Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers |  | Director: Dwight H. Little
Actors: Donald Pleasence, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, George P. Wilbur, Michael Pataki
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.98
Buy Used: $6.70
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Seller: goHastings
Rating:  297 reviews
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 88 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 013131053791
EAN: 0013131053791
Theatrical Release Date: October 21, 1988
Release Date: July 20, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
"You can't kill the bogeyman," the children insist to a terrorized Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the original Halloween. How right they are. Laurie is gone, but guess who's back in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers? Acting as if the third entry never existed, this installment picks up 10 years after the original, with mad maniac Myers in a coma and moved to a new facility. But wouldn't you know it that as soon as a loose-lipped orderly lets slip that Myers has a surviving niece he springs back into action, leaving a bloody trail of corpses on the road to Haddonfield. Donald Pleasance returns as Dr. Loomis, scarred and crippled from his last encounter with Myers and seething with a fanatical zeal to stop the freak from repeating his previous rampage. Pleasance is the best thing about the film as an aging hero seemingly on the verge of madness who drags a bum leg in his manic rush to save little orphan Jamie (Danielle Harris), the 10-year-old waif terrorized by her homicidal uncle. Director Dwight Little has managed a generic if professional slasher picture, rife with improbabilities and dominated by a killer whose superhuman powers reach near-mystical dimensions, but he delivers the goods: shocks, stabs, and cold, cruel killings. --Sean Axmaker
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 297
The Night HE Came Home...Again November 4, 2009
Jeffrey T. Munson (Dixon, IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It has been ten years since Michael Myers terrorized the people of Haddonfield. Michael was intent on killing his sister, Laurie Strode, but she survived, and Michael has ended up in a sanitarium. Now, ten years has passed, and Laurie and her husband have tragically died. However, there is someone left: Laurie's daughter Jamie (Danielle Harris). Michael has found out about her existence, and now he's come looking for her. However, Michael isn't the only one going to Haddonfield: Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has found out about Michael's escape, and he's determined not to let the events of a decade earlier repeat themselves.
Jamie has been put in foster care after the death of her parents. Jamie's foster sister Rachael (Ellie Cornell) has been given the job of taking care of her. Jamie is seen as an outcast by her fellow classmates, and she suffers from hallucinations. But, Jamie decides to go trick or treating with Rachael. Unfortunately, Michael is waiting for them. After single-handedly destroying the local police station, Michael is intent on finding Jamie. Will Michael succeed, or will Dr. Loomis manage to keep Jamie and Rachael safe?
I've been a fan of the "Halloween" series for many years, and this installment was very good. I was glad to see the series get back on track after the strange episode 3. I thought Danielle Harris did a very good job as Jamie, and it was good to see Donald Pleasence reprise his role as Dr. Loomis. Although this episode lacked some of Michael's signature knifings, the suspense was still palpable throughout.
I found this to be a very good addition to the "Halloween" series. Michael Myers has come back with a vengeance. Watch Halloween 4 and see the return of Michael Myers.
 The night Halloween met B October 30, 2009
Sid the Elf (North Pole)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In a luck break of events, Sid the Elf was able to catch Halloween 4 on tv one of the roughly 750 times AMC shows it during October. Great timing right there because it allows us to make Halloween 4 the final film in October Horrorgreatsuccess. This is very fitting because Sid loves the Halloween series, and 4 is a great way to close out Sid's personal horror film festival. And, really, who doesn't want to see another Loomis vs. Myers rematch? This has always been one of Sid's favorite secretly B horror flicks.
Halloween 4 is set 10 years to the day after the original classic. Myers has been in a coma for 10 years after Loomis and him were in that sweet fire at Ben Tramer Memorial Hospital in Haddonfield. Myers has been kept in a federal sanitarium but now he is being transfered back to his old stomping grounds, Smith's Grove. There is no logic, no reason behind this move which in Sid's eyes is great because it's so implausible that it set off the first B alarm of the film. During the transfer, the ambulance crew is discussing the comatose guy in the back and they mention that his sister, Laurie Strode, has died in a car accident and Laurie's daughter, Jamie please, is living with the Carruthers family in Haddonfield. Obviously, Myers wakes up upon hearing this, picks them off and heads to Haddonfield for a Halloween rampage. Standing in his way, however, is the legendary Dr. Sam Loomis along with new sherrif in town Ben Meeker. For this round, Loomis has some of the best fake burn scars ever, but he's still equiped with all his old speeches about Myers to convey that he's not a man, he's pure evil. Awesome.
Sid did the math here and figured out that Myers is 31 here, right in the heart of his prime. That must account for his possesing little girls to choose his clown costume from his rookie year and ice a family member and appear randomly to Jamie and Loomis. He was a tour de force in this one. He hit his peak, undoubedly, in the famous Hick Scene which just may be the best scene in horror film history and looms large in Sid the Elf lore. If you're a B fan, please get the DVD of this movie and watch the Hick scene in slo mo. If you don't crack up at least 5 times, well, Sid wouldn't believe you.
 Unnecessary, Overrated, and Formulaic October 2, 2009
Sebastian Sanjurjo (Miami FL)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2SNFDSU1ZYFZI Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers
Halloween 4 September 22, 2009
Jeannine T. Stone
Very good movie. The Return of Michael Myers. We can never get too much of Michael Myers.
One of the best sequels in the Halloween franchise September 8, 2009
dylan21484nj
The first film, John Carpenter's Halloween, is a classic horror film that inspired a decade of masked murderers stalking teen girls on holidays. Its sequel, Halloween II, upped the ante with more blood and more disposable characters. Halloween III: Season of the Witch tried turning the franchise into The Twilight Zone. But after its critical and commercial failure, it was realized that the the real draw to these movies was the borderline-supernatural masked killer Michael Myers.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was the producers' "mia culpa" to those who were turned off by Halloween III, resurrecting Myers and making him even more unkillable, if that's possible. He seems to now posess superhuman strength on top of the supernatural ability to take any kind of physical punishment but never die, embedding his thumb in one man's forehead and crushing another man's skull with his bare hands. Looks like Michael has had in I.V. drip of roids while he was in that decade-long coma.
Also making his return to the franchise is Donald Pleasence's Sam Loomis, Michael's former psychiatrist and the Captain Ahab to Michael's Moby Dick. Though scarred and hobbled but somehow still alive after Halloween II's explosive finale, Loomis is still as relentless in hunting Michael as Michael is hunting his family, and Pleasence's perfomance anchors the movie, as Loomis once again tries to warn the quaint Midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois that Michael has returned to wreak havoc on Halloween night.
Since Jamie Lee Curtis' career had taken off considerably since she first played Laurie Strode in the first two films, she could not reprise her role. Laurie's absence is explained away briefly, having died in a car crash a year before the events of Halloween 4Her character was replaced by Laurie's orphaned daughter Jame Lloyd, played by the adorable Danielle Harris. Jamie finds herself being plagued by nightmares of her masked uncle whom she's never met before and ultimately becomes the target of Michael's rampage. Harris manages to prevent Jamie from becoming a shrill, annoying character you wish Michael would eviscerate, and you actually care about her well-being.
The supporting cast also do their best to keep this film from being another silly 80's slasher filled with disposable characters, something the series is incapable of avoiding with the follow-up Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. In Halloween 4, there is a love triangle between Jamie's adopted sister Rachel (played by Ellie Cornell), her prospective boyfriend Brady (played by Sasha Jensen), and busty blonde tart Kelly Meeker (played by the ever-gorgeous Kathleen Kinmont). Kelly's the daughter of the town's new sheriff, Ben Meeker (Beau Starr), who serves as the disbelieving voice to Loomis' urging that Michael Myers has returned to Haddonfield, Illinois to kill his young niece.
Dwight Little directs the film quite deftly, adding a dark, foggy atmosphere that separates this film from the countless other identical slasher films out there. Alan Howarth's showtrack is a mix of ambient sounds and synth, occasionally pop-infused renditions of John Carpenter's simple yet classic orchestrations. Their work gives the movie a sense of dread and fear that many of its horror peers (and even its peers within the Halloween franchise) severely lack. And the film's zinger of a twist finale, leaves you wanting to know what happens next, but after watching Halloween 5, you'll wish you never found out.
In all, Halloween 4 is a return to form for the Halloween franchise and a worthy sequel, even without the original's main star. And the best part? No kung-fu Busta Rhymes!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 297
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