Halloween II (1981)

“You don’t know what death is!” – Dr Sam Loomis

Let’s give this a little bit of historical context to begin with. Halloween (1978) had become the highest grossing, most successful independent film ever made. Not only had it cemented John Carpenter’s career as a horror movie director, but Hollywood being the way Hollywood is, had sensed a new trend – and they wanted to pile on and cash in. So, we began to see all sorts of holiday themed slasher movies splattered all over the screen, and several of these I covered during the spring and summer. Friday the 13th had begun releasing annual sequels to the original, so surely it was time for Michael Myers to return and cash in on the trend he’d started?

Carpenter had always intended for Halloween to be a one-off, and resisted the calls for a sequel. But eventually, he caved and not only wrote the screenplay, but he also produced. He didn’t direct. Well, not until he saw the film new director Rick Rosenthal delivered and decided it needed a few extra shots for a pacing boost and oddly, extra gore – even though Halloween, as I’ve noted, had barely a drop of onscreen blood. The audience is led to believe they see more than they do. (The same is actually true of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) oddly enough). At a guess, I’d say that as this point, Halloween 2 had to compete with the butchering we saw in the other slashers, so understated menace and offscreen blood was off the table. Despite this, Halloween 2 is actually a pretty good, solid movie despite the stylistic change.

The film begins with a slightly altered recap of the final moments of Halloween, with Loomis (Donald Pleasance) shooting Myers as he’s about to attack Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) for the last time. Myers falls from the first-floor veranda and goes missing.

This was billed as “More of the Night HE Came Home” on the posters and that’s exactly what it is. Both the first film and this one take place immediately after each other on the same night, (October 31st 1978). So, Loomis is running around like a crazy person waving his gun around, while Myers has walked calmly away. Most of Haddonfield has yet to learn what’s happened on the suburban street. They’re still watching the Monster Movie Marathon, which by now has moved on to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Myers stops off at an elderly couple’s house to take a carving knife, but leaves the couple unharmed and pops next door to kill yet another teenage girl.

Meanwhile, the cops have discovered the bodies from earlier in the evening – or at least that of Annie, the sheriff’s daughter. (And they brought back Nancy Loomis for the ten second role as the corpse on a gurney.) But Laurie is still alive and is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital where the bulk of the action takes place.

Myers overhears on a radio newsflash that Laurie has survived and that she’s being taken to hospital and makes his way there. Haddonfield Memorial Hospital is a strange place. It seems quite big, but is the most sparsely populated hospital I’ve ever seen in a film. There’s a kid who comes in to casualty with his distraught mother having been trick or treating and had bitten in to an apple that had a razor blade in it, but he’s soon discharged home. There are two little babies (no sign or mention of the mothers), and there’s Laurie. We have a small handful of staff, one nurse in charge, a half-drunk doctor and maybe three other nurses and a security guard. I’m not counting the two paramedics because they can be called away at any time and aren’t actually hospital staff as such.

These are the two who bring Laurie in, one, Jimmy (Lance Guest) is a kind hearted, gentle soul, so he survives the film where the other named Bud (Leo Rossi) is a loudmouthed, crude jerk. Bud actually convinces one of the nurses to leave her duties to join him in the therapy room in the hot tub. We’re not told where the other nurses are nor how she’s not missed but off this nurse goes (played by Pamela Susan Shoop) and pays dearly, along with her jerk of a boyfriend as they become Myers’ next victims after the security guard. The killing is a little more inventive than Myers’s usual stabbing, drowning the nurse in boiling water as the skin peels off her face. This is more of a Jason kill.

Myers works his way through the staff, the on-duty doctor gets a hypodermic to the eye, the nurse who finds him gets a needle through her temple, the supervisor is drained of blood, and Myers abandons his usual kitchen knife for a scalpel and offs someone with that.

But what about the stars?

Laurie is conscious, having had a fever dream of seeing a small boy she had long forgotten about. She’s aware that she’s practically alone in the hospital (apart from the two little babies who aren’t mentioned or seen again) but Myers is after her, making his way inexorably to her, as she tries to escape just as slowly due to her injuries and sedation. (It’s the slowest chase in horror movies, but tense as hell)

Loomis has his own set of problems. Investigating a break-in at the local school, he sees a child’s picture of a family with a knife through the daughter. (Uh oh) And on the wall, scribbled in blood is the word Samhain – the ancient Celtic winter festival, the precursor to Halloween, which involved sacrifices. (Really BIG uh-oh)

As if that wasn’t enough – in walks Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) his nurse, who drove the station wagon Myers stole in the first film to escape the sanitorium. (Or, in the timeline, the station wagon Myers stole yesterday). The governor has ordered Loomis to leave Haddonfield and return to Smith’s Grove Sanitorium, and there’s a Marshall there to escort him back. On their way out of town, Marion tells him that some records have been unsealed that show that (BIG REVEAL) Laurie is Myers’ other, younger sister and she was put up for adoption for her protection after older sister Judith’s murder in 1963. Michael is literally finishing what he inexplicably started. This explains the fever dream Laurie had earlier.

Loomis hijacks the Marshall’s car at gunpoint, suddenly realising that Myers is targeting Laurie and they head for the hospital. There we get the final confrontation.

Myers corners both Loomis and Laurie in an operating theatre where they open up canisters of ether and oxygen, Laurie shoots Myers in both eyes (I think – this scene is pretty dark) before Loomis tells her to escape as Myers swings his scalpel blindly. Loomis lights his cigarette lighter and the whole place goes up, as Laurie is blown over in the corridor, she sees Michael approach, walking slowly out, fully aflame, but he collapses and dies presumably a crispy death. (But what about the little babies????? Did everybody forget about them?)

The film ends memorably with the song Mister Sandman forever becoming inextricably linked with the Halloween movies, over a shot of Myers’s mask burning on his face, reassuring us that he wasn’t just going to wander away this time.

Halloween would continue – but in a wildly different direction.