Harefooted Halloween: Halloween II (1981)

Ok guys, full disclosure time.  I re-watched this two years ago but didn’t talk about it because I’m an idiot.  Since I’ll be exploring the rest of the films in this series proper (meaning I’m going up to Resurrection) it only makes sense that I give my thoughts on part 2 to complete the bridge.  And yes, I know I never wrote anything on John Carpenter’s original masterpiece but, well, there you go.  It’s an excellent film that’s required reading for anyone into horror, thrillers or John boy himself.  I strongly urge you to check that one out before venturing on to any of the sequels.

Anyway, I just wanna make this particular one short and sweet because it’s been a while.  Here a goes:

Overall Impressions: Part 2 isn’t that bad but it isn’t very good either.  The coolest aspect is we pick up right where we left off on Halloween night 1978 with Michael Myers still on the loose even after being shot by Dr. Loomis.  It’s a novel approach and something you don’t see very much in horror sequels.  Another neat thing is the filmmakers did a good job capturing the look and overall mood of the original.  John Carpenter wrote and produced so that would make sense.  But he declined to direct because he didn’t want to do a sequel and he was also working on Escape from New York.  It turns out he hated his own script and I can see why.

The biggest problem with this one is that it feels in every way derivative of its landmark predecessor.  The slasher genre was in full swing by 1981 with more Halloween knockoffs than you could count.  The over the top death sequences, the carnage and gore amped way up (the first one had very little blood in it), the terrible plot twists involving the killer’s identity and the overly complicated climax had already become clichés by then.  Having Michael Myers as your villain helps because he’s so iconic but it’s not enough.

The movie is…fine.  It’s pretty average and that’s disappointing considering most of the original players were involved.  The sad thing is no one really wanted to make it.  But you take what you can get and this first sequel is by far the most straight forward one we would ever see.  That could be good or bad depending on what the filmmakers decided to do and we’ll check that out over the next bunch of Talkin’s (Spoiler: they chose bad, oh so bad).