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Film / Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

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"I prayed that he would burn in hell. But in my heart, I knew that hell would not have him."
Dr. Loomis

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers picks up right after the events of the previous film in the Halloween series, where Michael ends up shot by Illinois state troopers and left for dead. Despite those efforts, Michael Myers lives — and after a year of rest, he rises again to go after his traumatized niece Jamie (Danielle Harris) — who now shares an eerie psychic link with Michael — on Halloween, with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) once more in pursuit as Michael targets not only Jamie but also her adopted sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) and her close friend Tina (Wendy Kaplan).

On top of Michael's continuing quest to kill his family, a new mystery shows up in the form of a man in black who watches the night's events unfold from afar...

The film is the least successful entry in the Halloween franchise, grossing a very modest $11 million, and going straight-to-video overseas. It also performed poorly with critics and audiences, sending the franchise back into Development Hell for many years before 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.


Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Air-Vent Passageway: When Jamie tries to escape through one, Michael proceeds to relentlessly stab the outside of it.
  • Asshole Victim: Mikey is the closest to this out of all the victims as he's an abrasive prick who threatens death over the slighest of things, granted he didn't exactly deserve to die so painfully just for being obnoxious.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Mikey is utterly obsessed with his car and flips out when Michael scratches it. Unfortunately, him going to attack Michael seals his fate.
    • In Jamie's case its hurting her friends as she goes along with Loomis's plan to kill Michael after he murders Tina, something that prior to Tina's death she never would have considered, showing how much Michael's actions have angered her at this point.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The cops show up at the store before Tina gets back in the car with Michael.
  • Big "NO!":
    • Jamie lets out an absolutely heartrending one when she stumbles on Rachel's corpse in the Myers' attic.
    • Rachel's last word before Michael murders her
  • Break the Cutie:
    • Jamie from beginning to end as she is once again ruthlessly pursued by her psychotic uncle who murders both her beloved adopted sister and her best friend in a single night, she almost gets through to Michael only for him to attack her again and then Loomis ruthlessly uses her as bait. The night ends with Michael being broken out of jail with her tearfully realizing she'll never be safe from Michael. And then Halloween 6 shows she was kidnapped by Dr Wynn straight after the ending. To say Jamie had an awful Halloween is putting it lightly.
    • Also to a lesser extent Tina as she spends her final minutes bleeding out and tearfully begging Jamie to run, fully aware that she's going to die and that Michael could still kill Jamie.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Poor Loomis' fate by the end. He succeeds in capturing, tranquilizing and beating Michael unconscious with a 2x4, protecting Jamie from him, but being in his 70's at this point the exertion and stress of the entire night gives him a stroke, collapsing right on top of his defeated nemesis, his last sight before falling unconscious. Even then, while Loomis is incapacitated, Michael is freed later that night from jail by the Man In Black.
  • Car Fu: Michael tries to run down Jamie, Billy, and Tina.
  • Cat Scare: Tina finds one of the kittens that she, Samantha, and Spitz were playing with earlier covered in blood (but thankfully unharmed) just before she finds Samantha's and Spitz's bodies, then the equally dead cops before being chased by Michael.
  • Cliffhanger: The movie ends with the Man in Black massacring the Haddonfield police and freeing Michael from his cell, leaving Jamie alone among the carnage, weeping in terror, with no indication that Michael or the Man in Black are gone.
  • Clothing Damage: Jamie's princess costume gets torn during the car chase and the climax.
  • Cool Car: Michael procured a nice, black 1969 Camaro from Tina's boyfriend, Michael. Sadly, he destroys it by crashing it into a tree.
  • Covers Always Lie:
    • The poster/cover shows Jamie in her clown costume from the previous film, but she doesn't wear it at all during the movie (not counting reused scenes from said previous film).
    • For that matter, Michael is shown wearing his mask from the original film, which he doesn't wear in this film, and with a double-edged knife, which he doesn't actually use; he uses a chef's knife.
    • The VHS box proclaimed "The face of Michael Myers...REVEALED!". Michael does indeed unmask in this film but you only see a Face Framed in Shadow and a close-up on his eye. Besides, you get to see Michael's face in the original Halloween anyway after Laurie pulls off his mask during the struggle at the end of the film.
  • Cuteness Proximity: In one of their few non-obnoxious scenes, Tina, Samantha, and Spitz spend a lot of time uncontrollably gushing over a litter of kittens.
  • Crying Wolf: Spitz dresses up as Myers and chases Samantha and Tina with a fake knife, angering the cops who come to their rescue because they nearly shoot him. Later, when the real Myers comes out of the barn after killing Samantha and Spitz, the cops assume it's another joke and don't realize it's for real until it's too late.
  • Dead Man Honking: Subverted after Myers's car crashes into a tree. Initially, the three people he's been pursuing are relieved at the sound of the car horn, assuming this trope. Their facial expressions turn to horror when the noise stops, revealing that, of course, Myers has survived.
  • Deconstructed Character Archetype: Tina comes across as a deconstruction of the Final Girl by showing what happens when the wrong type of girl ends up in that role. During the sequence where she enters Rachel's house looking for Rachel, Tina wanders and has a clear confused expression on her face the whole time. When she later leaves with Samantha, she casts a knowing look back at the house as if to indicate she knows something is wrong. The trouble is, Tina doesn't have the emotional fortitude or willingness to recognize the situation she is in until it is far too late, and she ends up dying in a Heroic Sacrifice to save Jamie that later ends up being a Senseless Sacrifice when Jamie gets abducted. So Tina seems to be aware on some level that she was heading into the role of the Final Girl but ended up rejecting it because she wasn't strong enough to handle it.
  • Decoy Protagonist: It looks like Rachel is going to reprise her role as the one who survives, but ends up getting killed twenty minutes in. Then Tina, Rachel's best friend, looks like she's going to be the final girl of the movie only to die before the finale at the Myers house.
  • Defiant to the End: Samantha tries to fight back against Michael with the very pitchfork he used on her boyfriend.
  • Diabolus ex Nihilo: The Man in Black just shows up on a bus. While it's clear he has a connection to Michael (both have the same tattoo), who he is and what his motivations remain unknown when the movie ends. Word of God has admitted they had no idea who the character was when making the movie.
  • Dissonant Serenity: After being captured by the police, Michael just sits in his cell, playing with a chain.
  • Don't Go in the Woods: Michael attempts to run down Jamie, Billy, and Tina in Mike's car, chasing Jamie into a spooky wooded area, before crashing into a tree. He emerges from the burning vehicle unscathed, stalking Jamie and her friends in the foggy woods.
  • Downer Ending: Probably the bleakest ending of all the movies. Michael is eventually apprehended by Loomis and the police, but Dr. Loomis suffers a stroke in the process, and the mysterious Man in Black appears at the last second, killing Sheriff Meeker and most of Haddonfield's police force. Jamie discovers their bodies and Michael's empty cell, weeping as she now knows the terror is far from over and no one is there to save her this time.
  • Enemy Rising Behind: Michael lurks right behind the oblivious Rachel—several times—yet doesn't kill her. Not yet, anyway.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Michael chases the protagonists in a car. Even though the car is barely going at a running pace, it still explodes when it collides with a tree. This does add to the creepy factor when Michael nonchalantly gets out of the car completely unscathed, however.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Max.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Michael survives the finale of the previous film thanks to a hermit who rescues him from the river and takes care of him. Michael breaks the man's neck immediately after waking up.
  • Final Girl: Michael Myers's young niece, Jamie Lloyd.
  • Genki Girl: Tina.
  • Gross-Up Close-Up:
    • Michael impaling Spitz with a pitchfork while doing his girlfriend.
    • Same with Michael slamming a hand rake into Mike's face.
    • Recent uncut footage of the two deaths show them even in greater detail.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Since Jamie's attack on her foster mother the previous Halloween, much of the town lumps her in with Michael, with one person lobbing a brick into her hospital room with a note that says "the devil child must die!".
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Tina sacrifices herself to give Jamie a chance to get away from Michael.
    • Soon thereafter, Deputy Charlie does the same for Jamie, giving her a chance to temporarily elude Michael inside the "Myers house."
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Almost. Dr. Loomis is ready to use blackmail, threats and physical force to make sure Michael is gonna be put down. It goes so far that he uses Jamie as bait to lure Michael into a trap, and then beats him savagely with a plank until he's unconscious, yet he continues to beat him, all while screaming "DIE! DIE!" for each hit.
  • Homage: Deputies Nick and Tom were created as a tribute to the bumbling cops in The Last House on the Left.
  • Hope Spot:
    • Rachel is apparently saved from an attack by Michael when Dr. Loomis phones her and warns her to run out of the house, and the police even get involved. Turns out it was a Cat Scare and Michael does some slashing when everyone's gone.
    • Michael crashes his car trying to get Jamie. His body is pressed up against the steering wheel, so the horn is blaring while the characters heave a sigh of relief. Then the horn stops and the car door opens...
    • Jamie seems to succeed in appealing to Michael's humanity, getting him to remove his mask and even shed a tear in seeming remorse for his actions. The moment Jamie tries to wipe the tear away, however, Michael reacts angrily and starts attacking Jamie even more ferociously.
    • Michael is locked in a cell and one of the officers is going to take Jamie home. Then the Man in Black shows up and everything goes to Hell.
  • Immediate Sequel: The film picks off right where the previous film left off, with the police dropping dynamite down the hole Michael Myers fell into and Michael narrowly escaping by crawling into a stream and getting washed downstream until he finds a cave with a hermit inside, tries to kill the hermit, but falls unconscious.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Spitz gets impaled with a pitchfork in the midst of sex.
  • Kick the Dog: The man in black gives a textbook example. As does Michael, who of course, kills poor Max.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Rachel doesn't get as far as the first letter.
  • Killed Offscreen: Sheriff Meeker is among the police officers killed by the Man in Black, but the scene showing his death was cut.
  • Kill the Cutie: Rachel and Tina, much to the horror of Jamie, Michael also kills Max, a very cute dog.
  • Left Hanging: The Man in Black for one. Also, Loomis is last shown having a stroke and collapsing on Michael. While few believed he died, it was nonetheless curious that none of the other characters addressed it onscreen.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After Dr. Loomis tranqs and drops a chain net on Michael, he proceeds to relentlessly wail on him with a two-by-four.
  • Modesty Towel: Rachel wears a towel after taking a shower for a prolonged sequence.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: The opening credits have someone carving a jack-o-lantern, which is shown with quick cuts that make it seem like someone is being sliced and stabbed.
  • Mythology Gag: Following the prologue, the film begins on a rainy Halloween Eve, just like the original film.
  • Neck Snap: The hermit's death. Either that or he was strangled.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The advertising repeatedly claimed that we'd get to see Michael unmasked in this film. Not only was this never really that big of a deal since he'd been clearly seen unmasked in the original film (both as a child and an adult) when he eventually does unmask himself he does so while in the shadows. However, there is a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment near the beginning of the movie, when Michael wakes up in the hermit's shack. With the hermit in the foreground, an unmasked Michael in the background sits up. Even though he is in a dark corner, if you look closely you can see his face clearly enough to see him glance first at the hermit and then at his mask which is hanging nearby.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Despite Michael trying to strangle him before losing consciousness, the hermit who finds him gives Michael shelter for an entire year while he recovers. Naturally, as soon as Michael wakes up, the first thing he does is murder the hermit.
  • Not Now, Kiddo: Tina doesn't take Jamie seriously when Jamie begs her to stay, though this is because she thinks Dr. Loomis's obsessive nature has made Jamie needlessly paranoid.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted; Tina's boyfriend is named Mike, and he ends up running afoul of Big Bad Michael.
  • Parental Substitute: Nurse Patsey has been acting as one to Jamie ever since she started living at the children's hospital, and is one of the few sources of emotional stability Jamie has known since the previous Halloween.
  • Peekaboo Corpse: Done when Jamie finds the body of her adoptive sister Rachel.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Jamie's Halloween costume is a princess dress. Tina's costume ain't too shabby, either.
  • Police Are Useless:
    • The Haddonfield Police Station gets massacred again in the end, including Sheriff Meeker this time.
    • When the gunfire goes off in the police station, the officer in charge of protecting Jamie runs into the station instead of driving off to ensure Jamie's safety. Not only does he fail to save anyone, but it's revealed in the next movie that Jamie was then kidnapped by the cult responsible for the massacre and lived a tortured teenagehood before eventually meeting a gruesome fate.
  • Puppy Love: Jamie and Billy are preteen kids who have some chemistry.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure:
    • Carrying over from the last film, Sheriff Meeker works hard and intelligently to protect people from Michael and listens to civilians whenever they contribute anything important.
    • Despite being comic relief figures who view themselves as poor cops, Deputies Tom Farrah and Nick Allen display fairly good judgment. They are understanding about being called on an apparent false alarm and while they do fail to find Michael in the ensuing search, he is notoriously elusive and may not have been in the house the whole time. When Loomis demands that they stop Tina from leaving the hospital, the deputies point out that as a civilian, he has no authority to order the detention of a girl who hasn’t done anything wrong. Nonetheless, they understand that Loomis is right to be worried and do agree to follow Tina to the party and protect her. When Tina and her friends prank the deputies by faking a Michael Myers attack, the deputies rightfully point out that this could have turned into a Deadly Prank and get someone shot. They only overlook Michael later on due to justifiably thinking the teenagers are pranking them again.
    • Deputy Charlie Bloch puts guarding Jamie above his own safety and rebukes Loomis for taking a course of action that endangers the girl.
    • Doctor Hart and Nurse Patsy at the children’s clinic are patient, caring and reasonable medical professionals who try to take care of Jamie and take her worries seriously.
  • Retcon:
    • Michael's eyes are still completely fine (as they were in Halloween 4) despite his left being pierced in Halloween' and both being shot out in Halloween II.'' Though this could be the supernatural at play, with him having healed entirely.
    • Michael's mask is completely different despite being the same mask in-universe.
    • The Myers house is retconned into an enormous mansion, as opposed to the simple two-story suburban house it was in the first two films.
    • This film begins the more direct implication that Michael is being controlled by a cult, with the tattoo of thorn and the man in black. It was intended to be at least a little more fleshed out in this film, but cut footage ended up leaving out the explanation, which was saved for the following film.
    • Michael is given human emotion in this film, if only briefly.
    • This film's Loomis has apparently forgotten his fifteen years of experience with Michael as his psychiatrist and his firm belief that Michael is not human and has no human emotion, as he erroneously tries to appeal to his emotions and human side to convince him to stop his killing sprees.
    • The ending of 4 had Jamie kill her foster mother and set her up to become the next killer in Michael's place (or alongside Michael). This film decides to contrast that setup, retconning the foster mother's murder with a simple wounding (not to mention retconning her from a foster mother to a step-mother) and having Jamie's attack be a one-time freak incident as a result of her psychic connection with Michael, leaving her to be an innocent victim instead of the new killer the previous film intended to set her up as.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Why exactly Michael wears a different mask than the one from the previous film even though he's been wearing the same mask for a year is never explained.
  • Scenery Censor: The "big cookie woman" advertisement.
  • Series Continuity Error: In the original Halloween, the Myers house is a modest two-story home. In this movie, it's a huge, Gothic-style mansion. At the time this movie was made, it was on the same continuity as the first one, so there's no excuse for the discrepancy.
    • Word of God is that the script required a scene where Jamie hides from Michael in a laundry chute, but this was the only house in the filming location they could find that had one. You'd think they'd just write out that scene instead of trying to pass off a mansion as the same modest home from the first two films...
    • A minor but still noticeable one—Michael lurks behind a tree on the Carruthers's front lawn to observe Rachel when she comes home. However, there was no such tree in the previous film.
    • During the costume pageant scene, the announcer gives Jamie's last name as Groder rather than Lloyd.
  • Shooting Superman: This trope gets referenced in the commentary track - in a scene where a cop clumsily shoots at Michael, one of the commentators mentions that, as a lifelong resident of Haddonfield, the guy should have known that shooting Michael just pisses him off.
  • Single Tear: Strangely enough, Michael has a Single Tear moment...before reverting back to his evil self.
  • Sinister Scythe: Used to kill Samantha.
  • Slashers Prefer Blondes: Samantha of course is killed. Likewise, blonde Rachel didn't get to survive this film. Notably, brunette Tina survives much longer than either of them.
  • The Speechless: Jamie spends the first part of the film a mute, mostly thanks to psychological trauma.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: Michael pulls off some pretty epic ones. He kills Rachel, but hides the evidence and himself so well that Tina has no inclination of what's happened when she stops by. He also manages to get Rachel's, Max's, and Mikey's bodies to the attic in the "Myers house" with no one seeing him.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: The fate of Rachel Carruthers and Ben Meeker, and even implied to be the case with Loomis.
  • Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Inverted; after appearing to undergo a Face–Heel Turn at the end of the previous film, Jamie is, while traumatized, still a heroic character in this film.
  • Those Two Guys: Deputies Nick and Tom, who act as (mild) comic relief. The first time we see them, their footsteps are accompanied by goofy music and sound effects, and they're Finishing Each Other's Sentences.
  • Time Skip: Despite a prologue that picks up right when the previous film left off, the film soon jumps ahead by a year.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The back cover of the British VHS spoils the fact that Rachel, the main protagonist of the previous film, is murdered, in spite of the fact that Rachel is set up as Decoy Protagnist right up until her death
  • Ungrateful Bastard: An old hermit cares for Michael for an entire year as he lies comatose from his injuries at the end of the previous film. Within minutes of regaining consciousness, Michael strangles the hermit.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: While Dr. Hart's body is seen at the clinic, neither Nurse Patsey or Billy are seen or mentioned after that scene, making their fates unclear. There is another adult-sized body under a sheet in the scene where Meeker looks at Hart's body, but that could have been one of the police guards. note .
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Tina lambasts Loomis and the others for frightening Jamie with tales about the "boogeyman." Little does she know that said fears are quite justified. Loomis in turn calls out Tina for her decision to go to the party instead of staying at the hospital with Jamie where she'll be safe from Michael, of course, hours later Loomis is proved fatally right in his concern for Tina.
  • Where It All Began: Loomis sets up a trap for Michael in his supposed childhood home, the location of his Start of Darkness.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Uhm, hello? Aside from the fact that he's spent the entire last movie as well as this one stalking and terrorizing his elementary school-aged niece Jamie, let's not overlook the fact that Michael nearly mowed down her Puppy Love Billy while chasing them down in a car.

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