Decided it had been too long since I gave this one a spin.
While I loved it when I was young, I had come to think of it as crap when I was in my early 30s, I think I was a little kinder to it the last time I saw it, but that was probably a decade ago. And all the
Halloween talk made me think it was due another shot.
I have to admit, the first 30 minutes of this movie just flew by. It really gets on its horse right away.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, this is the most direct sequel to a movie you can imagine because, while it actually comes out 3 years later and really only in response to the success of Friday the 13th, this movie takes place the same night as the original film. Funny, I didn’t remember this movie actually opening with the climactic section of the original
Halloween and then it sort of seamlessly shifting into the second film. But it does. They’re very different movies but the transition is surprisingly smooth.
(Really like the three level, foreground/mid-ground/background composition there.)
So, Laurie Strode has just finished dealing with Michael Myers and is taken to the hospital. But Michael goes there to find her. So the movie is mostly Michael Myers in a hospital. Which is kinda all you need.
Oh man, it’d been so long since I’ve seen this, I forgot that this movie makes it clear that Laurie doesn’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t know
WHO it was that was stalking her, making the "Boogeyman" line even more interesting but really grounding the movie in my opinion. As if this were really happening to someone.
There are a lot of little things that I like actually. I dig the opening credits with the pumpkin opening up to reveal the skull inside. It's a nice mood-setter. I love that Night Of The Living Dead is on the TV. I can’t remember if
Halloween was the movie that established that trope, but it’s a great one.
On the other hand, the murder in the opening seems somehow incongruous to the ethos set in the first film. It just seems random. The killings in the first one didn’t seem as random, he seemed specific and intentional, he'd been stalking these girls all day and he had seemingly chosen them, which was particularly scary, not just, oh, I walked past this girl’s house so I’ll kill her. Which is what happens here. And something I complained about in the 2018 film as well. Also, while some setup was there, it was pretty abrupt and not in character with the way the kills are drawn out in Carpenter’s film.
Also, I know it’s coincidence but it’s funny that the first person killed in this film is named “Alice”, the name of the final girl in
Friday the 13th. Given the way
F13 2 opens, I almost wondered if it wasn't intentional.
When Laurie goes to the hospital, of course, they have to call a doctor. In a small town like that, the doctor would not actually be
in the hospital overnight, certainly not in 1981. Well, I’m a doctor. And this doctor cracks me up. He’s like the doctor in that meme, “You’ve got ghosts in your blood. You should do cocaine about it.” Just gave me a good chuckle.
Jesus, the death of the kid they think might be Michael is ****ed up. And they leave that part kinda dangling.
And just an amusing viewing note I see that I took down: "I have a brutal case of the hots for this head-nurse that keeps bustin’ everybody’s balls."
There's really a lot to like in this movie. It's much better than I'd remembered. Michael is still quite scary in this one. And, while this director is no John Carpenter, I would still say this is probably as good as if not better than the best of the post-
F13 slashers.
Also, this movie does contain my favorite kill in all of horror, slightly edging out the hammer-kill in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bob in Halloween. It's the nurse in the hallway, for anyone who's seen the film. That one always scared the living hell out of me when I was a kid/teenager. Yikes. Really effective.
And this leads me to wanting to talk about kills a moment.
So, it’s pretty clear to me that
F13 kinda established the anti-
Halloween kill. Which is to say that while they both have the buildup, the kills in Halloween were long and visceral with a sort of brief aftermath to them, which is largely why you could get away with only, what, three on-screen kills. Because the kills actually taking time and then there being a bit of a lingering over them was actually more frightening than squeezing in another kill. But the kills in
F13 were really fast and don’t have the same gravitas, which only got worse as the series went along, particularly in the opening of
F13 Part IV when the time elapsed between the beginning of a stalk and the victim being dead was just 14 seconds.
Halloween II unfortunately follows the latter model more often than not. And while the suspense is still effective, the kills, save one, are just sudden and then they’re done.
So, to revisit the two early films from the most famous slasher franchises ever, I definitely got more of a sense of
fear out of
Halloween II than
F13. I felt that it was fairly scary. Hospitals are inherently scary. But the pacing of this film and the very intentional building of suspense and continued lingering over a kill (less in this one than the first but it's still there) is really just more effective from a fear-generating perspective. Which is not to say that
F13 wasn't effective in its own way.
Ultimately, here, I have to say that I liked
Halloween II a lot and would not mind ever watching it as a double-feature with the original.