#68-B: HALLOWEEN II (1981) & HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

6

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, and the first time was within the last few years

BEST SEQUENCE

Hot tub kill

BEST LINE

Nothing really worth mentioning

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

32%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Halloween II picks up where its predecessor left off - and quickly wanders into a dead end that the franchise would spend decades struggling to find its way out of."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"While Dr. Loomis hunts for Michael Myers, a traumatized Laurie is rushed to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, and The Shape is not far behind her."

DIRECTOR

Rick Rosenthal (notably, not John Carpenter, although he did co-write and co-produce, and even re-filmed a few sequences to add more gore)

MAIN CAST

Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Dick Warlock 

THOUGHTS

• So if we take it as a fact that the original Halloween set the standard for slasher movies and spawned a great many imitators, what's interesting about Halloween II is that, in some ways, it imitated the imitators. The original came out in '78, this sequel in '81, and in between there were a wide variety of slasher movies, including the first instalment of another long-running slasher franchise, Friday the 13th
• But unfortunately, Halloween II seemed to make the wrong conclusions about what made the original so good. The sequel is much more graphically violent, as opposed to the subtler, more chilling violence of the first. As well, I noticed during this viewing that the focus seems to be more on Michael than Laurie - we follow Michael's point of view more often in this movie than in the first one, and this shadowy, mysterious killer even gets a motivation of sorts when it's revealed (spoiler warning, but come on) that he's Laurie's long-lost brother
• This undercuts one of the most effective parts of the original, the seemingly random and inexplicable nature of Michael Myers' killing spree. And with Laurie Strode being sidelined for much of this movie, mostly sleeping in her hospital room, we instead have to pay attention to a bunch of obnoxious secondary characters. It's very hard to care whether they live or die. And sure, there were obnoxious secondary characters in the first one too, but they were Laurie's friends so she was still involved by proxy. Jamie Lee Curtis was such a strong lead in the first one that the sequel definitely suffers from less of her
• There are some creative kills here, including the hot tub scene mentioned above in which Michael cranks up the water temperature to scalding before attacking, but I don't know, are we to believe that Michael actually possesses this level of diabolical cunning? I wouldn't say that this was shown in the first movie, when he's depicted more simplistically
• In conclusion, I do just want to point out that Michael Myers, listed in the credits as "The Shape", was portrayed by a man with, perhaps, the best name ever - Dick Warlock. He was actually a fairly prolific stunt coordinator and performer and collaborated on several other John Carpenter movies, including my favourite, The Thing, but I'm mostly just curious to learn more about his specific style of witchcraft

MINI REVIEW: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

And speaking of witchcraft! John Carpenter originally envisioned the Halloween franchise to be an anthology series. The success of the first movie led to the return of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, but when Michael was pretty decisively killed off at the end of Halloween II (or so we thought; what fools we were), it allowed Halloween III to take a biiiiig left turn. Celtic and Druidic Stonehenge magic, killer androids filled with what appears to be a mixture of mustard and Gak, and rubber masks that not only explode peoples' faces, they also change them into bugs and snakes (or something). It's wacky and it's ludicrous, but you know what? It works for me. It drags a little towards the end, but the violence is pretty effective, and as ridiculous as the main plot is, you can't say it isn't original. Pretty great ambiguous final shot, too. It certainly doesn't hold a candle to the first Halloween, but I think I'd take this one over any of the other sequels I've seen (except, perhaps, the 2018 reboot, which was also quite good)

Up next: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the AFI's movie #67. I thought we were done with Westerns for a while, but apparently this one also qualifies, so saddle up again, pardners