10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers (1989)

10. The Music's Downfall

For the first time in the franchise's history, the music does this installment absolutely no favors.

Long-time franchise composer Alan Howarth returns but seemingly forgets to bring any of the vigor or enthusiasm that made he and John Carpenter's prior scores such successes. Instead, Howarth's score here relies on fidgety, weak piano parts and an excess of dollar-store-Halloween-sound-effect samples.

This also marks the first time that electric guitar is incorporated into a Halloween soundtrack and this is a very bad thing. This can be heard on tracks like Victim #1 and Stranger Things and it is used to strikingly poor effect, most notably when the audience is being introduced to Samantha. It's as if Howarth was going for a sultry kind of sound but it just comes off as jarring and totally out-of-place.

Howarth has stated in the years since;

"The director kind of wanted to go back to Halloween 1 in his mind... to feature the piano. So I went for the craziness."

And that's exactly what it sounds like throughout the film; as if Howarth is completely bored by the composition and is just throwing anything in, regardless of if it fits. The end result is a score that sounds tinny and shallow in all the worst ways.