Halloween 5 (1989) - Favorite Scenes

While the Myers house in Part 5 (1989) isn’t remotely similar to the famous one in “Halloween” (1978), it is decked out as quite the decaying, decomposing relic; dust, cob-webs, rusted steel, and weeds, this vessel of rotting wood, wrapped in skeletal branches is certainly imposing. The house, though, isn’t even a faint reminder of the house in the first two Halloween films. It has two big scenes I like. Dr. Loomis goes to the house during the day to canvas it for Michael (the Man in Black clothes, cowboy hat, and silver-tipped boots is in there after getting off a bus in Haddonfield), calling out to him, searching throughout it, eventually down in the basement at the end of a laundry chute. Then later, Loomis and Michael confront each other, with the expected results of the patient attacking his doctor while a cop guards Jamie unsuccessfully upstairs. Michael won’t stop until he gets Jamie once and for all. So there is the big chase throughout the house as Michael tries to get Jamie and she hopes to evade him until Loomis is able to protect her with a strong enough plankboard that appears to exhaust his heart to stop…Loomis looks very much dead. Of course, the franchise has killed Loomis before, only for him to return. So this revisit of that wasn’t a sure thing.

Loomis throughout the film is practically a basket case on the brink of mental collapse. He is always hovering over Jamie, demanding her reveal where Michael is. The nurse tries to wave Loomis off but he’s like a buzzard needing to pick the bones of the dead carcass and poor Jamie can’t seem to get a break. Loomis sent the cops away to the clinic just so Michael would come to the house, purposely putting Jamie in danger just to get one more crack at the old patient! Loomis talks about hell not wanting Michael and a cure for the rage perhaps being Jamie. Jamie even halts Michael’s initial intent to stab her, asking for him to remove his mask, a tear down his face, with reference to him as uncle.  Even using Jamie as leverage to get Michael to fall under a netted trap, Loomis tries tranquilizers and the board, just wanting him to die. It would have appeared that Loomis gave his very last breath to finally stop Michael. It did appear thanks to the Man in Black, that was all for naught.

Critically, the use of the Man in Black left yet another open ending. Jamie as the next Michael didn’t cut it and so Akkad and other writers/producers/etc. decided on the Man in Black opening fire on an entire police force that couldn’t stop him. You get the Jamie walk through and bodies strewn all over the place. No Michael in the prison cell, either. And Jamie with weepy voice, “No.” That was probably what critics said, too.

I do love two scenes. I think the car chase through a patch of trees as Michael pursues Tina, Jamie, and Billy (Jeffrey Landman; the kid with a stutter who loved Jamie) is excellent. Michael crashes into a tree but isn’t about to let that stop him. The terror of the scene is very well illustrated and having a car charging at a nice little boy is horrific enough without poor Jamie watching Michael plunge a butcher knife into the shoulder of Tina. And the other is a nightmare where Jamie is in the clinic, as Michael appears in silhouette from behind doors sheets hanging from lines, in different places as she moves about the halls, rooms, and crowded nooks and crannies, looking wherever she can for an escape. What made this so potent to me is how it is shot as this frenzied, frenetic sensory overload, with Jamie just surrounded by his presence everywhere and the clinic this claustrophobic labyrinth, almost a nightmare cell she can’t escape. And very much Michael is a nightmare cell Jamie can’t escape. No matter where she runs, Michael seems to be right there, preparing to knife her at just the right moment.

The next film does Jamie no justice whatsoever and when I saw it at the theater (my first Rated R film I could see by myself without an adult) I was enraged and disgusted at her treatment. Just discarded and brutally murdered, Jamie deserved better than that. But I guess that could also be said for Rachel.

*The Man in Black always felt like a shoehorned character injected into the film as a go-to sequel-extender, seemingly meant for another chapter perhaps set for 1990. That it took five more years might have been a sign that there was no hope for this inserted brand new character. Eventually he is given a lot more credence along with a whole mythology that left plenty of series fans baffled and others rather invested in the Druids/Thorn developments that came in the Producer’s Cut.

**Beau Starr, with a lot more to do in Part 4, is really a non-factor in the fifth film. I just always assumed, before seeing the fifth film, he might matter more. But he’s probably in the fifth film a total of ten or so minutes, given one serious dialogue scene with Loomis, and just attending to his police duties otherwise. Seemed a waste to me.

***It seems like I read Pleasence was maybe on set for like two weeks or so. He got a lot done in those few weeks!