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Director: Dwight H. Little
Screenplay: Alan B. McElroy
Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis);
Danielle Harris (as Jamie Lloyd); Ellie Cornell (as Rachel Carruthers); George
P. Wilbur (as Michael Myers); Beau Starr (as Sheriff Ben Meeker)
A Night of a Thousand
Horror (Movies) #63
After Part III Season of the Witch (1982), it took six years before Halloween returned to the silver
screen, Michael Myers firmly back in its centre having been in a coma since the
second film, awoke from his slumber in an institute when word of him having a
niece is uttered in ear shot. The decision to write Laurie Strode off screen,
as Jamie Lee Curtis was long past
slasher films in her mainstream career, and switching to an adopted girl played
by a young Danielle Harris is
actually a smart move to have gone with. I may find the decision to make Strode
related to Myers annoying, but if one is forced to continue the series, having
the bogeyman plague other members of the family is far more practical, and
meaningful, the random groups of teens in the first three Friday the 13th movies.
Particularly when you get to Part 5 as well, Harris as a child actor in the film is incredibly charismatic and
likable, making the fact her two films in the franchise are about Myers
threatening and trying to kill a young girl more disturbing. Particularly when
her adoptive older sister Rachel, played by Ellie
Cornell, is merely okay and Donald
Pleasure is turning his Dr. Loomis into an Ahab character slowly losing his
mind, Harris is an anchor for viewer
sympathy greatly needed.
It's amazing as well how
beautiful and moody the film looks. The Blu-Ray era has been an incredible
godsend for cinema like this; once a luddite who had no interest in the
technology, my sudden change to the medium over DVD over the last year has
nothing to do with picture resolution but because it has lead to films being
restored or at least, with this one, getting better visual quality for them.
The orange hued yet cold autumn colours of Haddonfield adds to the creepiness
of the premise, of scarecrows in the fields, Jack O' Lanterns everywhere and a
small local town plague by memories of the bogeyman before he even returns. The
slow, extremely glacial nature of the film, even next to the first two in the
series, adds an atmosphere that can stand up to the prequels in having its own
personality.
The real issue, with is
subjective for each viewer, is that after Season
of the Witch bombed The Return of
Michael Myers is a very safe direction to have gone with the franchise.
Beyond its supernatural twist ending, which leads to the precipice of the
franchise's obsession with adding occult details, it's a very solid and easy to
understand slasher film. In the long term, a franchise entirely about Michael
Myers terrorising people could end up with what happened to Freddy Krueger and Jason
Voorhees as staleness kicks in, which is up to my opinion of the next sequels
after Part 4. In the short term, The Return of Michael Myers does a
commendable job of being a solid, mood drenched horror film.
The sense of classiness I always
viewed Halloween as a franchise in
having is especially found here, a mostly bloodless chiller which is about
tension, drawing things out and not falling into terrible late eighties perms
or z-list glam metal songs. Aspects are up to question in logic - the most
egregious being the subplot of the locals becoming an armed mob, with an
unresolved event when they shot an innocent bystander by mistake - but the rest
of Part 4 is entirely better on this
re-visit than I originally thought of it.
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