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Synopsis:
Rushing to the rescue of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Dr Sam
Loomis (Donald Pleasence) fires six shots into her assailant, Michael
Myers (Dick Warlock), sending him plunging from the second-storey balcony
of the house. However, when he goes to inspect the body, Loomis finds
nothing but a bloody imprint upon the lawn…. While its occupants are
distracted by a news bulletin, someone
enters a house. When Mrs Elrod (Lucille Benson) returns to the kitchen,
she finds her knife missing and blood on her benchtop. Shortly afterwards,
the young woman in the house next door discovers that she is not alone….
At the Doyle house, Laurie is lifted into an ambulance by two paramedics,
Budd (Leo Rossi) and Jimmy (Lance Guest) – the latter of whom has a
crush on her. At the hospital, Dr Mixter (Ford Rainey) declares that
Laurie’s shoulder wound requires stitching and, ignoring the girl’s
pleas that she not be made to go to sleep, orders her sedated. Meanwhile,
Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) continue their search for
Michael Myers. Loomis sees a masked figure and runs towards it, drawing
his gun. The Sheriff must wrestle with Loomis to prevent his shooting. The
figure crosses the street, only to be struck by a speeding police car,
slammed into the side of a parked van, and incinerated as both vehicles
explode. As Loomis and Brackett contemplate the horrifying scene, Deputy
Gary Hunt (Hunter von Leer) comes running up with the tragic news that the
dead bodies of three young people have just been discovered – and that
one of them is the Sheriff’s own daughter, Annie (Nancy Loomis). Having
identified Annie’s body, the grief-stricken Brackett goes home to his
wife, leaving Hunt in charge. Loomis insists that Michael Myers may still
be alive, and asks that Hunt arrange for a dentist to meet him at the
coroner’s office, where the incinerated body has been taken. Nearby, a
second masked figure hears on a radio that Laurie has been taken to the
Haddonfield Memorial Clinic; it heads in that direction. At the hospital,
security guard Garret (Cliff Emmich) fails to notice that his monitors
have picked up the approach of a shadowy figure in a mask. Garret releases
the electronic doors to admit Nurse Karen Bailey (Pamela Susan Shoop), who
is late for her shift, and is reprimanded for it by her supervisor, Mrs
Alves (Gloria Gifford). Meanwhile, disturbed by the news reports of the
three murders and his partner’s callous reactions, Jimmy goes to visit
Laurie. He tells her all that is known so far about the killings,
including the name of her assailant. Laurie recognises the name
“Myers”, but can only ask in a mystified tone – “Why
me…?”
Comments:
Even as Halloween II
opens with a replay of the climactic events of its predecessor, I thought
it might be not inappropriate to open this review with an observation made
during the final section of my review of Halloween:
“What
is truly startling when watching the film these days is how patently its
open ending was not intended to
set up a sequel, but rather, merely to leave the audience with the
uncomfortable feeling that ‘the evil’ was still out there.”
And in spite of what history has given us, and in
spite, too, of John Carpenter’s cryptic on-set remark to Donald
Pleasence, “Would you believe Halloween II?”, I still believe that
initially there was no real intention in anyone’s mind of producing a
sequel to Halloween. Let’s not
forget that twenty-five years ago, the film industry was a very different
place. It had not yet degenerated to the point where even a very minor
degree of financial success is deemed sufficient to justify the production
of a sequel; or where, still more insanely, sequels are put into
production before their forerunners are even released.
Prior to October of 1978, no-one would truly have contemplated the making
of Halloween II. For one thing,
whatever John Carpenter may have said at the time, there is no way that
even in his very wildest dreams, the writer-director could have envisioned
the magnitude of his film’s ultimate success. More importantly, however,
Carpenter knew very well that although “the evil was still out there”,
the story of Michael Myers was over – done with – told. There was no
call for a sequel to Halloween,
because there was nowhere left for such a film to go. And so things stood
for another three years. In the meantime, the world of the horror film was
undergoing a profound – and profoundly depressing – revolution. Halloween’s success sent low-budget film-makers into a frenzy; and
one of them, Sean S. Cunningham, hit upon a formula that could generate a
maximum of profit with a minimum of effort and ability. With its brutal
simplicity, its disregard of story and character, and its unapologetic
emphasis upon the bloody details of human death, Friday
The 13th is, in essence, Halloween
stripped to the very bone; and it proved to be a watershed in the
evolution of the horror movie. When John Carpenter and Debra Hill finally
gave in to the various pressures being exerted upon them and began
production of Halloween II
(and
perhaps I should say here that I am unfamiliar with the exact sequence of
events that led to their doing so), they found themselves working in a
very altered atmosphere. And in response, the two of them made a critical
decision: not to challenge that atmosphere, but to become a part of it. Of
course, the tragedy is that we will never know whether that decision was
right or wrong. Perhaps a Halloween II
made in the spirit of the original could
have held its own against its savage competition; perhaps it could even
have helped stem the flood of Friday
The 13th imitators; or perhaps Carpenter and Hill were
entirely right, and the movie world no longer held a place for a simple
fright-film like Halloween. Their sequel, when it appeared, was expressly designed to
compete in the increasingly bloodthirsty marketplace of the early
nineteen-eighties. Put succinctly, Halloween
is a horror movie. Halloween II,
in contrast, is a slasher movie.
Now, I want to be quite clear about something: when I
use expressions like “horror movie” and “slasher movie”, I am
doing so merely as a means of classification, not
as a form of judgement. I, for one, don’t considered the expression
“horror movie” to be a derogatory term; and in fact, few things tick
me off more than film-makers who do verbal somersaults in order to avoid calling their works “horror movies”, even if that’s
clearly what they are. (And while we’re on the subject, I hear that good
ol’ Blockbuster is getting rid of its Horror section altogether, and
re-shelving the films from it as “Thrillers” and “Action Movies”.
Apparently a horror movie is only eee-vil
if it’s called a horror
movie!) And furthermore, I don’t necessarily consider the expression
“slasher film” to be a derogatory one, either. I do, however, use that
term to convey that a film has certain characteristics – and as regular
site visitors would know, these are characteristics for which I personally
have little fondness. But this is not to say that I condemn such films out
of hand, nor that I deny the right of others to enjoy them as thoroughly
as they like. For myself, while it’s true that I have yet to discover a
slasher movie that I would consider a good
film, I do have to admit that most of them manage at least an
effective sequence or two, enough to rescue them from worthlessness; and
moreover, that the sub-genre as a whole exerts a sick kind of fascination
over me; one that draws me back to it repeatedly, against both my taste
and my judgement.
The
moment that John Carpenter and Debra Hill made the---well, I hesitate to
use the phrase “artistic choice”; “commercial choice” is more like
it; anyway, the choice
to make their sequel a slasher movie, certain aspects of Halloween II
were guaranteed:
the sharp rise in the body count, for one; the concomitant introduction of
a myriad of minor characters who have no purpose but
to die, for another; and perhaps most of all, the ever-escalating
outlandishness of the manner of those deaths. The other notable aspect of Halloween II, which I would also
consider to be a slasher movie “given”, is its overall mindset. Horror
movies are, of course, perverse little beasts. As any fan of the genre
could tell you – and as non-fans usually fail to understand – there
can be a world of difference between the content of such a film, and its
tone. It is quite possible for a film to scrub the entire human race and
yet remain an essentially good-natured work; while conversely, there are
films in which no-one dies, and yet leave the viewer feeling in urgent
need of a rub-down with a strong disinfectant. The disparity in attitude
between Halloween
and Halloween II
could scarcely be greater. The former, in spite of its dead teens, is
basically a fun little exercise in fright and suspense; the latter,
perhaps the most mean-spirited slasher movie of my admittedly limited
experience. Indeed, the film as a whole seems infected with the
resentment and negativity with which Carpenter and Hill undertook the
project; and while there are quite a number of scenes in the film as nasty
as they are improbable – like the draining of Mrs Alves, or the syringe
of death – three in particular stand out. One is the fiery demise of the
unfortunate Ben Tramer – the object, if memory serves, of Laurie
Strode’s hesitant desires in Halloween – which is everything that the death scenes in the
original film were not: contrived, grotesque, and needlessly cruel. The
best that can be said for it is that it serves a purpose, of sorts, in
both temporarily diverting Sam Loomis from his pursuit of the real
Michael, and illustrating, in its lead-up, just how unhinged his non-fatal encounter with his quarry has left the good doctor.
You would be hard put, however, to find purpose – other
than the purely exploitative – in the demise of Nurse Karen Bailey,
notoriously boiled to death in the hospital’s hot tub. (I can only
repeat here my objection to the tanning bed in I
Still Know What You Did Last Summer:
why would a hospital have a hot tub capable of getting
that hot? – and that quickly?) This sequence is truly ugly, with long,
loving shots of Ms Bailey’s hideously blistered face interspersed with
equally loving shots of her bare breasts. (Which shouldn’t be
bare: when Michael goes to work, Karen’s towel is beneath her arms; when
he finishes, it’s mysteriously around her waist.) But even this –
legitimised in genre terms by Ms Bailey’s attempt to have illicit sex in
the killer tub – pales besides the moment that for me, sums up in a
single shot everything that is wrong with Halloween II: a close-up of a
small boy who has a razor blade embedded bloodily in his mouth. Now, I’m
not one of those who consider children to be off-limits when it comes to
miserable horror movie fates, but this scene is beyond the pale in its
sheer gratuitousness. I know I use that word a lot – “gratuitous
sex”, “gratuitous violence” – but this is one time when it is
dictionary-definition appropriate. The razor scene is without
reason, cause, or justification.
It is the work of some truly desperate film-makers.
But
even aside from these scenes – and granting that my reaction to them is
largely a matter of taste – Halloween II
has a number of serious problems. One of the things about this film that
annoys a great many people intensely is that it commits the prime sequel
sin of re-writing its predecessor. The whole point of Halloween
is, after all, that its events have
no point. There is no real motive for what Michael Myers does. Laurie and
her friends are targeted not because of anything they do, or anything they
are, but simply because Laurie happens to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time. And this works wonderfully, both because the very randomness
of it is frightening, and because we know only too well that this is often
the way things happen in real life. But the beautiful simplicity of Halloween
has since been retrospectively tainted, by the sequel’s insistence that
Michael’s pursuit of Laurie is motivated by the fact that she is
actually his sister,
who was adopted in early childhood by the Strodes, and whose origins were
kept a strict secret from everyone, including Sam Loomis – and Laurie
herself. There is, truly, no way to quantify the sheer wrong-headedness of
this idea – which I can readily believe was the result, as John
Carpenter claims, of an attempt to overcome terminal writer’s block with
the help of a six-pack or two. The mystery is that, once sober, Carpenter
didn’t see the damage he was doing to his earlier work; if indeed he
ever got
sober during the production of this film. (While it is customary to talk
about the influence of Friday The 13th
upon Halloween II,
I can’t help wondering whether Friday The 13th
Part 2, which was
released early in 1981, wasn’t just as influential. John Carpenter may
well have thought that if horror fans were prepared to swallow that
film’s 180o about-face, then they’d swallow anything.)
And in fact, this particular “twist” does just as much damage to Halloween II
as it does to the
original film. The shadowy characterisation of Michael in the first film
– and the fact that we get that characterisation via the obviously
unbalanced Dr Loomis – allows his actions to pass without attracting too
much critical scrutiny; but once they start broadening Michael’s
background, he becomes too concrete, and just too much of a contradiction.
Either Michael
is an essentially supernatural entity, “the Boogeyman”, or he is Judith Myers’ psychotic and sexually outraged younger brother,
but not both at once, surely? And if it is as the latter that he is
stalking Laurie Myers Strode specifically,
then how could he possibly have known that Laurie was his sister in the
first place?
But
the revisionism of Halloween II,
and of the character of Michael Myers, doesn’t stop there, of course.
This film is infamous for its completely out-of-the-blue suggestion that
Michael is, of all things – a Druid! I mean – excuse
me!!?? The hell
- ?? And, uh, other such exclamations of contempt and bewilderment! Much
as I disagree with the question of Laurie Strode’s secret identity, at
least I can see what might have put it into the film-makers’ heads, and
where they were trying to go with it. But this--- If ever there was a definitive “What were they thinking?”
moment, this is surely it. While you might just be able to believe that a
boy could develop a homicidal psychosis by the age of six, are we
seriously expected to believe that he found the time to become a Druid as
well!? Or perhaps Druids are born, not made? I don’t know…. And
besides, I don’t even think they got their inference of Druidism right.
The term is thrown around wildly enough, I know, but I’ve always been
under the impression that “Samhain” was just some kind of harvest
festival….but I might well be wrong about that.
The
Druid twist is far from the only sign of desperation and negligence to be
found in Halloween II.
The level of emotional involvement of its makers – or at least, of its
writer-producers; Rick Rosenthal, I’m sure, meant well – is perhaps
best encapsulated by the film’s opening scene, which features not one,
but two
flagrant continuity errors. Dr Sam Loomis spends a considerable amount of
time in the early section of the story wailing to anyone who will listen,
“I shot him six times! Six times!”
The good doctor underestimates himself: as it happens, despite wielding a
revolver, he actually shoots Michael seven
times. Talk about a tone-setting moment! This multiple shooting
precipitates Michael’s dramatic plunge off the balcony of the Doyle
house….which happens at the front of the house, not, as it was in Halloween,
the back! Worse is to follow, with what looks like another continuity
error, but isn’t. Michael’s first act upon shrugging off his bullet
wounds is to invade a neighbouring house and steal a knife. The absence of
the knife, and some shed blood, are discovered by an elderly housewife,
who screams. This in turn is heard by the housewife’s young female
neighbour, who will shortly become the film’s first victim. And
pointless as this killing is, this is not my
objection to the scene. We first see the neighbour, Alice, as she is
learning about the murders, first from a friend over the phone, then via a
radio report. The trouble is – the bodies
haven’t been discovered yet.
The actual discovery occurs simultaneously with the roasting of Ben Tramer;
it is immediately subsequent to that event that Sheriff Brackett gets the
dreadful news about his daughter. (And I love the fact that the Sheriff
identifies Annie’s body in the middle of a crowded street!) It is fairly
obvious that the stealing of the knife, and the killing of Alice, were
initially intended to occur later in the film – probably after Michael
hears about Laurie being in the hospital – and that the scenes were
transposed during post-production into the opening sequence. The question
is, why?
My guess is that it was done to get the film’s body count kick-started.
Compare this approach with that of Halloween
itself, which was confident enough simply to tell its story. There was no
perceived need to throw in some meaningless violence to spice things up;
and consequently, the first onscreen killing does not occur until it is
dramatically valid, about halfway through. Halloween II, on the other hand, has
no real story; it has only dead human beings to offer the viewer, and so
naturally wants to get down to business as quickly as possible. Moreover,
Michael is no longer content to merely strangle and stab – two modes of
killing fully in keeping with the original child-in-a-man’s-body
conception of the character. Instead, the film again concedes its own
hollowness by trying to keep the viewer’s attention by serving up a
smorgasbord of improbable deaths.
So,
have I finished going to town on this film? Hell, no! I haven’t even
touched upon the film’s single biggest idiocy – well, second biggest,
after the Druidism: the world’s darkest, emptiest, most under-staffed
hospital! Even the people who like Halloween II,
and manage to overlook what I perceive to be its flaws and shortcomings,
usually have a tough time swallowing the Haddonfield Memorial Clinic,
which seems to have no patients at all beside Laurie Strode – except for
a nursery full of newborns, and even they
don’t seem to have parents. It’s the kind of hospital where the lights
don’t work, the phones are out of order, the doctors (both of them) are
either drunk or dozing in front of the television, and where nurses figure
that if they leave a door open, they’ll be able to hear any
(non-existent) patient who calls for help while they’re romping naked in
the hydrotherapeutic hot tub with their sleazy paramedic boyfriends.
Puh-leese! Theoretically, I agree that a hospital is a fabulous setting
for a horror film. Who isn’t, deep down, scared
of hospitals? (Hell, I work
in one, and I don’t particularly like it!) But to make the setting work,
you have to get around the fact that hospitals never truly shut down; that
they are lit, and populated, and busy at all hours of the night and day. Halloween II
doesn’t even try.
Now
– I’ve said that I consider Halloween II
to be a slasher film; and I have also
said that most slashers, while not working for me overall, generally offer
up something to make them worthwhile; and so it is here. The one thing
that I truly like about this film is the contribution of Donald Pleasence.
Melodramatic? Yes. Over the top? Absolutely! But, dammit, it’s also fun!
The one positive aspect of the screenplay of Halloween II
is the endless
number of quotable lines it serves up for Sam Loomis, and the sheer
entertainment value that Pleasence managed to wring out of them (“You
don’t know what death
is!”). Like many British actors, the man was simply a pleasure to listen
to. His work in Halloween II
is, to me, rather reminiscent of that of Richard Burton in The
Medusa Touch: dubious
films, both, but close your eyes and open your ears and they very nearly
work. In fact, Pleasence’s verbal performance is so very engaging, he
almost manages to sell that idiotic “Samhain” speech. Almost. I enjoy
the fact that Halloween II
puts so much emphasis upon Loomis as a character, and that at the end, he
gets to be a hero. Pity that another bunch of sequels had to come along
and spoil it.
But
this shift of focus onto Sam Loomis means, of course, a shift away
from somewhere else – namely, the problematical contribution to the
proceedings of Laurie Strode herself. Emotionally drained by the
horrifying events of earlier in the evening, and zonked to the gills with
drugs despite her pleas not to be sedated, Laurie is the most passive of
heroines, and spends most of the film just lying around waiting to be
attacked. While at the last she does manage to drag herself out of bed,
and to play a crucial role in the film’s climax, for about
three-quarters of the film she might as well not be there at all. After
the energy of Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance in Halloween,
this is a real let-down. Of course, if we’re honest, after Laurie’s
experiences she would
end up flat on her back and helpless – but nevertheless, it is extremely
annoying. Halloween II
could scarcely have picked a worse time to turn logical! As I said
earlier, I am not cognisant with the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring that
preceded the production of this film, so I don’t know what were the
terms of Curtis’s reappearance. Clearly, however, either she didn’t
want to do the film in the first place, and consented to only the most
minimal involvement, or having lured her back, Carpenter and Hill then
realised they didn’t really have anything for her to do. Whatever the
truth, it’s a shame.
Being
a body count film, Halloween II
didn’t provide its supporting cast with many opportunities for actual
acting, but a couple of good performances managed to sneak through anyway.
Charles Cyphers’ reprisal of Sheriff Brackett is sound, and his
retirement from the proceedings after the discovery of Annie’s body
rather moving. I also like Hunter von Leer’s contribution as Deputy
Hunt, a man swiftly realising that he is way out of his professional depth
but doing his best nevertheless. Nancy Stephens’ return as Marion
Chambers is welcome; Gloria Gifford is convincingly authoritative as Mrs
Alves; and John Zenda offers a nice supporting turn as the Marshall with
the unenviable job of removing Sam Loomis from Haddonfield – and who
makes the fatal error of assuming that a psycho killer is dead just
because he should be….
The
single best idea in Halloween II
was to pick up exactly where Halloween
left off, and with many of the same players. To an extent at least, this
ensured some emotional investment in the project on the part of the fans
of the original. (And this decision may, in turn, have influenced the
direction of the second and third Friday The 13th
sequels.) It was, however, the re-recruitment of someone behind
the camera that was responsible for giving this misconceived project a
real touch of class. The single outstanding virtue of Halloween II
is Dean Cundey’s
cinematography; the film looks
fabulous, probably better than it has any right to. (Shades of Friday
The 13th: A New Beginning on DVD!) The opening sequence documenting the pursuit of Michael
through the dark streets of Haddonfield by Loomis and the Sheriff, as
trick-or-treaters continue to go about their business, is full of
atmosphere – as are the climactic scenes at the hospital. The shadowy
corridors of Haddonfield Memorial might be dramatically ridiculous, but
Cundey wrings the maximum amount of eeriness out of them. Everything about
the film’s closing scenes is geared towards exploiting the fear and
paranoia of the viewer. Otherwise, Halloween II
is, technically, a mixed bag. John Carpenter’s seminal score from Halloween
itself makes a reappearance, but it’s been souped-up electronically, and
isn’t nearly so effective. (Speaking of inappropriate music--- “Mr
Sandman”!? What was that
about? Now, “Enter
Sandman”, possibly….) The actual direction of Halloween II
is a real point of
contention. It is evident that for the most part, Rick Rosenthal tried to
duplicate the visual style of the original film. He probably thought it
was the most artistically valid thing to do. How angry and frustrated he
must have been, then, to have John Carpenter declare that that
wouldn’t do, and to re-shoot chunks of the film himself! –
particularly after, supposedly, Rosenthal was hired because he and
Carpenter were “philosophically compatible”. But despite the re-takes,
and the gruesomely emphasised murders, the quieter moments of this film
are again the most memorable ones. Rosenthal reproduces the famous “fade
in” from Halloween,
and it is just as effective here, if less unexpected; once again we have a
scene where Laurie pounds hysterically on a locked door as Michael closes
in on her from a distance; and a typical Halloween night film makes a
cameo appearance: Night Of The Living Dead, presumably screening after The Thing
and Forbidden Planet.
(It is this that distracts the doomed security guard as Michael draws near
the hospital.) Rosenthal does manages to create a new and startling image
during the hospital climax, with Michael seemingly weeping tears of blood;
while the shot of the film is – to a point – an admirable piece of
subtlety. Nurse Karen Bailey is late for work, and is reprimanded for it
by Mrs Alves. The scene between takes place near the hospital’s nursery,
and with the two women well fore-grounded – so much so, you nearly
don’t notice that Michael is inside the
nursery. It’s a
beautiful, eerie moment – and then Rosenthal all but ruins it by cutting
to Michael’s point of view. And this brings me to something that really
struck me upon this viewing of Halloween II:
its shift in perspective. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between
the original film and its sequel is that “the evil” is no longer
something outside the characters – and by extension, us. Whereas the
story of Halloween
is told primarily from the viewpoints of Sam Loomis and Laurie Strode, one
as he pursues that “evil”, the other as she becomes aware of it, in Halloween II, large stretches of
the action are seen exclusively through Michael’s
eyes. Above all else, it is this identification with the killer rather
than with his potential victims, and the very facelessness of those
victims, that puts Halloween II
on the darker side of the horror movie world’s philosophical divide.
Want a second opinion of
Halloween II? Visit Stomp Tokyo
and Cold Fusion Video Reviews.
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