I know people who watch horror movies because of the characters involved. The audience roots for Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, and for some reason even Chucky. People will watch those endless streams of sequels because they like the bad guy. For me it is the Halloween franchise and I will watch of the movies no matter how bad they may be. This particular movie is not as bad as the next one, a little more entertaining than the 2nd movie, but no where near as good as the original.

In this installment, Michael Myers some how survived the fiery blast in the hospital at the end of Halloween 2. He was in a coma at the maximum security hospital for 11 years and is getting transferred to a minimum security hospital, again, on the day before Halloween, again, and of course in middle of his transfer, he kills all of the ambulance drivers, brutally, and heads back to Haddonfield. Meanwhile, his sister Laurie Strode, was killed in a car accident, but still had time to have a daughter, Jamie, played by Danielle Harris (The Last Boy Scout) who had since been adopted by another family and now has a sister named Rachel, played by Ellie Cornell (House of the Dead,) who is upset that she has to baby sit her sister during Halloween while everyone is out partying. As Michael Myers heads towards town, Dr. Loomis, played once again by Donald Pleasance (You Only Live Twice,) is hot on his heels trying to warn everyone that Myers is on his way.

The movie is very clichéd by this point, mostly because by the time this installment of Halloween had been released in 1988 and the last installment of 1981, there had been six Friday the 13th's, four Nightmare on Elm Streets, and one Child's Play. Because of this, there are not a whole of original scares. One of my dislikes in this movie is that, in the first Halloween, you could knock him down, but he would get right back up and come for some more, in the second one I don't think anything happened to him until the end, by this time he was not only getting shot, but hit with rifles in the face, and getting run over by a truck. He went from being a vulnerable but unstoppable psycho to Jason Vorhees, you could nuke him and he would still come after you. Ho-Hum.

The movie also borrowed a lot from the original movie in the death scenes, lots of running objects through people. The final scene with Jamie turning on her step-mother and wearing the clown mask that Michael had when he killed his sister, was very predictable, and some what entertaining.

I did like both actresses, the young and the old, in the movie. Ellie did a very Jamie Lee Curtis like job as being the vulnerable yet tough girl who is trying to keep Michael away from her sister. Danielle did a good job as the screaming without being annoying victim. For example of annoying see the young girl in the movie Aliens. Donald Pleasance was also entertaining again as the Doctor, however, he was starting to show his age by this point and should have called it a career by the end of this movie. Surprisingly he survived for two more bad Halloween sequels and about another 10 movies, but he still did them, but he was done.

As always my biggest problem with the movie was the actor who was Michael Myers i.e. The Shape. He was not as menacing as the first movie and this time the mask was not as intimidating as the original mask. The difference between the two would be that in the first movie, the mask was of something else, and now, the mask is an actual Michael Myers mask trying to be the original mask. Not the same. Oh and lets not forget that at the end of the 2nd movie, Laurie had shot both of his eyes out, yet he can see, so in order for this movie to be at all enjoyable you have to forget that fact.

Anyway, this movie is very ok. If you can't get the original than I would rent this instead of the 2nd movie because it is more enjoyable than that one. I will say that I probably like it better than I should but I have already told you why.

Brian - the Naked Gun