Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Silver Shamrock Masks Not Included in This Sequel (thank Goodness)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS! DON'T SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED!

I hated this sequel when I first saw it. At the time, it felt nothing like the first two "Halloween" movies (the third is irrelevant), and there seemed to be nothing in it to make it stand out from all the other slasher movies of the 80's. To see Donald Pleasance return as Dr. Loomis seemed depressing because it felt like an insult to see this great actor slumming in a movie that seemed so by the numbers. I also thought that the movie reeked of cheapness because of its low budget. Then again, these movies never really had big budgets to begin with. Indeed, John Carpenter's original masterpiece is a hard one to top even by today's standards, so maybe I was expecting too much from it. My impulse to see it came about because I wanted to know how the writers would explain how Dr. Loomis survived "Halloween II."

What a difference a number of years and a whole bunch of embarrassingly awful sequels make. In retrospect, "Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers" is tone of the very best films in this long running franchise, and it did more than just drop a bunch of bloody good killings on us with little regard to everything else that makes a movie strong. There was actually some thoughtful work put into the screenplay, the performances are better than you would expect them to be for this genre, and it does have some very scary moments that the other "Halloween" sequels seriously lack.