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reVIEW (14)
HALLOWEEN II
If memory serves me right, aside from The Empire Strikes Back, Halloween II was one of the first sequels that I anticipated with relish (another being Friday the 13th Part II). And with the promise of a bigger budget than the original, well, this was bound to be cool, wasn’t it?
Taking a cue from James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein, Halloween II starts at the point where the original ends.
Beginning with the killer climax from the first film, we watch as Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) saves Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from the relentless Michael Myers, emptying his revolver into the silent killer, then the sequel’s opening segues into some new bits (Michael falls into the front yard, instead of the back, as in the original). Loomis then discovers his quarry is still up and about, and has a neighbour call the police before running off into the night in hot pursuit.
That opening still gets me after more than two decades. Of course, much of the credit for that goes to John Carpenter’s masterfully directed Halloween climax, but it’s a crackerjack way to open up the second chapter of this franchise, by essentially making it a seamless whole with the first film.
Working from a script by Halloween co-writers Carpenter and Debra Hill, Rick Rosenthal takes the director’s chair this time out, as we follow Laurie (who is brought to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital) and Loomis (who continues to search the town’s streets for Michael) over the course of the night, till the dawn of the following day.
What is most conspicuous in this sequel is the absence of that air of dread and pervading sense of time and place (Halloween in small-town America) that so characterized Halloween. Instead, what we have here is a very conscious upping of the on-screen violence. Whereas the original was a practically bloodless outing, in Halloween II, we actually see blood spatter and pool on the floor. We even see scalpels and hypodermic needles contact victims’ bodies. Nothing compared to the Tom Savini killshots in such classic slasher fare as Friday the 13th, The Prowler, or The Burning, mind you, but compared to Halloween, this was a bloodbath!
Sadly though, much of the running time seems to be a bad excuse to show some on-screen kills. One has to wonder why Michael dilly-dallies after he gets to the hospital so he can off nurses and security guards and ambulance drivers, instead of just heading straight for Laurie’s room. I mean, the woman does spend practically the entire film in a hospital gown, doped up on sedatives. How difficult would it have been to just ice her within his first few minutes in the hospital? Instead, he takes his sweet-a$$ time, so that when he finally does get to her room, her spider-sense kicks in, and she’s ready for him. (One of those inexplicable moments in film where the protagonist just senses the baddie coming and acts accordingly. And note that this occurs just as she’s in some sort of coma-like state, apparently a bad reaction to her medication.)
Yes, the film does strive for some sort of realism (characters fall unconscious due to sedatives and concussions; Dr. Loomis is ordered to leave Haddonfield for fear of some public relations disaster), but none of this really helps the film’s dodgy pacing. It’s only when the film is about two-thirds over that Michael actually makes an attempt on Laurie’s life, and the narrative rediscovers itself. Before this point, Halloween II is basically standard slasher fare as the audience watches “characters” (a.k.a. dead meat walking) dropping like flies.
Meanwhile, the Empire reveal regarding Michael and Laurie’s connection is telegraphed a tad early in the proceedings courtesy of a blinding nightmare sequence, effectively blunting whatever shock value they were aiming for.
And all this leads up to a rather limp climax that comes nowhere near the one from the original. Not only do we discover Laurie is a crack shot as she puts a bullet in each of Michael’s eyes(!), but we also have to wonder why Michael, now blinded, just doesn’t lumber forward and stick a scalpel in his tormentors, instead of swinging his weapon about like a right drunken git.
What will largely get you to the end of this film is the need to know how the evening turns out; if Laurie once again manages to get out alive; if Loomis finally catches Michael. And this need to know how things turn out will largely be rooted in the time the first film took to let us know who these characters are.
That sense in Halloween, of being compelled to sit through the entire film because of the dread of what’s just around the corner, is never realized here. In trying to compete on a playing field that had changed significantly in the three years since Halloween, the sequel adopts a different tone, but in the process, ends up being just like most of the other slasher films that had emerged in the wake of Halloween’s success.
At times, Halloween II seems like a rip-off of a rip-off, as if it were trying to be a slasher film (killshots and all), but still somehow dialing down the gore because it was trying to emulate the suspense of the first Halloween (which really had nothing to do with on-screen gore).
Ironic, that Carpenter and company found themselves having to play by the rules of a burgeoning genre that they kick-started in the first place, a genre that was already going down a different road from the path Carpenter walked in Halloween in the first place.
Seeing an arrowhead burst out of Kevin Bacon’s neck and Betsy Palmer losing her head to a machete in slow-motion were cool, yes, but those kills—and others like them—were forging the paradigm that would hold all the way to the slasher genre’s first death (at the hands of sequelitis).
Of course, those are all sentiments of the me of today. The me of 1981, who first saw Halloween II, was a young gorehound who enjoyed the film, but wished they’d gotten Tom Savini to work his bloody magick.
It’s a testament to what Carpenter achieved in Halloween, and the bits of Halloween II that actually work, that the film still holds up to a viewing over a quarter of a century later. (Unlike, say, The Prowler, which I saw again a couple of years back, and realized with horror that a film I watched over and over again on Beta, was really just stretches of tedium and sophomoric acting between still excellent make-up effects by Tom Savini. Even then, the film geek in me was far stronger than the gorehound, as I never just fast-forwarded to the elaborate killshots, but insisted on watching the film in its entirety. Sure, I’d rewind and run through the effects shots a couple of times, to try to figure out how Savini pulled it off—at the time, I dreamed of being a special effects guy—but then I’d settle back and continue watching the damned thing, all the way through to the end credits.)
Despite its flaws, there is still enough of the original Halloween in the sequel’s DNA to make it an okay watch, even today. In hindsight though, it’s frustrating that it couldn’t stand up on a par with Carpenter’s original, or it could have been a great double-feature, watching both back-to-back.
Instead, doing that, you end up with a 3-hour film that has a brilliant first half, then kind of wobbles and unravels over its final half.
Still, on its own, Halloween II is certainly a sight better than many other slasher sequels, including some of the later Halloween installments. (It also has the best Halloween scene Nancy Loomis ever did: on an ambulance gurney, dead.)
Parting shot: Among the luckless hospital employees who are subjected to Michael’s unwanted attention are Ana Alicia, who would go on to primetime soap opera vixenhood on Falcon Crest, and Lance Guest, who would go on to play video games and fight in an interstellar war in The Last Starfighter.
Parting shot 2: Halloween II was Rick Rosenthal’s feature film debut. Since then, he’s worked mostly in television, directing episodes from a whole string of series, including The Practice, Wasteland, Strong Medicine, and Smallville.
Recently, he directed two episodes of the excellent-but-cancelled Reunion, as well as episodes of The Dresden Files, Angela’s Eyes, and Veronica Mars. He also helmed the pilot episode for the upcoming Flash Gordon series.
Amidst all his TV work (including the lamentable TV movie The Birds II: Land’s End, for which he took the credit “Alan Smithee”), Rosenthal returned to the Halloween franchise in 2002, for Halloween: Resurrection.
(Halloween II OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
Again, thanx to J&R Travel Agency, for arranging my return trip to Haddonfield.
HALLOWEEN II
If memory serves me right, aside from The Empire Strikes Back, Halloween II was one of the first sequels that I anticipated with relish (another being Friday the 13th Part II). And with the promise of a bigger budget than the original, well, this was bound to be cool, wasn’t it?
Taking a cue from James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein, Halloween II starts at the point where the original ends.
Beginning with the killer climax from the first film, we watch as Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) saves Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from the relentless Michael Myers, emptying his revolver into the silent killer, then the sequel’s opening segues into some new bits (Michael falls into the front yard, instead of the back, as in the original). Loomis then discovers his quarry is still up and about, and has a neighbour call the police before running off into the night in hot pursuit.
That opening still gets me after more than two decades. Of course, much of the credit for that goes to John Carpenter’s masterfully directed Halloween climax, but it’s a crackerjack way to open up the second chapter of this franchise, by essentially making it a seamless whole with the first film.
Working from a script by Halloween co-writers Carpenter and Debra Hill, Rick Rosenthal takes the director’s chair this time out, as we follow Laurie (who is brought to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital) and Loomis (who continues to search the town’s streets for Michael) over the course of the night, till the dawn of the following day.
What is most conspicuous in this sequel is the absence of that air of dread and pervading sense of time and place (Halloween in small-town America) that so characterized Halloween. Instead, what we have here is a very conscious upping of the on-screen violence. Whereas the original was a practically bloodless outing, in Halloween II, we actually see blood spatter and pool on the floor. We even see scalpels and hypodermic needles contact victims’ bodies. Nothing compared to the Tom Savini killshots in such classic slasher fare as Friday the 13th, The Prowler, or The Burning, mind you, but compared to Halloween, this was a bloodbath!
Sadly though, much of the running time seems to be a bad excuse to show some on-screen kills. One has to wonder why Michael dilly-dallies after he gets to the hospital so he can off nurses and security guards and ambulance drivers, instead of just heading straight for Laurie’s room. I mean, the woman does spend practically the entire film in a hospital gown, doped up on sedatives. How difficult would it have been to just ice her within his first few minutes in the hospital? Instead, he takes his sweet-a$$ time, so that when he finally does get to her room, her spider-sense kicks in, and she’s ready for him. (One of those inexplicable moments in film where the protagonist just senses the baddie coming and acts accordingly. And note that this occurs just as she’s in some sort of coma-like state, apparently a bad reaction to her medication.)
Yes, the film does strive for some sort of realism (characters fall unconscious due to sedatives and concussions; Dr. Loomis is ordered to leave Haddonfield for fear of some public relations disaster), but none of this really helps the film’s dodgy pacing. It’s only when the film is about two-thirds over that Michael actually makes an attempt on Laurie’s life, and the narrative rediscovers itself. Before this point, Halloween II is basically standard slasher fare as the audience watches “characters” (a.k.a. dead meat walking) dropping like flies.
Meanwhile, the Empire reveal regarding Michael and Laurie’s connection is telegraphed a tad early in the proceedings courtesy of a blinding nightmare sequence, effectively blunting whatever shock value they were aiming for.
And all this leads up to a rather limp climax that comes nowhere near the one from the original. Not only do we discover Laurie is a crack shot as she puts a bullet in each of Michael’s eyes(!), but we also have to wonder why Michael, now blinded, just doesn’t lumber forward and stick a scalpel in his tormentors, instead of swinging his weapon about like a right drunken git.
What will largely get you to the end of this film is the need to know how the evening turns out; if Laurie once again manages to get out alive; if Loomis finally catches Michael. And this need to know how things turn out will largely be rooted in the time the first film took to let us know who these characters are.
That sense in Halloween, of being compelled to sit through the entire film because of the dread of what’s just around the corner, is never realized here. In trying to compete on a playing field that had changed significantly in the three years since Halloween, the sequel adopts a different tone, but in the process, ends up being just like most of the other slasher films that had emerged in the wake of Halloween’s success.
At times, Halloween II seems like a rip-off of a rip-off, as if it were trying to be a slasher film (killshots and all), but still somehow dialing down the gore because it was trying to emulate the suspense of the first Halloween (which really had nothing to do with on-screen gore).
Ironic, that Carpenter and company found themselves having to play by the rules of a burgeoning genre that they kick-started in the first place, a genre that was already going down a different road from the path Carpenter walked in Halloween in the first place.
Seeing an arrowhead burst out of Kevin Bacon’s neck and Betsy Palmer losing her head to a machete in slow-motion were cool, yes, but those kills—and others like them—were forging the paradigm that would hold all the way to the slasher genre’s first death (at the hands of sequelitis).
Of course, those are all sentiments of the me of today. The me of 1981, who first saw Halloween II, was a young gorehound who enjoyed the film, but wished they’d gotten Tom Savini to work his bloody magick.
It’s a testament to what Carpenter achieved in Halloween, and the bits of Halloween II that actually work, that the film still holds up to a viewing over a quarter of a century later. (Unlike, say, The Prowler, which I saw again a couple of years back, and realized with horror that a film I watched over and over again on Beta, was really just stretches of tedium and sophomoric acting between still excellent make-up effects by Tom Savini. Even then, the film geek in me was far stronger than the gorehound, as I never just fast-forwarded to the elaborate killshots, but insisted on watching the film in its entirety. Sure, I’d rewind and run through the effects shots a couple of times, to try to figure out how Savini pulled it off—at the time, I dreamed of being a special effects guy—but then I’d settle back and continue watching the damned thing, all the way through to the end credits.)
Despite its flaws, there is still enough of the original Halloween in the sequel’s DNA to make it an okay watch, even today. In hindsight though, it’s frustrating that it couldn’t stand up on a par with Carpenter’s original, or it could have been a great double-feature, watching both back-to-back.
Instead, doing that, you end up with a 3-hour film that has a brilliant first half, then kind of wobbles and unravels over its final half.
Still, on its own, Halloween II is certainly a sight better than many other slasher sequels, including some of the later Halloween installments. (It also has the best Halloween scene Nancy Loomis ever did: on an ambulance gurney, dead.)
Parting shot: Among the luckless hospital employees who are subjected to Michael’s unwanted attention are Ana Alicia, who would go on to primetime soap opera vixenhood on Falcon Crest, and Lance Guest, who would go on to play video games and fight in an interstellar war in The Last Starfighter.
Parting shot 2: Halloween II was Rick Rosenthal’s feature film debut. Since then, he’s worked mostly in television, directing episodes from a whole string of series, including The Practice, Wasteland, Strong Medicine, and Smallville.
Recently, he directed two episodes of the excellent-but-cancelled Reunion, as well as episodes of The Dresden Files, Angela’s Eyes, and Veronica Mars. He also helmed the pilot episode for the upcoming Flash Gordon series.
Amidst all his TV work (including the lamentable TV movie The Birds II: Land’s End, for which he took the credit “Alan Smithee”), Rosenthal returned to the Halloween franchise in 2002, for Halloween: Resurrection.
(Halloween II OS courtesy of impawards.com.)
Again, thanx to J&R Travel Agency, for arranging my return trip to Haddonfield.
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