In Defense Of: “Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers” (1988)

One of the major things the film did right was bringing back Donald Pleasence, even if the idea that Loomis survived the explosion at Haddonfield Memorial is, admittedly, preposterous, especially when all he has to show for it are some scars on his face and hands. Pleasence is just a delight to watch though, even in the fifth and sixth films, and it’s clear that he’s having a ball letting the exasperated psychiatrist slip into his own form of desperate madness over the course of the sequels. Though Michael has spent a decade in a coma, Loomis has never strayed too far from him, aware that one day his patient could get up and go right back to killing despite everyone else dismissing him as a loon.

There’s a palpable tragedy to his character, the man forever linked to keeping the world safe from a patient he refers to as “it” and “evil on two legs,” and when he’s forced to hitchhike early in the movie after an encounter with Michael leaves his car destroyed, it’s almost hard to watch when a group of teenagers pull over as if to pick him up only to taunt him by peeling out and leaving him in a cloud of dust. It’s a moment that’s at least tempered by the fact we get to see him genuinely let his guard down and smile for a moment shortly after he’s picked up by a traveling reverend instead.

Even better, once Loomis arrives in Haddonfield and makes it to the police station, his desperate plea that Michael has returned isn’t taken lightly by the new sheriff, Ben Meeker (Beau Starr). No one in Haddonfield has forgotten about what Michael did or who Loomis is, least of all the police, and seeing Meeker quickly overcome his initial reluctance is refreshing, as the film doesn’t have to waste time on proving Loomis is right. Meeker immediately jumps into action, enacting a curfew, requesting the news broadcast that businesses be closed, and setting out to find Jamie and bring her to safety, ultimately taking her to his own home for protection from Michael.

And as for Michael himself, that’s where the film does begin to veer off into strange territory. Halloween 4 highlights a Shape who’s busier than ever before, as Michael seems to teleport all across Haddonfield. One minute, he’s stalking Jamie; the next, he’s causing a blackout by electrifying a worker at the town’s electrical substation. He also slaughters almost the entire police force off screen.

Near the end of the film, after Jamie and Rachel have been picked up by a local posse that formed to hunt Michael and are being taken out of town, he miraculously climbs into the bed of the speeding vehicle, killing the posse members only for Rachel to take the wheel, after which she hits the brakes, sends him flying, and runs him down with the truck, all before he’s riddled with a hail of gunfire by police and other posse members alike.

Whereas the first two films played into the character’s patience, this sequel really ups the ante in making him more dangerous and capable than ever, undeniably in response to the types of body counts and active lifestyles of his genre contemporaries at the time, but added up it all makes Michael feel like an outright supernatural force of evil rather than the otherwise grounded – at least in comparison – malevolence we’d seen him as before.