Halloween II (1981)

Images Courtesy Of The Official Halloween Movies Website

John Carpenter was very reluctant to make a sequel to Halloween, this isn't as strange as you may think. Hollywood in the 70's was not dominated by sequels and tie-ins, huge movies were usually left alone, things like Star Wars and The Godfather started to change all that. Anyway, Mustapha Akkad owned the rights so a sequel was going to be made with or without JC, but the end product would obviously be associated with him, so JC agreed to write a script for Halloween II.

The movie starts exactly where Halloween left off, just after Donald Pleasence has shot down Myers (this scene is repeated from the original, see if you can spot the mistake). Laurie is taken to hospital while Pleasence goes screaming off down the road looking for Myers (I shot him six times!). There follows some very tense prowling, Micheal is trying to escape from the Haddonfield suburb. Halloween II seems to ditch the ultra-smooth panaglide point-of-view shots that made Halloween famous. The pov shots are a little more jerky which helps to stamp the fact that this is a different film.

A few plot twists and turns (and some deaths, a little more gory than in the original) end up with Myers finding out that Laurie has been taken to the local hospital, so he decides to pop in and visit her. Laurie is hevaily sedated and has some strange dreams that deliver the films large plot wallop. She is in fact Micheal Myers sister, her existence was kept secret from him after he killed their other sister. This is an interesting attempt that adds some much needed character development to Halloween II. It does sound cliched (how many films do we find the victim and killer are mysteriously related?) but it seemed a fresh enough idea at the time.

Myers attacks! The hospital is pretty deserted (one point; I find this hard to believe considering the absolute carnage Haddonfield has seen tonight) so we have the perfect setting for some ultra creepy shots of Micheal walking down hospital corridors chasing the amazingly tough JLC. Meanwhile Pleasence also makes his way to the hospital to confront Micheal and hopefully save JLC.

The rest of the film tries too hard to follow the Halloween formula of stalk and slash, though it is filmed with some flair that makes it very interesting to watch. The best thing about Halloween II is that it tries to put a full stop on the Halloween story, there is no disappearing body this time, Myers is dead. At least, until someone hauled out his now very smelly carcass for Halloween 4,5,6 and 7 maybe?

JC's original Halloween theme tune is reprised with a slightly different arrangement that isn't as good as the original. Apart from some interesting plot developments Halloween II is an average film, worth watching back to back with Halloween to see how the story actually ends.

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