Census Bloodbath: The Boogie Woogie Boogeyman

Year: 1989

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell |

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

And so we come back, as always, to 1989. That year is like a black hole, taking every franchise we know and love and crushing it into oblivion. Many slashers entered that dark void and very few returned. The ones that did were in bad shape. Freddy Krueger was shipped off to a 3D suckfest that turned him into a blithering cartoon character. Jason Voorhees was abandoned on New Line’s doorstep, converted into a body-hopping demon worm, and shuttled off into space. And Michael Myers… Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?

Many films worked in tandem to murder the illustrious slasher genre in cold blood during that hallowed year. Some were putrid, obscene messes. Some were quite fun, but didn’t have the moxy to make a splash at the box office. Most were a chore to sit through. But perhaps none so effectively derailed a franchise as Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. This was a film so ludicrously inept that it buried a series that had already withstood the assault of the Michael Myers - Laurie Strode sibling connection and a Michael-less entry about evil Stonehenge masks.

We’re talking heavy artillery here.

Halloween 5 starts promisingly enough. A direct continuation of Halloween 4 (with some light retconning to spinelessly reverse that dark ending), we follow Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the young niece of Michael Myers (Don Shanks of Sweet 16) who has been institutionalized following their encounter last year. More or less direct continuity, a returning lead, actual recognition of Jamie’s trauma… What could go wrong? The answer is everything. Immediately.

Michael Myers, having recuperated in the hut of a mountain man one evening that lasted an entire year according to the editor, returns to Haddonfield to continue his relentless pursuit of Jamie. But THIS TIME THEY’RE READY, so proclaims the poster. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the actual plot, unless you count the fact that Jamie seems to have some sort of useless psychic connection to Michael that gives her seizures whenever he kills. It’s not the most efficient defense mechanism in the world, and it only ever helps to save Tina (Wendy Foxworth), who is the single most annoying human being in the known universe, so I say she’s better off without it.

And of course Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is back, because what would a Halloween flick be without some purple monologuing and an old man tormenting a little girl with tales of hellspawn and baby coffins? There’s a slightly larger teen presence than usual here, so let’s also take a short break to Meet the Meat.

There’s Rachel (Ellie Cornell), Jamie’s adopted sister who takes all that lovely character development from Part 4 and tenderly tosses it in the shredder before being tragically reduced to the role of Girl Who Takes a Shower; you’ve already met Tina, Rachel’s best friend who is woefully unfit to take her place as teen protagonist and never speaks normally when a dog whistle shriek will do; Mikey (Jonathan Chapin), Tina’s greaser boyfriend who I would say is the least attractive slasher hunk in history if I hadn’t already met Spitz (Matthew Walker of Child’s Play 3), a Neanderthal with a puddin’ bowl haircut, and yes that is his real name; and Sammy (Tamara Glynn), his inappropriately sexy girlfriend. The teens are alone in Rachel’s house for the weekend and head out to a barn party, because Halloween 5 has no idea what type of movie it is.

I can tell you one thing for sure, it’s not a good one.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Halloween 5 proved me wrong. I thought no slasher character could be more profoundly irritating than Joey from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Or Franklin in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Or – heaven help me – Jack Black in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Tina’s car alarm chirpiness is bad enough, but when you roll her up with the grimacing, gibbering imps she calls friends, it’s enough to make you want to tear out your eardrums and staple them over your eye sockets so you never have to see or hear them ever again.

I think writer-director Dominique Othenin-Girard (whose name is actually misspelled in the opening credits, because this film is a work of art) took notes on everything that slasher sequels do wrong and vowed to copy that formula exactly. Mysterious killers are ruined with too much mythology? “Let’s throw in a cult tattoo, a shadowy Man in Black following the proceedings, and vapid psychobabble about quelling Michael’s inner rage!” Slashers are no fun when they’re not working with sharp implements? “Let’s have our first finale [EN: There are like twelve endings to this damn movie] be an extended car chase!” The Last House on the Left had infuriatingly inept comic relief cops? “Great idea! Make sure you throw in some honk-honk sound effects so people know that they’re silly!”

“Just call me the Jean-Luc Godard of horror cinema.”

Halloween 5 is just all over the place. It can’t decide whether it wants Tina to be a Final Girl or a victim. It can’t decide whether Michael Myers is the product of supernatural forces or a shattered psyche. It even misplaces an entire character (Billy – a young boy with a crush on Jamie) and never finds him again. All it knows is that it wants to have its cake and stab it too.

The ineptitude at work here is frankly staggering. Let me give you an example. If you were a director staging a sex scene in a barn, how would you do it? Would you throw on a smoky filter and layer some light music, toss in a couple boob close-ups, and call it a day? Or would you have it completely silent save for the uncomfortable grunting of two actors who would clear rather be nowhere near each other, one of whom is supposedly engaging in intercourse without ever having taken off her panties? If you answered the former, congratulations. You are not Dominique Othenin-Girard.

At least the gore is safe from this kind of treatment. Because there is none. Only two deaths have any sort of visceral impact, but they happen to 1) the fourth most annoying character, which is still well above the curve, and 2) a character we only meet 20 minutes before the ending. Needless to say, it’s a bit difficult to care.

Also, Michael has a mean case of turkey neck.

The pure negative power of Halloween 5 is such that it finally defeats Donald Pleasance. His deflated wheeze of a character sounds something like Winnie the Pooh after running a half marathon, and his fire and brimstone speechifying flings itself so far over the to that it’s visible from space. He’s laying it on thick, and his lines constantly bounce from subject to subject like an untrained high school improve show. After four films, I suppose it’s hard to really put your heart into lines like “Hell would not HAVE himmm!”

You’d think people would know that Michael Myers is kind of a dick at this point, without Dr. Loomis’ help.

But after all this trial and tribulation, a seed germinates, containing hope for a better future. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are positive factors to Halloween 5 as well. A shot from inside one of Jamie’s drawings proves that somebody somewhere has at least a crumb of visual ambition, and a scene between Tina and Jamie at the clinic is actually pretty tender and sweet. Plus, it’s hard to knock the finale, which pits Michael against Jamie as she tries to escape imprisonment in a slick metal laundry chute. Of course, that’s immediately followed by a metal net, a weepy Michael getting beaned with a 2x4, and a machine gun-toting druid, but this is Halloween 5 after all. It needed to reach its crap quota.

At least it’s fun to make fun of, right? And the few genuinely good moments are scattered at an even enough distance that it almost feels like a tolerable motion picture. Halloween 5 isn’t the worst Halloween film (thank you, Rob Zombie), but it is the keystone film of the year that destroyed the traditional slasher once and for all. That’s no small achievement. A round of applause, everyone, for the final Halloween of the 1980’s.

Killer: Michael Myers (Don Shanks)
Final Girl: Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris)
Best Kill: Charlie is hung using the very rope ladder he was going to escape with.
Sign of the Times: Hell hath no fury like Tina’s outfit.

Scariest Moment: Michael attacks Jamie while she’s trapped in a laundry chute.
Weirdest Moment: Tina ends up in the spooky barn because she chased an adorable kitten in there.
Champion Dialogue: “When you’re older there are people you’re gonna meet that make you feel connected. Like your heart is made of neon.”
Body Count: 9; not including 10 cops, who were alternately machine gunned by the Man in Black or slaughtered by Michael Myers – Or Max, the family dog.

1. Mountain Man is stabbed to death.
2. Rachel is stabbed in the chest with scissors.
3. Mikey is stabbed in the face with a three-pronged garden tool.
4. Spitz is impaled with a pitchfork.
5. Sammy is slashed with a scythe.
6. Goofy Cop #1 is pitchforked offscreen.
7. Goofy Cop #2 is pitchforked offscreen.
8. Eddie has his face smashed into a steering wheel.
9. Charlie is hung with a rope ladder.

TL;DR: Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is an inept horror picture that pisses all over the legacy of Halloween even more than the other sequels already had.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1641
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Census Bloodbath: Happy Birthday To Me

To listen to our podcast episode about this very film, please click here.

Year: 1983

Director: Jim Sotos

Cast: Dana Kimmell, Bo Hopkins, Susan Strasberg

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Today is the day that I turn 21 years old. Considering that I don’t drink, I decided that the next best thing to get me into that emotionally battered, physically nauseated state was a slasher movie from 1983. So here we are at Sweet 16, a flick filmed in the subgenre’s Golden Age year of 1981 but shelved as audience interest started to wane in the hopes that a resurgence was right around the corner.

It wasn’t. Sweet 16 was unceremoniously dumped into the world two years later, during perhaps the single worst year for slasher cinema until the genre well and truly keeled over and died in 1989.

At least its lack of success spared us Sweet 17: B.Y.O.Body.

Sweet 16, for what it’s worth, at least has a unique premise for a meat and potatoes slasher. When pretty city girl Melissa (Aleisa Shirley)- and by pretty I mean literally caked in make-up every second of every day whether she’s sleeping, taking a shower, or even putting on make-up – moves into a small Texas town with her parents [the famed archaeologist Dr. John Morgan (Patrick Macnee) and Joanne (Susan Strasberg AKA the deliciously named Miss Viola Davis from another notable birthday slasher, 1981’s Bloody Birthday), who was born and bred in this town with her sister], all the boys are dying to go out with her. Or rather, they’re dying in general, because every boy she hooks up with ends up at the receiving end of a mad killer’s flashing blade before the night is through.

The local hicks blame the citizens of the nearby Indian reservation, namely the ancient Greyfeather (Henry Wilcoxon) and his grandson Jason longshadow (Don Shanks, who has the slashing distinction of portraying Michael Myers in Halloween 5 as well as appearing in Silent Night, Deadly Night and the Native American shaman slasher The Ghost Dance), leading to ugly racial tension about town that comes bubbling to a boil on the evening of Melissa’s sixteenth birthday party.

But what’s a birthday bash without a little lynching among friends?

Sweet 16 does not put its best foot forward. As a slasher, it is a daft, crummy mess and for the first twenty minutes or so it shows no indication that it might change its ways. Its muddy cinematography and cheap sets give way to even muddier night exteriors and even cheaper gore, which is invariably of the lazy Psycho-esque, “knife raise – scream – cut away” variety without a teaspoon of Hitchcock’s flair or talent. Or ability to see anything in the frame. 

The truly upsetting thing is that early on, while reading a mystery novel, a character inquires how one might murder somebody with a rake, and then the film has the sheer foolhardy audacity to go ahead and kill exactly zero people with zero rakes. There’s not even a gardening scene. It just carries on with its dishwater knife twaddle like it didn’t clearly have an ace up its sleeve.

It’s a testament to my perseverance that I haven’t yet set my hair on fire during this project.

Luckily, Sweet 16 does have an ace up its sleeve, though it’s completely unrelated to the woebegone slasher twiddling its thumbs in the wings. That ace is Marci Burke (Dana Kimmell of Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D), the daughter of the local Sheriff (Bo Hopkins of Uncle Sam). She’s the reader of the aforementioned mystery novel and a Nancy Drew-ish curiosity-seeker who would much rather accompany her father on visits to murder sites than go to the mall or play with dolls. She’s spunky, funny, and the amount of rouge blast-sanded onto her cheeks to de-agify her is frankly riveting.

Unfortunately, as happens more often than not with the film, Sweet 16 fails to follow through on the promise of a fun slasher whodunit about a young woman solving the mystery of the murders in her town. But at the very least, Marci’s presence elevates it from crappy slasher to mildly diverting crappy slasher, and that’s a distinction I do not make lightly. And as it turns out, the mystery does have a half decent reveal, even though it’s completely obvious to anyone with a veteran’s ear for clunky dialogue.

Marci and that reveal are the only genuinely good things about the movie however, save a comic relief records clerk and a shot of a moonlit lake so beautifully composed, it makes up every scrap of publicity material for the film. Beyond that it’s just a jumble of half-digested ideas that fail to come to fruition: not enough boys die by Melissa’s seductions to give the mystery any juice, the racial undercurrent is only valuable as a red herring rather than any sort of cultural statement, and nobody gets killed with a freaking rake.

I’d even be happy with a Stooge-esque face smashing. Cut me some slack here.

I think one of the most essential rules of thumb when telling apart bad movies from the good ones (it’s harder than you think – they’re still making Transformers sequels) is to listen to the incidental music. That’s the music that plays in the non-monumental moments which aren’t as high profile as the main theme (which, incidentally, is a deliciously syrupy lyrical ballad entitled “Melissa” that calls to mind a caramelized Air Supply B-side). Let me give you an example – in a steamy love scene between Melissa and her new beau, Johnny, (Glenn Withrow), listen closely: What you hear is nothing. Complete, staticky silence.

That’s a telltale sign of a bad movie. You know, that and its dull plodding pacing, the outrageously uncharismatic kills, and utter lack of atmosphere. Sweet 16 couldn’t scare the pee out of a baby and that’s pretty much all those cherubic little bastards know how to do. It slightly attempts to make up for it deficiencies with a thin sheen of camp (especially a staccato shuttering zoom effect during its horror sequences that dates it more accurately than a calendar printed in the corner of the screen would), but it’s too little too late.

Sweet 16 isn’t the worst slasher one could find themselves chancing upon on a lonely video shelf, but it’s a film I can’t imagine ever revisiting of my own volition. If you’re a sick freak like me looking for some classic slicing and dicing action to gift yourself with on your birthday, you’re better off sticking with tried-and-true titles like Happy Birthday to Me or even the killer kid flick Bloody Birthday.

Killer: [Joanne/Trisha Morgan (Susan Strasberg)]

Final Girl: Marci Burke (Dana Kimmell)

Best Kill: Not applicable. I’m still fuming about the rake thing.

Sign of the Times: Nearly every item of clothing is a precise shade of Violet Beauregarde blue.

Scariest Moment: Melissa’s mother screams in fear that her dead father is coming to get her.

Weirdest Moment: The sheriff attempts to research on the microfiche while the lonely records clerk lavishly describes the steak dinner they could be eating right about now.

Champion Dialogue: “Why does he always laugh when I propose?”

Body Count: 6 [uniquely, all men, except for the killer.]

1. Johnny is stabbed to death.
2. Tommy is stabbed to death.
3. Greyfeather is hung.
4. Billy is stabbed in the back.
5. Billy’s Friend is stabbed to death.
6. [Joanne/Trisha stabs herself in the gut.]

TL;DR: Sweet 16 is a dull slasher redeemed only by a unique teen character.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1258

Census Bloodbath: Dances With Ghosts

Year: 1980

Director: Peter F. Buffa

Cast: Julie Amato, Victor Mohica, Henry Bal

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Guys, I'm so excited! I only have one 1980 film left after this! I mean, it's all in Italian with no subtitles but still! 1980 is so close to being done. It's been quite a ride just to get this far and the slasher genre will only grow more twisted and gnarly as the decade goes on. Thank you for sticking with me this far! Census Bloodbath is one of my favorite projects that I've done, it's been a lot of fun sitting through these crappy-ass movies for both personal enlightenment and for the power and insight to recommend some hidden gems once I reach the end.

One of these lower tier hidden gems is the topic of today's review, The Ghost Dance. It's no masterpiece and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but the most hardcore slasher fans (not hardcore as in gorehound, hardcore as in "I can sit through hours of murky cinematography because that's how much I love this genre."), but it's certainly a unique supernatural entry a couple years before this kind of stuff was in vogue.

Strike a pose.

The Ghost Dance follows anthropology professor Kay Foster (Julie Amato) as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her dig at a Native American reservation. On the one side, she fights protests from the locals and her whitewashed boyfriend Tom Eagle (Victor Mohica, who had a small part in the same year's Don't Answer the Phone). On the other, the body she recently unearthed is that of murder cult leader Nahala, who possesses the body of local medicine man Aranjo (Henry Bal) to resume his reign of terror over the land.

This being a 1980 slasher film, the rules of the game were still falling into place, so there isn't a lot of Expendable Meat lying around that exists for the sole purpose of being offed in unusual ways. Fortunately there are still plenty of characters to toss at our Native American warrior spirit, they just generally have more narrative thrust than your typical slasher victims. Not that this is a complaint, I suppose. It just muddies up my structure a bit.

First we have Paul (James Andronica), one of Kay's coworkers and a very helpful source of information about the history of Nahala and his crimes. Then there's Ocacio (Frank Salsedo), a reclusive old man who is believed to have mystical powers. And finally there's Carol (Patricia Albrecht), Kay's secretary, and Rick (J. Christopher Senter), Carol's exotic photographer lover, two of the most expendable cast members who get the most typical (and enjoyable) slasher scene of all - Bang in an old car, die one by one in a museum.

Classic Nahala.

So Kay begins to have visions of Nahala that slowly drive her mad as she and Paul desperately try to unearth the ghost's motives and Tom just kinda hangs out in the background. For the first two acts, he's offscreen for the bulk of the scenes but feels everpresent because Kay literally won't shut up about him. It's always "Oh, I just got off the phone with Tom" or "Oh, Tom is gonna pick me up" or "Oh, I need to wait for Tom to show up before I investigate." We need a spinoff about Tom. Why is he always late? Where is he? What is he doing there? Who is he wearing?

I say this because unfortunately Kay is an aggressively bland protagonist, despite Julie Amato's above average performance, somehow grounding a casual realism in a character who actually has to speak the words "I've never been so frightened" aloud. Readers at home, say that sentence out loud. Now ignore the people looking at you like you just grew horns and focus on how stilted it sounds. Trust me, swallowing that line is a massive accomplishment.

The mythical Tom in his natural habitat.

Aside from Julie there are few good things about The Ghost Dance, although the parts that are good are startlingly solid and there's enough elements that are intriguing merely for their presence in the subgenre that the film just barely manages to stay afloat.

First things first, I'm the realest.

Second things first, this film does some tremendously interesting things with Native American representation. I mean, it's still a film about a white woman being chased by a tribal warrior possessing the body of a medicine man, but it is surprisingly keen on teaching the viewer about Native American mythology even when it has nothing to do with the plot at hand. This is a flaw cinematically, but a real plus in a thoroughly whitewashed genre. And I've never seen a film with a higher ratio of truly Native American actors. The fact that the film plays it straight and never descends into camp makes it a less entertaining watch, but treats the culture with the seriousness it deserves.

Man, the more I think about it, the more the film's strengths seem like weaknesses.

The one inarguably good scene in the entire film is the Final Girl sequence, the pivotal scene which can make or break a slasher movie. Although it takes place long before the film's natural ending, it is deliciously tense and contains what I can unambiguously refer to as imagery, when possessed Aranjo stands before a display of birds of prey and the wings appear to spread from his back. It's a terrific scene and most of the points this film got from me are predicated entirely on that one section.

That and her glorious 80's hair.

And luckily the kills are halfway decent, just bloody enough to be worth the effort but not so involved as to expose the flick's feeble budget. Unluckily, the film crawls along at a snail's pace after a brief barrage of nasty kills in the opening half hour. And with that we move into my favorite part of reviewing any slasher film - the bad.

This film is intriguing, but man oh man is it just full of terrible decisions on every level. Film tip: Nighttime shots aren't moody if the entire frame is black. That's not a mood. That's just the void. There are no emotions in the void. Fun Fact: Cinematographer Fred Murphy would later shoot Freddy vs. Jason. Make of that what you will.

Like I already said, the use of Native American mythology doesn't go anywhere, but perhaps even more damaging is the fact that in not a single scene does Dr. Foster use her knowledge of anthropology to help her out in any capacity. She's just your typical hapless horror victim who happens to teach a class relevant to her tormentors but handily forgets that any time Nahala shows up. She's like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates if Adam Sandler was played by an angry tribal priest (I would watch that movie).

The film's attempts at backstory and universe-building fall flat (a black cat that the camera places heavy importance on only serves as an introduction to a shower scene, Tom's half-remembered backstory is a truckload of nonsense) and the mummified corpse looks oddly like Tommy Wiseau on a hot day.

So maybe I should backtrack a bit. I don't recommend this movie to anybody. But if you're forced at gunpoint to pick a random slasher from 1980 to watch to completion, The Ghost Dance is at least palatable rather than actively rancid.

Killer: Nahala/Aranjo (Henry Bal)

Final Girl: Dr. Kay Foster (Julie Amato)

Best Kill: My favorite is probably the abrupt dog mauling that occurs almost instantly after another kill, catching both myself and Lena's poor friend off guard.

Sign of the Times: Despite being a professed expert in the field, Dr. Foster still resolutely calls the Native Americans "Indians."

Scariest Moment: The final chase in the museum still packs a punch.

Weirdest Moment: Ocacio attempts to banish the spirit by hissing at it.

Champion Dialogue: "She will take your life and put it in the basket on her back."

Body Count: 9; including the human vessel used by the killer.

1. Some Dude is bitten by a snake.
2. Lena has her throat slit.
3. Lena's friend is mauled by a dog.
4. Carol is impaled on a spear.
5. Rick is stabbed in the abdomen with glass.
6. Paul has a knife thrown into his back.
7. Ocacio is stabbed in the gut.
8. Aranjo burns to death.
9. Tom is stabbed with a scalpel offscreen. 

TL;DR: The Ghost Dance is a murky slasher film but has some points of genre interest.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1439