Halloween II (1981)

"Halloween" has its firm place in the horror genre, a classic shocker that moved with the slow, creepy pace of menacing, inevitable evil. "Halloween II" is nowhere in the same league as the original, but it also has an unstoppable, menacing sense of movement - the killer moves slow and the victims are doubly scared by the menace.

"Halloween II" differs from most sequels in that it is a direct continuation of the original. The original "Halloween" ended on the night of October 31st and this sequel continues on that very same night. The wounded Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to a hospital while Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is obsessed with tracking down this inhuman killer, known in the credits as The Shape aka Michael Myers. "I shot him six times, and he got up and walked away," admits the good doctor.

The Halloween of this town has all the hallmarks of a bloody evening waiting to happen. There are kids dressing up in Michael Myers masks, lustful doctors, kids biting into razor-sharp apples, irate dogs, and a largely nonexistent hospital staff caring for the weak Laurie who mostly sleeps and has nightmares. Laurie is taunted by Michael Myers (who may be her brother!) and teased by a lovestruck ambulance driver (Lance Guest). During this very long night, each member of the short hospital staff is murdered by Michael Myers in particularly gruesome ways, while the nearly blind Laurie manages to escape from one room to the other with a limp. And where is Loomis in all this? He is facing a court-martial back at the institution. Towards the end of the film, he finally pulls a gun on a state trooper when he realizes Michael is related to Laurie.

"Halloween II" continues the same sense of dread and menace that the original had, but the gore is accentuated making the goings-on less suspenseful than they should have been. I could have lived without seeing a syringe inserted in a woman's eyeball, or a half-naked woman scalded to death. These are not necessities. These are merely distractions considering we don't learn much about said victims. Another problem is the screenplay, which gives motivation to the snail-paced killer Michael Myers by telling us that Laurie's sibling status is the sole reason why he came back to Haddonfield! Sometimes not knowing a murderer's motives is more frightening than knowing.

If nothing else, "Halloween II" is a guilty pleasure because the ending works so well, and Curtis is believably sympathetic as Laurie (despite an obvious wig). She continues to be endlessly pursued by Michael - she hides but he finds her. Eventually, Loomis and Laurie battle Michael to a fiery finale. The film ends with Laurie escorted in an ambulance in the overcast morning day while "Mr. Sandman" plays on the soundtrack - a reminder that the nightmare is over. It is the opening scenes and the closing climax that come close to Carpenter's original, evoking a real sense of terror. "Halloween II" is worthwile if you can live through the distractions.

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