As is customary with long-running slasher series, the killer wasn't really killed at the end of the prior episode. In spite of all that happened to Michael Myers, he's back again, one year after the fourth film, to kill again.

Halloween 5, even more so than the second in the series, is a frustrating mix of good and bad. There's some genuine scares, including a creative and chilling scene involving a laundry chute, and then there's some blatant stupidity, such as when the entire police force evacuates the scene of an ambush on a dubious lead. There's a lot of gratuitous sensationalism too, unfortunately, the lack of which set the best Halloween episodes apart from its brainless peers.

The film is one of the weakest of the series; even so, horror fans may find enough to enjoy -- you just have to swallow the bad with the good.