The Fog (2005): The Curse of the Terrible Remake

Remakes aren’t new to movies– they have been around since the invention of the medium. It is also a fallacy to suggest that the original is always better, as there are examples of a remake being just as good, if not better than the original; The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Ten Commandments (1956), and The Thing (1982), come to mind. Unfortunately, The Fog doesn’t belong in this category and, is in fact, one of the worst remakes of all time.  It is an extremely ill conceived remake, complete with an attractive, but bland, cast and some of the silliest looking CGI in film history.

The original movie, while not a classic, was still an effective horror movie filled with genuinely haunting visuals and a better than average cast; the only real misfire is Jamie Lee Curtis, who, as the hitchhiking artist, Elizabeth, is given very little to do.  The script is filled with holes, but John Carpenter’s efficient direction, plus Dean Cundey’s moody photography, help smooth things over.  The Fog was panned by critics when it came out, but its reputation has improved with passing of time.  The remake has been widely forgotten about and, despite being only a decade old, actually comes off as more dated than the original.

There are so many things wrong with the remake, but I will limit my criticisms down to three things:

1) Casting/Characters.
 It’s really hard to decide which piece of casting is worse- Tom Welling (as Nick Castle), or Selma Blair (as Stevie Wayne).  The original movie did a nice job of separating Stevie Wayne’s (Adrienne Barbeau) radio and real life personas – when she goes on the air, she adopts a much more soothing, and sexy, voice.  This nicely sets up the ending; when Stevie starts to suspect something is amiss she begins to use her actual voice and as the movie progresses, it becomes more frantic. The remake makes no distinction between the two – Selma Blair’s Stevie Wayne is just as sarcastic in her normal life as she is on the radio.  There's a lot of nice nuances in Barbeau's performance - just from  her standoffish attitude towards Dan the weatherman, we can deduce that she has just gone through a bitter divorce and wants to keep her distance. She has moved to Antonio Bay from the big city with her son, Andy, to begin a new life. This is also verified visually; the only interaction Stevie has with the other characters is via the telephone. None of this comes through in the remake, largely because Stevie is largely sidelined to make room for Elizabeth. The movie also has her in the same physical space as the rest of the cast during the climax. Stevie Wayne in the original movie was the glue that held everything together; she uses her vantage point (her radio station is located inside a light house) to warn her radio listeners about the fog and guides them to safety. She has no real function in the remake; she's just there.

Nick Castle is even more ill served, in the original, as played by Tom Atkins, he was a gruff, but rather intuitive fisherman; from what little evidence he has, he is able to deduce that the fog is of a supernatural origin.  In the 2005 movie, he is not only dull, but rather dim as well – he fails to recognize that the hitchhiker on the side of the road is his girlfriend, Elizabeth.  He is ready to have a tryst with Stevie Wayne when Elizabeth appears out of the blue (she has been in New York for last six months).  Maggie Grace is, essentially, inhabiting the role (Elizabeth) that Jamie Lee Curtis played in the original movie - and she is certainly given much more to do than Curtis – the problem is that neither the character nor the actress are particularly interesting to watch.  It is revealed that Elizabeth is a reincarnation of the lost love of one of the vengeful ghosts, Captain Blake.  This bit of exposition gets doled out throughout the movie, but there is really no substance to this actual storyline. Is it supposed to be romantic or tragic that Elizabeth is reunited with her past life lover?  The character never seems to struggle with these emotions.  It is reminiscent of The Mummy (1932), where the character of Helen is torn between her past love (Imhotep) and her modern day existence.  Helen genuinely struggles in her choice, whereas Elizabeth seems to choose Blake on a mere whim.  

Finally, there is Father Malone, a pivotal character in the original movie (wonderfully played by Hal Holbrook), who almost feels like an afterthought in the 2005 movie.  In the original movie, Father Malone is guilt-ridden by the sins committed by the town's forefathers; it’s him that discovers the journal of his grandfather. The journal reveals that they killed Blake, because he suffered from leprosy and wants to establish a leper colony near Antonio Bay. Father Malone character spends most of the movie brooding in anguish, but is given a redemptive arc when  he sacrifices himself to save the others.  In the remake, he just stumbles around in a drunken stupor and is killed in gruesome fashion. He's just another tally mark in the movie's body count.

2)      Endless Exposition/Pointless Subplots.
Watching the remake is on par with watching a person fold laundry for ninety minutes – it is extremely boring. The pacing of this movie is an absolute mess, this is largely due to the fact the exposition never stops; it isn’t until midway through the movie that Elizabeth discovers the journal of Patrick Malone, one of the conspirators  who killed Blake and his men.  When the movie should be shifting gears and ratcheting up the suspense, it instead flashbacks to Elizabeth’s previous life aboard the ship of lepers – it is extremely unnecessary given that we are already given this information at the movie’s beginning ; a beach comber approaches Elizabeth and gives her a pocket watch that he found on the beach. He warns her, “If you touch it, things will change.” Later on, Elizabeth tells Nick about a recurring dream she’s been having which ends with her drowning.  These are two incidents are enough to signal that Elizabeth is remembering a past life, but the filmmakers keep spoon feeding us this information. 

However, this isn’t nearly as irritating as the pointless subplots that the movie quickly discards minutes after having introduced them – the most obvious example being the videotape that shows the ghastly murder of Nick’s cousin, Sean.  Earlier in the movie, Sean and Nick’s friend, Spooner, are partying aboard his boat with two bikini clad woman. Spooner, rather conveniently, is videotaping the thing for all prosperity.  Sean and the two women are killed, but Spooner survives the night by locking himself in the freezer. Nick finds the video camera and has Elizabeth hide it in her handbag.  The authorities want to charge Spooner with murder, but thankfully Elizabeth has the video camera on hand to clear his name. NOPE! She proceeds to lose it in the ocean, when she falls off a plank in a boathouse.  Fortunately, nothing ever comes of these murder charges and Spooner is free to go.  The original avoided needless filler, but the remake is loaded with it. The failed tryst between Stevie Wayne and Nick is another example of this – nothing is ever made of it.  They do bump into each other in town and exchange a few words, but that’s about it.

What is the guiding logic to Blake’s revenge? In the original, it was fairly clear, “6 MUST DIE.” Six men were responsible for killing Blake and his crew, and they have come back to seek revenge. Here, it is implied that he is after the descendants of the town’s founding fathers; the four men who betrayed him.  If that’s the case, then why kill the two women aboard the boat and the weatherman?  Is everyone in town a descendant of the four conspirators?  What’s the point of the fog? In the original, Blake and crew were killed while a fog bank consumed the coastline. The founding fathers used it to their advantage and tricked Blake into crashing his clipper ship on the rocks by lighting a fire on the beach. They then plundered the ship and used the gold it was carrying to build the town of Antonio Bay.   In the remake, the four men board Blake’s ship and set fire to it. So, again, why the fog?

3)      The Special Effects.
The shots of the fog rolling along the coast in the original were genuinely creepy, in the remake they are laughable. This is one example where it would have been advantageous to use practical effects (smoke machines) instead of CGI – it is absolutely silly looking. We get endless shots of actors staring at what is obviously a green screen and not really certain just what their reaction should be. The most laughable moment comes when Stevie’s son, Andy, outruns the fog on the beach and just barely makes it inside his house.  Also, Blake and his ghostly crew can kill people merely by touching them – a hand pops out of the sink and grabs Andy’s babysitter, Connie, by the wrist, whose flesh slowly gets eaten away, until the only thing that is left of her is a skeleton.  If it’s that simple, then why isn’t this the M.O. of Blake and company? Also, if their touch is lethal, then how come the corpses of the two bikini-clad women were left virtually intact? I wouldn’t take issue with it if it weren’t for the fact that very little of this movie makes any sense.The scene of Elizabeth confronting the ghosts in the graveyard is eerily reminiscent of the Army of the Dead sequence in The Return of the King; this may seem like a compliment, but that is easily one of my least favorite scenes in the entire trilogy.

If there’s one positive thing that can be taken from the 2005 remake of The Fog it is this – it makes you appreciate the ingenuity of the 1980 original even more so. Sure, it’s a flawed movie, but it is infinitely better than its generic remake. 

Credits

The Fog (2005)
Cast: Maggie Grace (Elizabeth Williams), Tom Welling (Nick Castle), Selma Blair (Stevie Wayne), DeRay Davis (Spooner), Kenneth Welsh (Mayor Tom Malone), Adrian Hough (Father Malone), Cole Heppell  (Andy Wayne), Sara Botsford (Kathy Williams), Rade Sherbedgia (Captain William Blake), Mary Black (Aunt Connie), Sonja Bennett (Mandi), Meghan Heffern (Jennifer), Matthew Currie Holmes (Sean Castle), Jonathon Young (Dan the Weatherman), Alex Bruhanski (Hank Castle), Christian Bocher (Patrick Malone)

Director: Rupert Wainwright
Screenplay: Cooper Layne.
Running Time: 100 min.

The Fog (1980)
Cast: Hal Holbrook (Father Malone), Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne), Tom Atkins (Nick Castle), Jamie Lee Curtis (Elizabeth), Janet Leigh (Kathy Williams), John Houseman (Mr. Machen), Nancy Loomis (Sandy), Charles Cyphers (Dan), James Canning (Dick Baxter), Ty Mitchell (Andy), Regina Waldon (Mrs.Kobritz), John F. Goff(Al Williams), George “Buck” Flower (Tommy Wallace), Darwin Joston (Dr. Phibes), Rob Bottin (Blake).

Director: John Carpenter
Screenplay: John Carpenter, Debra Hill.
Running Time: 90 min. 

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

The only controversy that really surrounds Halloween: Resurrection is whether it is the worst or second worst movie in the franchise. Occasionally, a brave soul will come out of the woodwork and admit that they “kind of” liked it, but otherwise it’s greeted with absolute disdain from the fans.  I admit, while I find the movie terrible, I am compelled to watch it every now and again, but more on that later. The main reason for the hate is that it completely negates  the ending to the previous movie, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later –which saw Laurie Strode beheading Michael Myers with an axe. Halloween: Resurrection retcons the ending of the previous film, so that instead of beheading Michael Myers, Laurie Strodie mistaken decapitated a paramedic wearing the Michael Myers mask – he pulled the old switcheroo on Laurie. Laurie, haunted by the guilt of killing an innocent man, spends the next few years in a psychiatric hospital, convinced that Michael will come for her.  When audiences heard this explanation, they let out a collective groan. It is revealed that Michael crushed the man’s larynx, so he couldn’t cry out for help.  Okay, but then, why didn’t he just take off the mask?  A policeman does so later on without any effort – so why couldn’t he?  Granted, the filmmakers needed to find away to bring Michael Myers back, but this is so stupid that it is completely insulting.  

The only thing more cringe worthy is the unceremonious death of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).  Laurie successfully snares Michael in a trap and is about to drop him to his death, when doubt begins to creep into her mind – she has to make sure that this is the right man.  She’s about to remove the mask, when Michael stabs her in the back, and then drops her to her death off the hospital roof.  Pretty pathetic!  This scene also undermines Laurie’s character arc in Halloween H20; in that movie Laurie has spent her adult life running away from her past – she fakes her death in car accident, relocates to Northern California, and changes her name to Keri Tate. After Michael has found her, and has killed a few people, Laurie chooses to stay behind and face him head on; her character becomes stronger as the movie progresses and she emerges victorious at the end.  Of course, that was until the filmmakers of Halloween: Resurrection said, “Too hell with Laurie’s character arc! Let’s have her institutionalized at the beginning!”  It was all a ruse!  

Oddly enough, the opening scene is rather superfluous to the actual movie itself; it exists solely to establish that Michael is still alive (and because Jamie Lee Curtis was contractually obliged to appear in it).  The movie could have easily opened with Sara sitting in her college lecture and no one would have batted an eye. Sure, someone in the audience might have wondered how Michael is still alive, but the filmmakers could have easily bullshitted their way through it. After all, in Halloween 4, the filmmakers made no effort in explaining how Dr. Loomis survived the explosion in Halloween II, or, for that matter, how Michael not only survived the same explosion, but also got back his eye sight (Laurie shot out his eyes in that film). 

I mentioned before that I am compelled to watch Halloween: Resurrection every once in awhile and that’s because I can easily imagine the thought process of the (original) screen writer as he typed up his script: 

This isn’t going to be your standard Halloween movie – it’s going to be a scathing satire on reality TV, man. Even though it claims to be real, it is completely fake. Well, I’m going to turn that on its head, dude. The participants are going to be on a fake reality show, only to find that the horror is real. Everything is staged, except the murder. Oh, the irony! 

Then, the screenwriter saw the actual movie and was horrified by what director Rick Rosenthal did with his concept.  The movie actually has an intriguing premise – six college students win a competition to appear on an internet reality show in which they will spend the night searching Michael Myer’s childhood home for clues that might explain homicidal tendencies. They are all equipped with head cameras and there are cameras stationed throughout the house as well; this gives the viewers the option of which point of view they want to follow.  I’ll give Halloween: Resurrection this – it accurately predicted the supernatural reality show; it was released two years before Syfy launched the TV show Ghost Hunters. Like that show, and many copycats, the characters spend most of the time scaring the living shit out of each other.  It turns out that many of the “clues” in the house have been planted by the director, Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes), who also dresses up as Michael Myers at one point to scare the contestants.  Of course, everyone remains oblivious to the fact that the REAL Michael Myers is in the house until it is too late.  

What exactly went wrong? Well, despite the interesting premise, the movie doesn’t do anything interesting with it.  The only thing Rick Rosenthal can come up with is to cut to different camera angles; the point of view seems to shift every ten seconds. This, in theory, should ratchet up the tension, but it quickly becomes a distraction, not to mention redundant, and is simply irritating. Also, it’s amazing that, given the number of cameras in the house, Michael Myers is able to glide through the house undetected. It also interesting that not once, but twice in the movie, characters manage to look away from the TV monitors at just the right (wrong) time – at the psychiatric hospital, a security guard is called away from the monitor, which allows Michael to sneak in undetected. Later on, Michael kills a crew member, with the tripod of a camera, while Nora, Freddie’s producer, makes herself a Cappuccino.  She sings and shakes her booty to a song on the radio, while making her Cappuccino, meanwhile Michael is very slowly dragging the corpse out of the house. Simply amazing! It should be noted that Rick Rosenthal also directed Halloween II, where he was content in aping John Carpenter’s style. This is not a bad thing, considering that Halloween II directly picks up where the first one left off, so at least, visually, it is consistent with the first movie.  In Halloween: Resurrection, he seems to take many of his visual cues from The Blair Witch Project; he even references the most famous moment in that movie – the close up of the girl’s eyes and nose as she apologizes to the camera.  

Then there’s the characters, oh boy, the awful, awful characters. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Sara - The poor man’s Laurie Strode. She is a fairly pretty, but socially awkward girl.  She isn’t the worst leading lady, just forgettable. It’s hard to distinguish her from all other attractive, but bland attractive women that have dominated modern horror films; the movie is set in the Midwest, yet Sara looks like she’s wandered off the set of Dawson’s Creek. Sara is, supposedly, the movie’s protagonist, but too often she gets lost in the shuffle.  Hell, she even botches her one true heroic moment; she comes after Michael with a chainsaw, but gets it tangled up in wires hanging from the garage ceiling and it dies on her. Luckily, Freddie arrives in the nick of time to save her. 

Jen – Sara’s best friend and complete smart ass. She specializes in annoying the shit out of other people, which means, her time on earth is fairly limited.

Rudy – Sara’s other friend and gourmet enthusiast. He talks about food nonstop and his good for a few laughs, but that’s about it.

Bill – The most obnoxious character in the entire movie. It doesn't help that he is played by Rookie of the Year (and American Pie) star, Thomas Ian Nicholas. He is slightly nerdy, but, more importantly, a complete pervert. He constantly throws all sorts of stupid innuendos at Jen. Thankfully, he only has about ten minutes of actually screen time.

Jim – He is a horny musician with a morbid sense of humor. He spends most of his time trying to bed the attractive red head, Donna, and nearly succeeds. 

Donna – The flakiest psych major in movie history.  She spends the entire movie putting down Jim, but then, rather unexpectedly, throws herself at him in the next scene. There is literally no transition – one minute she finds him disgusting, then seconds later she wants to have sex with him. Hmmm….. I wonder if she’s going to survive the night. Her main function is to provide the gratuitous nudity (we get a brief flash of her breasts).  

Freddie – The flamboyant reality show director. He is a kung fu enthusiast and provides much of the comedy relief.  He utters the catchphrase, “Trick or treat, mother fucker!”  He is one of two characters that are given a character arc – he learns that it is wrong to sensationalize a serial killer like Michael Myers.

Nora –She has no real narrative purpose. She is just there.

Myles – Easily the best character in the entire movie. Myles is Sara’s online chat buddy; he never actually meets her and they only interact through online messaging. Though, in an alternate ending, he does show up and save Sara. In fact, it is better than the actual ending that was tacked on for the theatrical release. He is the other character that is given an arc - he goes from being a complete outsider to the life of the party (literally).  

The subplot involving Myles (his screen name is Deckard) may be the only part of the movie that actually works for me.  He is at a Halloween party, but separates himself from every one else so he can watch the broadcast, in a study room, on a big TV screen. As the movie progresses other party goers begin to trickle into the study room to watch the broadcast with him. When the bodies begin to pile up, the other party goers thinks it is all a hoax and laugh it off. Myles, on the other hand, believes the murders are real and even tries to contact the police.  When Sara is the only survivor left, she uses her Palm Pilot to contact Myles and he helps navigate her through the house, using instant messaging.  It is the one moment where Sara actually displays common sense – using modern technology to her advantage. Though, I’m still confused as to why Myles needs to change the font every time he messages Sara. 

The movie lacks a proper foil for Michael Myers; Sara is too dull and Freddie is a living cartoon. Busta Rhymes is clearly having fun with the role, but he is just silly. Laurie Strode is killed off early on and, sadly, Donald Pleasence passed away in 1995, so there’s no Dr. Loomis to liven up the proceedings.  One of the few positives you can say about Halloween: Resurrection is that it makes you appreciate Donald Pleasence’s performance in the earlier entries.  Dr. Loomis was a unique character and really is what separated the Halloween series from all the other Slasher movies

The bland cast would be forgivable if Michael Myers was scary, but that is simply not the case. In the original Halloween, there was a childlike simplicity to Michael Myers – he viewed everything as one big game; he dresses up as a ghost to trick Lynda and constantly plays dead to fool Laurie. Here, he is just another superhuman psychopath that stumbles through the scenery while butchering attractive people in gruesome ways.  The original Halloween was innovative, Halloween: Resurrection, other the hand, is pretty indistinguishable from all the other Slasher movies that were popping up in the early 2000s.  

Credits

Cast: Busta Rhymes(Freddie Harris),  Bianca Kajlich (Sara Moyer),  Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Brad Loree (Michael Myers), Ryan Merriman (Myles Barton), Sean Patrick Thomas (Rudy), Katee Sackhoff (Jen),  Luke Kirby (Jim), Daisy McCrackin (Donna), Thomas Ian Nicholas (Bill), Tyra Banks (Nora),  Billy Kay (Scott),  Gus Lynch (Harold), Dan Joffre (Willie), Haig Sutherland (Aron), Natassia Malthe (French Maid), Lorena Gale (Nurse Wells), Marisa Rudiak (Nurse Philips), Brent Chapman (Franklin), Kyla Labine (Teen Party Guy), Rick Rosenthal (Professor).

Director: Rick Rosenthal
Screenplay: Larry Brand, Sean Hood.
Running Time:  86 min.

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