Filming began on May 1, 1989 for the film to be completed by its October 13th release date. Director Dominique Othenin-Girard was assigned to the project after Debra Hill (producer of the original HALLOWEEN) recommended him to producer Moustapha Akkad.
“It’s a story of people under pressure” said Othenin-Girard in an interview. “What makes Halloween 5 different is I believe ‘the shape’ has a soul, an extra dimension.” The director studied other horror films, like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, and compared them with the Halloween series. “I came into Akkad’s office with a full analysis of the Halloween films and brought in a writer.”
The film reportedly cost $3 million to make. “Moustapha Akkad kept saying that he wanted to go back to what the mask in the first Halloween looked like,” said KNB EFX’s Greg Nicotero. “We looked at pictures and sculpted the mask. When we got to Salt Lake City, they wanted the nose and eyes to look bigger, so we added latex appliances.”
Supposedly, there was a bit of tension on the set. Director Othenin-Girard liked to take things to an extreme, whereas Akkad never went for a lot of gore in the series. Donald Pleasence seemed to agree. “This director has a lot of imagination and is very clever, but I don’t think he understands that he’s making the fifth film in a series, rather than his own idea of what the film should be,” he told Fangoria. “I haven’t agreed with a lot of what he has done with this film, so we talk and come to compromises. I think they should have gone along with the fact that the little girl is now totally evil. I was disappointed that we now discover she did not kill her mother at the end of the last film.”
Director Othenin-Girard said of his work, “I know this is the fifth HALLOWEEN film, and people have come to expect certain things. The main thrust is to keep the audience off balance and on edge.”
Halloween 5 The Revenge of Michael Myers – © 1989 Trancas International Films