feel for Jamie when she is getting picked on by school mates, because her uncle is the town Boogeyman. Rachel genuinely loves her adopted sister Jamie, but kind of resents having to watch her all the time.  Her social life is constantly put on hold, because the burden of watching Jamie usually falls on her shoulders. However, as the film progresses it is pretty clear that Rachel would die for Jamie.  She constantly puts her life at risk to protect Jamie from Michael Myers.   Both are relatable characters and the actresses do a fine job of bringing them to life. The actress who plays Rachel (Ellie Cornell) has a natural look to her which gives the film an air of credibility. She’s attractive, but not overwhelming pretty, unlike the supermodels that tend to dominate most horror films today. Danielle Harris is extremely good as Jamie, odd considering that she was a child actress at the time and this was her first major film.  The Jamie/Rachel dynamic is the heart of the story; the film is at its best when it focuses on them.

The character of Sam Loomis is what gives the Halloween films a slight edge over the other horror franchises made during the same period; he is obsessed with destroying Michael Myers, but also adopts a very gentle approach when the two meet face to face.  When he meets up with Michael in a gas station he implores him not to go to Haddonfield and to leave those people in peace. He also adds, “If you want another victim, take me!”  Of course, his pleas fall on deaf ears and Michael heads to Haddonfield any ways. It’s interesting to note that Michael never goes after Dr. Loomis directly. The scene in the gas station is a great example, Loomis is ripe for the picking, but Michael never approaches him. The only time Loomis gets attacked is when he stands in Michael’s way. This is where having a veteran actor like Donald Pleasence pays off, because despite how silly the story might get, he brings a lot of dramatic weight and dignity to the role.  If a serious actor like Pleasence thinks the situation is dangerous, then chances are the audience will too.

In the first film, Pleasence sells the film’s premise with a memorable monologue:

I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil. 

While Loomis is slightly batty, he is wise enough to know he can’t take on Michael by himself and alerts the Haddonfield police.  Thankfully, the police take his warnings seriously and send squad cars out to the patrol the area. In most horror films from that period the law was either incompetent or nonexistent. In the Friday the 13^th series, the law (with the exception of Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives) was usually nowhere to be seen, except in small patches. In the first two films, there is a brief scene in which a patrolman shows up and serves up a warning to the teenagers, which gets promptly ignored.  Other than that, the teenagers are by themselves and picked off one by one. In Halloween 4, the town sheriff is fairly competent and does the right things, but even that is not enough to stop Michael Myers.  Loomis is essentially the Dr. Van Helsing of the series - a thorough expert on Michael Myers and is completely obsessed at stopping him, no matter the costs.

There are other nice touches in Halloween 4 that would I like to comment on, before I get to its biggest flaw:

1)      The specter of Michael Myers still haunts Haddonfield. In most horror film sequels, the characters develop a sense of amnesia and seem to forget all the horrible things that happened to their community years ago. In Friday the 13^th-The Final Chapter, the heroine’s family has lived near Camp Crystal Lake all their lives, but yet has never heard of Jason Voorhees.  In Halloween 4, Michael Myers is still very much a part of Haddonfield, especially around Halloween. As a prank, teenagers dress up as Mike Myers to scare one another and random citizens. The house Michael grew up in still stands and is thought to be haunted by the locals.  Jamie is teased by her classmates, because her uncle is the town Boogeyman. Even though the Haddonfield murders happened a decade ago, the town is still very much haunted by them.    

2)      The vigilantes.

      Chances are if there was an escaped killer lurking about your hometown, most people would opt to stay indoors and lock their doors and windows. However, there would probably be a small crowd who would arm themselves, take the law into their own hands, and hunt down the killer. In Halloween 4, local bar owner Earl gathers up all his redneck buddies and they proceed to hunt down Michael, hoping to get to him before he can take another life. However, as is the case with most vigilantes, they cause more trouble than good.  Earl and his men are bit on edge, and at one point their hear rustling come from the bushes and fire away, adopting the whole “shoot first-ask questions” later mentality. Unfortunately, the man they gun down is the local town drunk, Ted Hollister, who was urinating behind the bushes. Earl tries to deflect blame by yelling at one of his men, “You dumb son of a bitch. You said you saw Myers.”  Earl and his lackeys prove to be rather ineffectual against Michael as well; he sneaks up behind them (while they are standing on the pack of moving pickup truck) and proceeds to kill them one by one.  

The biggest flaw of Halloween 4 is, unfortunately, Michael Myers himself. In the first Halloween, Michael Myers was a fairly average sized male who was very slow and methodically in the way he stalked his victims. In fact, the main reason the first Halloween is so effective is that is slowly builds to the violence at the film’s end.  You know the characters are going to get it, but you don’t know when.  The body count is relatively low (five total) and the gore is kept to an absolute minimum. The interesting thing about Michael is that he is, in fact, very much a kid trapped inside a man’s body.  In his excellent book Cult Movies, Danny Peary writes:

               I think Michael is an incredibly interesting character, not the typical vengeful movie psycho. Carpenter defines him as Evil itself (the real boogeyman), but I don’t believe he goes around killing people because he is evil. Insane, yes; evil, no. There is still a little boy inside the man’s body, and everything he does is part of a game. In fact, his activities are less suited for Halloween than “Mischief Night” (the night after Halloween “celebrated” in many American towns when kids play dirty tricks on their neighbors). He has fun scaring characters before he kills them, or teasing them by making noises, or jumping out of closets. The scariest moment is when Michael drives past Laurie, Annie, and Lynda and stops for a moment. He could kill any of these people any time he wants to, but he prefers to hide behind bushes and in closets, peer into windows, or, as in the case with Annie, play tricks with her car door.

One of the more memorable moments in the first Halloween is after Michael stabs Bob, the camera lingers on him in a long shot as he stares at Bob in a most curious manner and slowly tilts his head to the side.  By the time of Halloween 4, such nuances got thrown out the window in favor of a more one dimensional, lumbering giant. The irony is that while most slasher films took their cue from Halloween, the Halloween sequels took their cue from the many rip offs that dominated the 80s.  The Michael Myers in Halloween 4 has more in common with Jason Voorhees than he does with the Michael Myers seen in the original film.  Between Halloween II and Halloween 4 Michael has somehow bulked up and increased in height, and completely lacks the grace that defined his characters movements in the first film. No longer is he a shadow in the background, but rather a super human brute who dominates the proceedings.

In the original film the bloodshed and the violence was implied, whereas the sequels the gore factor increased greatly and the violence started to get ridiculously over the top. For instance, there is a scene in Halloween 4 in which Michael impales a curvaceous blonde girl with a rifle with very little effort.

In another scene, his hand comes crashing through a pick up truck window and proceeds to rip off Earl’s head. Granted, the gore in Halloween 4 isn’t as gruesome as it is in present horror films, but it’s still there. While many horror fans applaud the gore scenes, I find them rather redundant and boring; to me gore diffuses the tension, rather than adds to it.  When Michael rips off Earl’s head, it makes me cry out, “Oh! Come on,” rather than, “OH MY GOD!”  If the execution is poor, gore scenes can be incredibly laughable. In the Lucio Fulci film The Beyond there is a scene in which an idiot is attacked by tarantulas that proceed to rip his face apart. This sounds disgusting, but because of Fulci’s inept direction it becomes a laugh riot. For one, despite walking on a wooden floor, it sounds like the Tarantula’s are walking on potato chips, and secondly, despite having his face torn apart, the guy doesn’t seem to be in any pain. At one point he gets his eye ripped off and mere says, “OH NO!” It’s a scene that lingers on and on, and doesn’t necessarily add to the overall narrative, though Fulci films rarely make any sense.

The other aspect I can’t stand about the Halloween sequels (not just part 4) is the idea that Michael Myers hunts down his next blood relative. In Halloween II, it was revealed that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’ sister.  This storyline was added to give Michael motivation for going after Laurie, but otherwise it added nothing to the overall narrative.  When Halloween 4 rolled along, the filmmakers couldn’t get Jamie Lee Curtis to reprise her role as Laurie, so they changed the premise from Michael Myers stalks his sister to Michael Myers stalks his niece.  I absolutely hate both story lines, because they take the idea of chance out of the equation.  In Halloween, Laurie was a random person Michael encountered and proceeded to stalk her and her friends; it was a chance encounter that leads to the death of three teenagers.  What makes the film so frightening is the idea that this could happen to anyone in any town. Laurie just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and as a result she finds herself fighting for her life at the film’s end. It is also through chance that Loomis spots the car Michael stolen, sees children fleeing from a house, and arrives in the nick of time to save Laurie.  However, by making Michael and Laurie siblings this idea of chance goes tossed out of the window in favor of the idea that fate is what brought the two together.  In Halloween 4, Michael has waited patiently for ten years, so he can escape and stalk his poor niece.  This also presents the problem of “How does Michael know he has a niece?” and Halloween 4 never really answers that question; in Halloween 5 it is revealed that the two share a psychic link (when it is convenient for the plot). 

*Spoiler*

I especially loathe the twist ending in which Jamie turns evil and attacks her stepmother with a knife, thus implying that she will take Michael Myers place. There are many fans that like this ending, because how it parallels the first Halloween, but it’s absolutely needless and unoriginal. For one, Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter sports a similar twist ending, in which it is implied that Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) might have not survived the ordeal of killing Jason with his sanity intact. In Friday the 13^th: The New Beginning this isn’t so much as implied as  it is explicit; we see Tommy wearing Jason’s mask and clutching a knife as the film’s heroine is oblivious to her soon to be demise. In Halloween 5 this idea of Jamie being Michael’s heir apparent is completely dropped and instead she spends a good deal of the film mute and recovering in a hospital. Secondly, it’s seemed to a common theme amongst horror films of the 80s to end on a rather downbeat note, just when you thought the killer was defeated, he would come back for one more scare. It’s a cliché that got rather tiresome as the decade wore on and seeing a cute girl turn evil is just a bit too much. And Pleasence shouting, “NOOOO!” in slow motion doesn’t really help matters.

I have love/hate relationship with Halloween 4. I like the characters of Jamie and Rachel, as well a few other touches by the filmmakers. It’s still a step above the majority of the slasher films of that decade, and certainly a masterpiece compared to the dreadful sequels that followed, but unfortunately I find the character of Michael to be rather lifeless and uninteresting. He’s no longer the Michael Myers of the first film, but rather a Jason rip off.  

Cast: Donald Pleasence (Dr. Loomis), Danielle Harris (Jamie), Ellie Cornell (Rachel), George P. Wilbur (Michael Myers), Beau Starr (Sheriff Meeker), Sasha Jensen (Brady), Kathleen Kinmont (Kelly Meeker), Michael Pataki (Dr. Hoffman), Gene Ross (Earl), Carmen Filpi (Rev. Jackson P. Sayer).

Director: Dwight H. Little