Halloween IV: The Proper Sequel to II

It's probably my favorite of the sequels. It has a reay nice autumnal atmosphere, Donald Pleasance is a very welcomed presence, and Danielle Harris is actually great for her age in the role. It's got some goofy and I'll conceived moments, but all around I think it's mostly very successful in continuing the first two movies. I recorded it today and am looking forward to watching it again tonight.

Would have been funny if that were the actual title.

And it gets a lot of love. I believe it is the best rated sequel after II. The only criticism I hear is for the mime mask. And that it's kind of retread of 1, which to be fair, it kind of is.

It's ok, but it really isn't a patch on II or H20, which is a better follow up. Myers burned to a crisp at the end of II and there was no way he or Loomis were coming back and the film-makers wouldn't have thought so either at the time. I also hated some of the stupid characters in it, like the slutty girl and they didn't even film it in the cinemascope ratio.

Part of the problem for me is that the Myers story was over at the end of HALLOWEEN II.

It's a big ask to entertain the idea of Loomis and Myers still being around to cross paths once again after both would surely have been incinerated in that fiery finale. In this sense I feel the movie was sailing against the wind from the outset.

However, even if you can put that aside and watch the movie on its own merits, HALLOWEEN 4 for me comes across like a jaded, fan-made rehash of the original but without the stylish cinematic touches that made that movie resonate. Instead, HALLOWEEN 4 is well produced and nicely shot but has little to offer other than what had by then already become routine and familiar.

While it's nice to see Pleasence back in his trademark role, he looks frail and tired here, while Myers looks rather bloated and ends up in a mask more reminiscent (though less scary) of Data from Star Trek TNG than the famed Captain Kirk! Consequently, their characters don't command the screen as effectively as we had seen them do previously.

There also seems to be an abundance of fog machines operating in Haddonfield on this movie that give the film an unwanted and unflattering resemblance to a cheap 80s pop video.

Some will be entertained - and that's good - but I was disappointed at the time with what I saw as an unimaginative,
workmanlike reconstruction of a movie done far better 10 years prior.

Well.....you did ask.

Good movie, but there are two things that really suck about it:

1. Michael’s mask. It looks like shit! His mask looked so much more menacing in the first 2.

2. You don’t get to see that chick’s huge tits! What a tease!

I don't quite get what you mean by unneeded. HIII, was NOT a Myers outing, it wasn't promoted as such, and it was just a Halloween themed film from Carpenter, who gave us a suspenseful, intriguing and even original little horror opus. If anything was unneeded, it was H4. It was old hat by the time it arrived, it was routine with boring kills, and it made no sense that Myers and Loomis were still alive. It also contained none of the essence or horror aesthetic that made the first 2 Halloweens work so well. And more importantly, it wasn't very scary, or even that creepy.

The first Halloween worked due to style and atmosphere, and there was very minimal blood and gore. The second one worked, due to the clever construct of continuing on the same night as the first, and still had a gritty style and a creepy atmosphere and setting about it. It also gave us a decent body count. It had more blood than the first and had more interesting kills.

H2, contained sharp, pointed and mean-spirited violence, and while there have been more gory slashers before and since, to me, it also has a more potent squeamish factor about it than most. I cringe at the little boy with razor blades stuck in his mouth, at the blood being drawn from Laurie by the doctors, at the scalpels and needles that slash and pierce, and at the hot water that scalds into blisters, not to mention the arbitrary and accidental killing of a poor teenaged kid, as the fire whips and crackles around his body to decimate it. What did H4 have that matched anything that H 1, 2 or even 3 did with it's scares, suspense and violence?