HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    Rick Rosenthal
Writer:       John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Producer:  Debra Hill, John Carpenter
Stars:     Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, Lance Guest, Pamela Susan Shoop, Hunter von Leer, Tawny Moyer, Ana Alicia, Nancy Stephens, Gloria Gifford, Leo Rossi, Ford Rainey

Review Score:

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Summary:

Michael Myers continues stalking Laurie Strode after she is taken to the hospital following his Halloween night homecoming.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Haddonfield, Illinois – October 31, 1978 – After being shot six times by Dr. Loomis, Michael Myers escapes the yard of the Doyle residence through an alleyway. Myers steals a knife from the kitchen of Mrs. Elrod and murders her next-door neighbor Alice.

EMT Jimmy Lloyd and his partner Budd remove Laurie Strode from the Doyle house and take her to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital via ambulance. Dr. Mixter attends to Laurie at the hospital and administers a sedative against her protests.

Loomis searches for Myers with Sheriff Brackett. Loomis sees someone in a mask similar to the one worn by Myers and gives chase. A speeding police car hits the man in the mask and pins him against a van. The vehicles explode and the man burns. Loomis questions if the dead man is really Michael Myers.

Deputy Gary Hunt arrives at the accident scene and informs Brackett that his daughter Annie was found dead at the Wallace house. Loomis continues his search for Myers with Deputy Hunt.

While stalking the streets of downtown Haddonfield, Michael Myers overhears a newscast on the radio identifying Haddonfield Memorial Clinic as the place where Laurie Strode was taken. Myers sets off for the hospital on foot.

Jimmy Lloyd keeps Laurie company in her hospital room. He tells Laurie that Michael Myers was the person stalking her.

Head nurse Mrs. Alves has security guard Mr. Garrett check the hospital’s cut phone lines. While investigating blood trails and broken locks, Garrett is killed with a hammer to the head by Michael Myers.

Loomis and Hunt examine the charred corpse with a dentist. While quelling a riot at the old Myers house a short time later, two young boys report the disappearance of 17-year-old Ben Tramer. Loomis and Hunt realize that the body in the morgue is actually the boy.

Laurie dreams of a childhood moment when her mother told her she was not really her mother. She also seems to recall visiting a young Michael Myers in the mental hospital.

EMT Budd and nurse Karen Bailey have a rendezvous in the hydrotherapy pool. Michael Myers raises the spa temperature and kills Budd when he goes to check the settings. Myers then drowns Karen in the scalding water.

Loomis and Hunt are called to the elementary school where police discover a knife stabbed into the picture of a sister on a child’s crayon drawing. The word “Samhain” is found written in blood on the blackboard. Loomis mentions that the word means “lord of the dead” and is a druid feast day marking the end of summer. Nurse Marion Chambers arrives to inform Loomis that per a directive from the governor, Dr. Rogers has ordered Loomis back to the Smith’s Grove Warren County Sanitarium.

Jimmy searches the hospital for help when Laurie has a reaction to her medication and enters a catatonic state. Nurse Janet Newhall finds Dr. Mixter murdered in his office just before Michael Myers stabs her in the eye with a hypodermic needle.

Myers enters Laurie’s room and stabs at her bed with a scalpel. However, he pulls back the sheet to reveal a stack of pillows as Laurie suspected the danger and fled in her groggy condition. Laurie hides while Myers continues hunting her.

Jimmy finds Mrs. Alves drained of blood. Jimmy turns to leave the room and slips in her blood pool, knocking himself unconscious when he hits the floor.

Nurse Jill Francis discovers that the cars in the hospital parking lot have all been disabled and their tires slashed. She returns to the hospital where Laurie witnesses Jill being stabbed by Michael Myers. Laurie flees again with Myers in pursuit. Laurie eventually hides in a car outside.

While being escorted back to Smith’s Grove by a marshal, Nurse Chambers informs Loomis about a sealed Michael Myers file he never knew about. Laurie Strode is revealed to be Michael Myers’ sister, who was two years old when he murdered his other sister Judith on Halloween night in 1963. Laurie was adopted after the Myers parents died and the Strode family had the record sealed to protect her identity. Realizing that Michael is trying to kill his sister, Loomis pulls his gun on the marshal and orders him to return to the hospital.

Jimmy makes it out to the car where Laurie is hiding in the passenger seat. Jimmy falls unconscious on the steering wheel. Laurie groggily escapes the car just as Loomis arrives on scene with Marion and the marshal.

Myers chases Laurie back to the hospital. Loomis and the others get her inside the building. Myers walks through the glass doors, prompting Loomis to shoot him several times. Marion goes to the marshal’s car to radio for help. The marshal inspects Myers’ body and has his throat slit when Myers recovers.

Loomis gives Laurie his second handgun as they hide in an operating room. Myers breaks down the door. Loomis tries shooting Myers, but his gun is out of bullets. Myers stabs Loomis with a scalpel. Laurie uses her gun to shoot Myers in both of his eyes. Blinded, Myers slices at the air while Loomis and Laurie open the valves on the room’s ether canisters. Laurie escapes as Loomis flicks his lighter and ignites the room. Michael stumbles out of the room in flames and collapses as his body burns. Authorities and newscasters arrive on scene in the light of day as Laurie is taken away in an ambulance.

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Review:

Less well known in the behind-the-scenes lore of “Halloween II” is that executive producer Irwin Yablans’ initial idea involved Laurie, Loomis, and “a high-security luxury highrise apartment complex” (“Fangoria” #7, August 1980, page 61).  More well known is John Carpenter’s oft-recalled memory that a six-pack of beer was necessary nightly to slog through the process of drafting a screenplay reluctant to come together easily.

It’s a recipe for muddled mind writing that certainly shows in the drunken disinterest of the final product.  “Halloween II” is a bad script.  John Carpenter will tell you so himself.  Examined critically, there is no honest way to justify the story and its structure as anything other than a creative nadir in the horror master’s deservedly praised oeuvre.

Yet through the lens of nostalgia, “Halloween II” as a movie surprisingly does not stand out as a bad entry in the series, especially when viewing the entire “Halloween” canon as a whole.  Though an argument might then be made that the franchise’s decline can be blamed on subsequent screenwriters struggling to make sense of the throwaway mythology dumped out by Carpenter in collaboration with Debra Hill and Budweiser.

Picking up at the immediate moment where its predecessor left off is the smartest part of the movie’s premise.  You can count on one hand the number of sequels that open as direct continuations and it is this element that most makes “Halloween II” go down smoother than it has any real right to.  The original “Halloween” (review here) is so good that “Halloween II” holds up to repeated viewings in spite of its shortfalls by simple virtue of being “more of the night he came home.”  As its own movie, “Halloween II” is not so good.  As a fan service follow-up, the film has a few things in its favor.

Shared world continuity is important to genre fans reared on comic books, serialized stories, and franchise entertainment.  More than just bringing back the main players, “Halloween II” nods at forgotten mentions and disposable characters from “Halloween” in the form of cameo appearances that only matter to diehards.  Nancy Loomis doesn’t really need to show up as Annie Brackett’s dead body being wheeled out of the Wallace residence, but the quick callback ties the two films together in a way that helps melt the three-year gap in production.

It’s absurd that Dr. Loomis would have no knowledge of the secret file disclosing Michael Myers’ relationship with Laurie Strode (that’s another editorial entirely), much less that the nurse who drove him to the sanitarium in the rain would find out about it before him.  Marion Chambers was just a device in “Halloween” to facilitate Loomis’ movement from one point to the next.  “Halloween II” turns her into more of a genuine character with a semi-important role in the storyline.  Again, that connection more closely aligns the two movies.

And I’ve always appreciated that Ben Tramer is the poor soul who blows up in the gonzo car crash that Loomis crazily chases him into.  Every time I watch the first movie, I mentally flash forward to Ben’s fiery death when Laurie fantasizes out loud to Annie about going to the dance with him.

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*Fun fact #1: The intersection where Ben Tramer is killed is the same street corner where Laurie and Tommy Doyle meet up while walking to school in the original “Halloween.”

The first clue that “Halloween II” rides on two wheels as it rounds corners comes from counting the minutes devoted to third stringers and undeveloped subplots.  The ambling aimlessness begins straight away while watching Mrs. Elrod fix a sandwich and Mr. Elrod enjoying “Night of the Living Dead” on the tube.  It’s a long way to go for Michael Myers to steal a kitchen knife and slash the throat of the Elrods’ next-door neighbor, easily the most unnecessary murder of Myers’ October 31st killing spree.

There is also pirate-costumed Gary, brought to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital by his mom following a horrible trick-or-treating incident.  Gary and his mom feature in at least three camera setups, which is a lot of real estate taken up just to deliver a gag about razor blades in Halloween candy.

Well-endowed nurse Karen has an extended argument with her friend Darcy about having to give the girl a lift, only for Darcy to never be seen again.  Ditto the newscaster introduced as an eager beaver issuing rule-breaking instructions to an assistant before pulling a Houdini of her own.

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*Fun Fact #2: The trucker cap-wearing assistant, seen only in profile, is future “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Dana Carvey.

Featured characters, by comparison, can barely be considered “featured” at all.  There is almost no characterization to any of the main players at all.  The Shape truly is just a shape.  Laurie spends the majority of the movie resting in a hospital bed.  When she finally does get moving, Laurie is groggy from sedatives and doesn’t say or do much aside from stumbling through hospital hallways during the climax.

Pay close attention to the content of Loomis’ dialogue.  He actually has nothing of substance to say, nor do any of his lines advance the story.  In fact, he is merely a hanger-on until he pulls his gun on the marshal and hijacks a lift back to the hospital.  Until that point, Loomis is only along for the ride as the police ping pong from the Wallace house, the coroner’s office, the Myers house, the elementary school, etc.  When he does speak, Loomis sounds like a loon waxing poetic about the nature of Myers’ evil, spouting vague nonsense concerning druidic rituals, and offering laughable lines about shooting Michael six times and questioning the Doyles’ neighbor with, “you don’t know what death is.”  What does that even mean?

*Fun fact #3: Count the gunshots in the opening scene redux of Loomis shooting Michael Myers.  He actually fires seven times.

*Fun fact #4: It’s technically b.s. that the original theatrical poster touts the sequel as “All New” when it actually reuses footage from the first film.

Look at how “Halloween II” spends its time instead.  A full five minutes elapses from the time security guard Mr. Garrett begins investigating a severed phone line to the time Michael Myers puts a hammer in his head.  Concurrent timelines are managed oddly, too.  When Nurse Chambers moves outside after informing Loomis about the marshal’s escort, the film cuts away.  Seven minutes later, the movie comes back as Loomis and Nurse Chambers step into the awaiting vehicle.  Did it really take them seven minutes to exit the school?

What story does exist is as haphazardly stitched together as one might expect from a script requiring a stew of hops and barley to muster up a conclusion.  Michael Myers locates Laurie Strode by bumping into a kid with a boombox.  Instead of music, this kid, who should realistically be home in bed or begging for candy, roams the streets blasting a newscast disclosing Laurie’s whereabouts.  Just a few feet away is a conspicuously placed sign conveniently pointing in the direction of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, thus sending Michael on his merry way.

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This sign is on the wrong side of the street to be of any use to vehicle traffic.

Haddonfield Memorial is one of the most ineptly run clinics in all of moviedom.  For a hospital staff consisting of only eight people, everyone has an incredibly difficult time locating one another in a building apparently large enough to disappear for extended periods without anyone noticing.  Are Laurie and the newborn babies the only admitted patients?  No one ever comes out of a room to say, “hey, where is everybody?”

How can I award three stars to a horror movie whose best scares involve a clichéd cat jumping from the darkness and a come-from-behind hand on the shoulder?  If I were reviewing this movie in 1981, there is no doubt that my opinion would be far less favorable.  Strip it of the “Halloween” connection and make “Halloween II” as a standalone slasher movie with the same script, cast, and crew, and it would be completely forgotten by now if not for the typically terrific Dean Cundey lighting.

Except it is not a standalone movie and it is not 1981.  As weirdly conceived and as bizarrely executed as it is, Rick Rosenthal’s movie somehow satisfies as a “Halloween” film, even if that notion is due to its direct affiliation with a true genre masterpiece than to individual merits.  Part of that perspective comes from the hindsight of knowing what worse “Halloween” sequels really look like, as well as realizing in retrospect that “Halloween II” mysteriously makes sense as the second chapter in the saga.  The age of 30+ years bestows a charm it would not otherwise have.  Looking at it that way, it kind of makes you wonder if “Texas Chainsaw 3D” (review here) could end up being considered a contemporary classic someday.

Review Score:  75

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