Creepy Commercials Countdown: Halloween 5 Movie Promo!

 The Creepy Commercial Countdown!
October 2nd, 2012: “Halloween 5 Movie Promo!” (1989)

I can’t say that I remember this exact promo, but I sure remember a thousand like it.

Urging moviegoers to see Halloween 5 , I was ten-years-old when this promo aired. As a late bloomer who was very easily terrified, no, I would not have been first in line to see Halloween 5.

I still loved to see promos like this, though. I felt like horror movies were part of a secret club for the kids a few years older than me, and in many ways, that’s exactly what they were. It was as if I knew I’d be into them, someday. Just had to wait my turn. It was like waiting to drive, or waiting to drink.

Until such time, I could only imagine what the movies were about. Let me tell you, when all you have to go on is a fifteen-second Michael Myers highlight reel, you imagine a movie way scarier than it actually is.

The ad sparks so many memories of how these seemingly “just there” movie promos used to affect me. As a child, when something like this snuck onto my bedroom television, I was spooked for the rest of the night. Fifteen seconds of Michael Myers hero shots set against piano music, and just like that, everything was scary.

Like many kids my age, I knew much more about Freddy and Jason. They just seemed to evolve into pop culture icons in much bigger ways. Michael Myers was always the more “mysterious” slasher.  I don’t know if that made him scarier, per se, but I definitely took him as the killer who never messed around.

Turns out, I was right!

Course, now I’m into these movies, so I have seen Halloween 5. It certainly wasn’t the best of the series, but I don’t think it was the worst, either. Continuing on with Part 4’s “plot reset,” a young Danielle Harris stars as Jamie Lloyd – the niece of Michael Myers. And we know how he treats his family. Muahahah.

Note the mention of the Halloween 5 hotline.  For a buck a minute ($2 for the first, doy), you could guide one of Michael’s intended victims to safety. Such hotlines were rip-offs in a nearly inherent way, but Google searches prove that several fans remember this one with great fondness. Having called a similar Freddy Krueger hotline way back when, I can confirm that those prerecorded messages were often scarier than the movies.