Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard
Written by Shem Bitterman, Michael Jacobs, & Dominique Othenin-Girard

Halloween 5 is the most wrongfully ignored and underrated of the Halloween franchise, of which people seem mostly to want to watch the first two or last two installments. Indeed, episodes four-through-six have been intentionally ignored by the more recent Halloween films, which would seem to indicate that they're of laughably substandard quality.

Not so. In fact, Halloween 5 might be the best of the entire bunch, John Carpenter's original excepted. This one has Michael Myers continuing to hunt down his pre-teen niece (Danielle Harris), for reasons unexplained except that he apparently wants all of his blood relatives dead, and this leads to a truly suspenseful chase sequence at the climax that is imbued with psychological insight (not exactly the forté of this series).

Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) finally meets his death (good thing, too … he'd be dead in real life by the time the next sequel came 'round), as does Rachel Carruthers (Ellie Cornell), the semi-promiscuous foster-sister of Myers's niece. A couple of weirdly comical cops (always accompanied by "Keystone Kop"-esque synth music) provide "comic relief," which is more unintentionally funny than anything else.

Though the film is by no means "great" (whatever that is), it's utterly "Halloween" through and through, and certainly better than its obliterated critical stature would have you believe.

Review by Frisky Pounders