So it was bad enough that Carpenter delivered a script he didn’t believe in that made Micheal Myers/The Shape into Laurie Strode’s brother in Halloween II. Then things got worse when they continued with the Myers tale in Halloween 4 by introducing little Jamie (Danielle Harris) as Micheal’s niece and new target upon his return to Haddonfield ten years later.

This time around it seems they want to add a whole other level to the strangeness going on. Following the traumatic conclusion of the previous film, it seems that Jamie and Myers (Don Shanks this time out, who seems even less threatening than George P. Wilbur was in the mask) share a form of a psychic link, something that has landed her in a children’s clinic where Loomis (Donald Pleasance can keep an eye on her.

And of course, once Halloween rolls around, Michael, who has spent the year recuperating with an old man in a hut (shades of Frankenstein), ambles back into town and begins to pile up the bodies. But Loomis and the local PD are determined to put a stop to him this time, and set a trap for him.

But there’s something else going on throughout the film, something that apparently won’t pay off until the next film. A stranger in black, with an odd triangle tattoo seems to be stalking the town as well, and he may be helping Micheal as the series delivers a bit of a cliffhanger ending with the entire police force dead, Micheal gone, and perhaps Loomis is dead once and for all.

Jamie’s stepsister, Rachel (Ellie Cornell) doesn’t make it too long in this film despite all of her previous entries in the story. but we are left following one of her friends, Tina (Wendy Foxworth) who serves as the barrier between Jamie and Michael, but in the end, or at least until the cliffhanger, it’s going to come down to family.

Despite the introduction of the symbol and strange character walking around, whom we learn nothing about in this entry, this one is so paint-by-numbers, and just so run-of-the-mill that the only thing that makes it of note is Danielle Harris, she’s wonderful as little Jamie. Even Pleasance seems tired of the franchise, or at least the direction the story has taken, and he seems to want to be free of it.

And while Alan Howarth delivers a fun, Carpenter-esque score, incorporating that iconic theme, there’s nothing that makes this one exceptional, and it’s easy to see why it was the lowest-performing film in the series. The directing is uninspired, and the entire film, nay series, seems to lack the imaginative low-budget punch that made the first film so brilliant.

Course, it could be argued that the franchise went off the rails with Halloween II, but some times companies just want to milk that prize cow for everything it has.

I’ll see about digging into the rest of the titles in the series, but right now, I’m not sure I care to know anymore.