"The night HE came home" continues.
Perhaps the most inevitable release during the avalanche of slasher flicks in the 1980's, thanks to its 1978 predecessor being an unexpected box office smash that birthed a slew of imitators, chief among which was the gory mega-hit FRIDAY THE 13th (1980), HALLOWEEN II was hotly anticipated by the newfound legions of young gorehounds who wanted to see seemingly superhuman murder machine Michael Myers return to once more wreak havoc upon the silver screen. Picking up right where the first film left off, we find traumatized survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) receiving attention at the local hospital as the unstoppable hulk that is Michael (Dick Warlock) continues his seemingly random pursuit of her. As Laurie fights to stay one step ahead of the Shatner-masked juggernaut who rampages through the halls oif the hospital facility, Inspector Loomis (Donald Pleaseance) seeks to put a stop to his murderous former patient once and for all.
Landing in the midst of charnel house cheapies dominating the box office without creative genius John Carpenter at the helm (though he did co-write), HALLOWEEN II is a serviceable sequel that, lacking Carpenter's flair for suspense and clever camerawork, gave the audience what the studio thought the audience wanted, namely an abundance of graphic gore. The original film was famously terrifying without being gory at all, but that goes to show what one can accomplish with creativity and a meager budget. Aping the gruesome body counts of other entries in the early first wave of '80's slashers, the film provides some nasty shocks, but the tone and flavor of the proceedings just cannot touch the magic that was the original, and at the time the film was widely derided as a rote disappointment. But over the past couple of decades, the film has undergone something of a reappraisal and is now seen as a pretty good continuation of Carpenter's classic, as well as what was obviously intended to be a finite conclusion to the story. Unfortunately, the greedy studio and the sequel-hungry audience kept the franchise going with 12 more sequels and remakes featuring Michael Myers and (sometimes) Laurie Strode, nearly always to diminishing returns, so HALLOWEEN II kind of automatically takes on a greater luster when stacked up against the majority of what followed from the franchise.
If watched back-to-back with the original, HALLOWEEN II gives us a (rather contrived) motivation for Michael's obsession with Laurie, and it concludes with a satisfyingly apocalyptic conflagration that in any sane universe would have been it for both Michael Myers and Inspector Loomis, so you'd be okay if you didn't bother to proceed any further in the cinema of Myers. The sequels range from slightly better than average all the way down to rock-bottom awful, with the unrelated HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH being a gem that was reviled for decades due to it not being more the familiar comfort food that the audience demanded. If you must see another film with the HALLOWEEN label, turst me and check out SEASON OF THE WITCH.
Poster from the theatrical release
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