10 Bad Movies That Killed Great Horror Franchises
1. Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers
After an iconic first film and an extremely stellar second outing, the Halloween franchise shot itself in the foot with Halloween III: Season of the Witch in 1982. Giving its fanbase a Halloween movie with no Michael Myers to be seen, Season of the Witch - which thankfully nowadays is viewed as somewhat of a classic - made it clear that horror hounds at the time weren't interested in a Halloween picture with no Michael.
Thus, 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers had the Shape front-and-centre once more, as he ventured back to Haddonfield to torment his young niece Jamie Lloyd - all with Donald Pleasence's ever-erratic Sam Loomis in tow.
The Return of Michael Myers still stands as one of the better entries in a franchise that now spans 13 movies, with its jarring final scene seeing Jamie butcher her foster mother as it was teased she'd be joining her murderous uncle.
When Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers rolled around one year later, it put the franchise into a nosedive and took away a chunk of the fanbase's good faith. Rather than Jamie being under the wing of Michael, the picture made the youngster a mute who had a psychic connection with her uncle. Even worse, the end of the film had Michael broken out of jail by the mysterious Man in Black, which would serve as the introduction to the awful Cult of Thorn nonsense that would fully tank the franchise with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
Not only did Revenge start a decline that would eventually necessitate a new canon kickstarted with Halloween H20 - a canon which itself was trashed by Halloween Resurrection - but Revenge also took home the lowest box office haul of the entire franchise.