As always (except, y'know, when I don't), I like to end Horror Month on a high note. And there's not much of a higher note than a film that John Carpenter wrote, but never actually wanted to do and didn't actually direct himself.
...yeah. Apparently he was in that "I'm done with this" phase before he decided to take Halloween into an anthology series...and that didn't go particularly well, but that's a story for another time. What I like about this film, and it's something that not a lot of films bother to do even today, is that it's more of a continuation than it is a straight up sequel. It still has, overall, the same feel as the original 1978 film and is actually not one that tries to pull a "one year later" or an even longer time period after the original.
Halloween II picks up right where the original left off, with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) absolutely traumatized after she's saved from Michael Myers (Dick Warlock) by Doctor Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and his magical six-shooter that can fire seven shots. However, the power of editing errors is not something that can put Michael down and he's soon gone, leaving Loomis to go after him, Laurie to be sent to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, and both of them to learn a terrible secret about Michael's origins...and his motive for killing.
Yes, this is where the series' long-standing plot device of "Michael killing his loved ones" comes into play. To give credit where it's due, it's a legitimately good twist if you're seeing this film for the first time and it's actually done pretty well. That being said, it is a blatant retcon and you would think that Laurie would remember trips to Smith's Grove to visit her older brother...even though, to the best of my recollection, Michael's name isn't ever actually spoken to her in the first movie. But, regardless, a legitimately good twist and something that provides good motivation for Michael.
It's just a shame the sequels will run it right into the ground.
The feel is very much the same as the first film, director Rick Rosenthal apparently wanting to follow as close to the original as possible. He succeeds in this, though the style is not exactly the same in a few places. One of the biggest ones, of course, being that there's a great deal more violence and gore than in the original. This is, of course, because the 1980s were in full swing. The original had unfortunately given birth to the slew of imitators and copycats that would follow on from it, and...here's where things get a little confusing.
Rosenthal claims to have wanted to do "more of a thriller movie than a slasher movie", as the original was. The original Halloween had almost no gore and a minimum of violence (the most traumatic death onscreen happens by a character being strangled by a phone cord, of all things), relying largely on suspense and - in John Carpenter's own words - "jack in the box moments". It was meant to be suspenseful, not a gore-fest as so many films of the 1980s were.
He claims that John Carpenter took control and refilmed several scenes in II to add more gore, which he says ruined the movie overall. Carpenter, however, was apparently afraid audiences wouldn't respond well to a lack of gore giving the rise of the copycats who had upped the gore significantly (much like Friday the 13th), and thus did so in post-production. And while it's positively tame, even for the standards of then (and laughable by the standards of today), it isn't hard to see Rosenthal's point. I really wish that Carpenter has stuck to his guns and let the suspense speak for itself, showing up all the horror films of the time without feeling like he needed to surpass them in the cesspool of blood and gore that they'd fallen into.
The film also suffers from the slasher film trope of a pile of victims that we don't actually care about. Michael walks his way through many members of the hospital staff in order to get to Laurie. Note to screenwriters, making a character comic relief does not necessarily make them endearing (see also: Jar Jar Binks). It also doesn't help when humor is the only trait of a character besides being an asshole, which only makes every single moment that they're onscreen and not a corpse completely unbearable. And while the supporting cast isn't all that great (again, no attempts at even developing so much as one character), both Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence turn in excellent performances as one can expect from either of them in a film.
Despite the few problems, I do actually enjoy this film. It's not as good as the original, but given the nature of the film literally being a direct continuation, I almost consider this and the original as just one extended film. It meshes pretty well, minus a few blemishes, and is very enjoyable. Much more so when you consider the slew of sequels that followed it, some of which we've already covered here much to my own trauma.
If you can pick up a copy, or you can find it on cable, give it a view! Bonus points if you can find it playing back to back with the original.
Halloween II is available from Universal Pictures and The Dino De Laurentiis Corporation.
Halloween and all related properties are owned by Dimension Films.
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