Halloween II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Halloween II
Original 1981 theatrical poster
Directed by	Rick Rosenthal
Produced by	Debra Hill
Written by	John Carpenter Debra Hill
Starring	Jamie Lee Curtis Donald Pleasence Dick Warlock
Music by	John Carpenter Alan Howarth
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	Mark Goldblatt Skip Schoolnik
Distributed by	Universal
Release date(s)	October 30, 1981 (USA)
Running time	92 min.
Language	English
Budget	$2,500,000
Preceded by	Halloween
Followed by	Halloween III: Season of the Witch
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Halloween II (also known as Halloween II: The Horror Continues and Halloween II: The Nightmare Isn't Over!) is a 1981 horror film set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1978. It is the sequel to the influential film, Halloween (1978). Halloween II was directed by Rick Rosenthal and stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and stunt performer Dick Warlock as Michael Myers. While other films in the Halloween series follow, this is the last one written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The film immediately follows the events of the first film, and centers on Myers's attempts to find and kill Laurie Strode and Loomis's efforts to track and kill Myers.

Stylistically, the sequel reproduces certain key elements that made the original Halloween a success such as first-person camera perspectives and unexceptional settings. The film, however, departs significantly from the original by incorporating more graphic violence and gore, making it imitate more closely other films in the emerging splatter film sub-genre. Still, Halloween II was not as successful as the original, grossing only $25.5 million at the box office in the United States despite its $2.5 million budget.^[1]

Halloween II was intended to be the last chapter of the Halloween series to revolve around Michael Myers and the Haddonfield setting,^[2] but after the lackluster reaction to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Myers returned in the film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988).

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 2.1 Writing 2.2 Casting 2.3 Directing 2.4 Music 3 Reception 3.1 Criticism 4 Television version 5 Halloween II murders 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Plot

The beginning of the film is a re-shot version of the final scenes of Halloween, concluding with Dr. Loomis finding the body of Michael Myers missing from the lawn. Loomis runs off in search of him. Laurie Strode is taken in an ambulance to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. One of the EMS drivers, Jimmy Lloyd (Lance Guest) begins to show an interest in her. Myers continues to wander Haddonfield in search of her.

Jimmy tells Laurie that the man who attacked her was Michael Myers, infamous for murdering his older sister fifteen years earlier on Halloween night. After this, Laurie drifts in and out of consciousness, having strange flashbacks about her adoption by the Strodes and visiting an unpleasant boy in an institution.

Dr. Loomis and the Haddonfield police continue to search the town for Myers. At the local elementary school they discover that Myers has broken into a classroom and scrawled the word Samhain in blood on the chalkboard. Loomis explains that it is a Celtic word that means "lord of the dead," the "end of summer," and "October 31" (Samhain's symbolic importance is not elaborated on until later films).

Myers learns that Laurie is at the hospital and goes there, murdering the hospital's staff one by one. Laurie manages to elude him, but she is limping badly and sedated and is thus unable to move very quickly. Nurse Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Loomis's assistant, meets up with the doctor and informs Loomis that he has strict orders to return to Smith's Grove, and that she is accompanied by an armed marshal. In the marshal's car, she tells Loomis that she has discovered a secret file on Myers to which he was not privy. The file reveals that Laurie is actually Myers' sister, adopted by the Strodes after Myers killed his older sister, Judith.

At gunpoint, Loomis forces the marshal (John Zenda) and Chambers to drive to the hospital, knowing that Myers will have already tracked Laurie there. Upon arriving, Loomis shoots Myers several times, but to no avail. After Myers kills the marshal, Loomis and Laurie retreat into an operating room, and Laurie shoots Myers in the eyes after Loomis is stabbed. Loomis is able to turn on the oxygen tanks in the operating room, causing an explosion that engulfs him and Myers. Laurie survives and is taken away in another ambulance.

[edit] Production

Halloween II boasted a much larger budget than its predecessor: $2.5 million. Halloween producers Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad invested heavily in the film even though John Carpenter refused to direct. Most of the film was shot at Morningside Hospital in Inglewood, California, and Pasadena Community Hospital in Pasadena, California.^[3] There was discussion of filming Halloween II in 3-D. Writer and producer Debra Hill says, "We investigated a number of 3-D processes ... but they were far too expensive for this particular project. Also, most of the projects we do involve a lot of night shooting—evil lurks at night. It's hard to do that in 3-D."^[3]

[edit] Writing

The screenplay of Halloween II was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, the writers of the first Halloween. Hill mentions in a 1981 interview with Fangoria magazine that the finished film differs somewhat from initial drafts of the screenplay. She explains how she and Carpenter had originally considered setting the sequel a few years after the events of Halloween. They planned to have Myers track Laurie Strode to a high-rise apartment building in which she is a resident.^[2]

The sequel was intended to wind up the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode and neither Carpenter nor Hill were involved in writing material for later sequels. The third film, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, released a year later, contained a plot that deviated wholly from the first two films.^[2] Tommy Lee Wallace, the director of Halloween III, stated "It is our intention to create an anthology out of the series, sort of along the lines of Night Gallery, or The Twilight Zone, only on a much larger scale, of course."^[4] When asked what happened in a 1982 interview to Myers and Loomis, Carpenter flatly answered, "The Shape is dead. Donald Pleasence's character is dead, too, unfortunately."^[5]

Film critic Roger Ebert notes that the plot of the sequel was rather simple: "The plot of Halloween II absolutely depends, of course, on our old friend the Idiot Plot, which requires that everyone in the movie behave at all times like an idiot. That's necessary because if anyone were to use common sense, the problem would be solved and the movie would be over."^[6] Characters were described as shallow and like cardboard. Hill rebuffed such critiques by arguing that "in a thriller film, what a character says is often irrelevant, especially in those sequences where the objective is to build up suspense."^[7]

Historian Nicholas Rogers suggests that a portion of the film seems to have drawn inspiration from the "contemporary controversies surrounding the holiday itself."^[8] He points specifically to the scene in the film when a young boy in a pirate costume arrives at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital with a razor blade lodged in his mouth, a reference to the urban legend of tainted Halloween candy.^[9] According to Rogers, "The Halloween films opened in the wake of the billowing stories about Halloween sadism and clearly traded on the uncertainties surrounding trick-or-treating and the general safety of the festival."^[8]

[edit] Casting

The main cast of Halloween reprised their roles in the sequel with the exception of Nick Castle who played the adult Michael Myers in the original. Veteran English actor Donald Pleasence continued the role of Dr. Sam Loomis, who was Michael Myers's psychiatrist for the past fifteen years while Myers was institutionalized at Smith's Grove Sanitarium. Jamie Lee Curtis (then 23), once again played the teenage babysitter Laurie Strode, the younger sister of Michael Myers. Curtis would now require a wig to continue her role of long-haired Laurie Strode, as she had since cut her own hair shorter.

Charles Cyphers reprised the role of Sheriff Leigh Brackett, but his character disappears from the film when his daughter Annie's (Nancy Kyes) corpse is discovered. Actor Hunter von Leer heads the manhunt for Myers as Deputy Hunt. He admitted in an interview that he had never watched Halloween before being cast in the part. He stated, "I did not see the original first but being from a small town, I wanted the Deputy to have compassion."

Stunt performer Dick Warlock played Michael Myers (as in Halloween, listed as "The Shape" in the credits), replacing Castle who was beginning a career as a director. Warlock's previous experience in film was as a stunt double in films such as The Green Berets (1968) and Jaws (1975) and the 1974 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.^[10] Warlock claims that the mask he wore was the same used by Nick Castle in the first movie. In an interview, he explained how he prepared for the role since Myers received far more screen time in the sequel than the original. He watched the

scenes where Laurie is huddled in the closet. Michael breaks through. She grabs a hanger and thrusts it up and into his eyes. Michael falls down and Laurie walks to the bedroom doorway and sits down. In the background we see Michael sit up and turn towards her to the beat of the music. ... Anyway, that and the head tilt were the things I carried with me into Halloween II. I didn't really see that much more to hang my hat on in the first film.^[11]

The supporting cast was played by relatively unknown actors and actresses, with the exception of Jeffrey Kramer and Ford Rainey. Kramer was previously cast in a supporting role as Deputy Jeff Hendricks in Jaws and Jaws 2 (1978). In Halloween II, Kramer played Dr. Graham, a dentist who examines the charred remains of a boy confused with Myers. Rainey was an actor well-known for his supporting roles on television shows such as Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and The Bionic Woman. He was chosen to play Haddonfield Memorial Hospital's drunk resident doctor, Frederick Mixter.^[12]

A host of character actors were cast as the hospital's staff. Many were acquaintances of director Rick Rosenthal. He told an interviewer, "I'd been studying acting with Milton Katselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and I brought many people from the Playhouse into Halloween 2."^[13] These included Leo Rossi, Pamela Susan Shoop, Ana Alicia, and Gloria Gifford. Rossi played the part of Budd, a hypersexual EMS driver that harasses Jimmy as a "college boy." Rossi would go on to have minor roles in television series such as Hill Street Blues and Falcone and several direct-to-video releases.^[14][15]

Shoop played Nurse Karen, who is scalded to death by Myers in the hospital therapy tub. Featured in the only nude scene in the film, Shoop discussed filming the scene in an interview: "Now that was hard! The water was freezing cold, and poor Leo Rossi and I could barely keep our teeth from chattering! The water was also pretty dirty and I ended up with an ear infection."^[16] Prior to working with Rosenthal, she had made several cameo appearances on television shows such as Wonder Woman, B.J. and the Bear, and later Knight Rider and Murder, She Wrote.^[17] Gifford and Alicia played minor supporting roles as nurses.

Actor Lance Guest played an EMS driver, Jimmy Lloyd (who later marries Strode and fathers a child with her, Jamie Lloyd, as revealed in Halloween 4: The Revenge of Michael Myers). Much like the original Halloween had launched the career of Jamie Lee Curtis, after Halloween II, Guest went on to star in such films as The Last Starfighter (1984) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987) and the television series Life Goes On.^[18] The Last Starfighter director Nick Castle stated in an interview, "When I was assigned to the film, Lance Guest was the first name I wrote down on my list for Alex after seeing him in 'Halloween II.'" Castle adds, "He possessed all the qualities I wanted the character to express on the screen, a kind of innocence, shyness, yet determination."^[19]

[edit] Directing

John Carpenter refused to direct the sequel and originally approached Tommy Lee Wallace, the art director from the original Halloween, to take the helm. Carpenter told one interviewer, "I had made that film once and I really didn't want to do it again."^[20] After Wallace declined, Carpenter chose Rick Rosenthal, an unknown and inexperienced director whose previous credits included episodes of the television series Secrets of Midland Heights (1980-1981). In an interview with Twilight Zone Magazine, Carpenter explains that Rosenthal was chosen because "he did a terrific short called Toyer. It was full of suspense and tension and terrific performances." ^[5][21]

Stylistically, Rosenthal attempted to recreate the elements and themes of the original film. The opening title features a jack-o'-lantern that splits in half to reveal a human skull. In the original, the camera zoomed in on the jack-o'-lantern's left eye. The first scene of the film is presented through a first-person camera format in which a voyeuristic Michael Myers enters an elderly couple's home and steals a knife from the kitchen. Rosenthal attempts to reproduce the "jump" scenes present in Halloween, but does not film Myers on the periphery, which is where he appeared in many of the scenes of the original. Under Rosenthal's direction, Myers is the central object of a majority of the scenes.^[22] In an interview with Luke Ford, Rosenthal explains,

The first movie I ever did [Halloween II] was a sequel, but it was supposed to be a direct continuation. It started one minute after the first movie ended. You have to try hard to maintain the style of the first movie. I wanted it to feel like a two-parter. You have the responsibility and the restraints of the style that's been set. It was the same crew. My philosophy was to do more of a thriller than a slasher movie.^[13]

The decision to include more gore and nudity in the sequel was not made by Rosenthal, who contends that it was Carpenter who chose to make the film much bloodier than the original.^[23] According to the film's official website, "Carpenter came in and directed a few sequences to clean up some of Rosenthal's work."^[21] One reviewer of the film notes that "Carpenter, concerned that the picture would be deemed too 'tame' by the slasher audience, re-filmed several death scenes with more gore."^[24] When asked about his role in the directing process, Carpenter told an interviewer:

That's a long, long story. That was a project I got involved in as a result of several different kinds of pressure. I had no influence over the direction of the film. I had an influence in the post-production. I saw a rough cut of Halloween II, and it wasn't scary. It was about as scary as Quincy. So we had to do some post-production work to bring it at least up to par with the competition.^[5]

Rosenthal was not pleased with Carpenter's changes. He reportedly complained that Carpenter "ruined [my] carefully paced film."^[25] Regardless, many of the graphic scenes contained elements not seen before in film. Roger Ebert claims, "This movie has the first close-up I can remember of a hypodermic needle being inserted into an eyeball."^[6] The film is often categorized as a splatter film rather than a slasher film due to the elevated gore. Film critic John McCarty writes of splatter films: "[They] aim not to scare their audiences, necessarily, nor to drive them to the edge of their seats in suspense, but to mortify them with scenes of explicit gore. In splatter movies, mutilation is indeed the message ...."^[26] Rosenthal later directed the eighth film in the Halloween series, Halloween: Resurrection (2002).

[edit] Music

The film's score was a variation of John Carpenter compositions from Halloween, particularly the main theme's familiar piano melody played in a 5/4 time rhythm. The score was performed on a synthesizer organ rather than a piano.^[27] One reviewer for the BBC described the revised score as having "a more gothic feel." The reviewer asserts that it "doesn’t sound quite as good as the original piece," but "it still remains a classic piece of music."^[28] Carpenter performed the score with the assistance of Alan Howarth, who had previously been involved in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and would continue to work with Carpenter on projects such as Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982) and Christine (1983).^[29]

The film featured the song "Mr. Sandman" performed by The Chordettes.^[30] Reviewers commented on the decision to include this song in the film, calling the selection "interesting" and "not a song you would associate with a film like this." The song worked well to "mimic Laurie’s situation (sleeping a lot), [making] the once innocent sounding lyrics seem threatening in a horror film."^[28] Nonetheless, another critic saw the inclusion of the song as "inappropriate" and asked, "What was that about?"^[31]

[edit] Reception

Halloween II premiered on October 30, 1981, in 1,211 theaters in the United States.^[1] To advertise the film, Universal printed a poster that featured a skull superimposed onto a pumpkin. This imagery is described by film historian and sociologist Robert E. Kapsis as "an unmistakable horror motif." Kapsis points out that by 1981 horror had "become a genre non grata" with critics. The effect of this can be seen in the distributor's promotion of the film as horror while at the same time stressing that the sequel, like its predecessor, "was more a quality suspense film than a 'slice and dice' horror film."^[32] Use of the tagline More Of The Night HE Came Home—a modified version of the original Halloween tagline—hoped to accomplish the same task.

The film grossed $7,446,508 on the opening weekend and earned a final domestic total of $25,533,818.^[1] Rights were sold to Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis and the film was distributed by Universal.^[33] While the gross earnings of the sequel paled in comparison to the original's $47 million, it was a success in its own right, besting the earnings of other films of the same genre released in 1981: Friday the 13th Part 2 ($21,722,776), Omen III: The Final Conflict ($20,471,382) and The Howling ($17,985,893).^[34]

Internationally, Halloween II was released throughout Europe, but it was banned in West Germany and Iceland due to the graphic violence and nudity; a later 1986 release on home video was banned in Norway. The film was shown in Canada, Australia and Japan.^{[33][35][36][37]}

In 1982, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA, nominated the film for two Saturn Awards: Best Horror Film and Donald Pleasence for Best Actor. The film lost to An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Harrison Ford was chosen over Pleasence for his role in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).^[38]

The film's performance at the box office later translated into home video sales. It was first released on VHS and laserdisc in 1982 by MCA/Universal Home Video and later by Goodtimes Home Video. DVD editions have been released by these companies as well beginning in 1998.^[33] Additionally, an adaptation of the screenplay later printed as a mass market paperback in 1981 by horror and science-fiction writer Dennis Etchison under the pseudonym Jack Martin. Etchison's novelization was distributed by Kensington Books and became a bestseller.^[39][40]

[edit] Criticism

Critical reaction to the film was mixed. While film critics had largely showered praise on Halloween, most reviews of its sequel contrasted it with the original and found it wanting by comparison. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that Halloween II represented "a fall from greatness" that "doesn't even attempt to do justice to the original." Ebert also commented, "Instead, it tries to outdo all the other violent Halloween rip-offs of the last several years."^[6] Critic James Berardinelli offered an especially stinging review:

The main problem is the film's underlying motivation. Halloween was a labor of love, made by people committed to creating the most suspenseful and compelling motion picture they could. Halloween II was impelled by the desire to make money. It was a postscript—and not a very good one—slapped together because a box office success was guaranteed.^[24]

He accused Carpenter and Hill of not believing "in this project the way they believed in the original, and it shows in the final product. The creepiness of the first movie has been replaced by a growing sense of repetitive boredom." Berardinelli was not impressed by the decision to give Myers so much screen time. He says, "The Shape, who was an ominous and forbidding force, has been turned into a plodding zombie. The characters have all been lobotomized, and, in keeping with the slasher trend, the gore content is way up. There was virtually no blood in Halloween; Halloween II cheerfully heaps it on."^[24]

On the other hand, Janet Maslin of the New York Times compared the film to other horror sequels and recently-released slasher films of the early 1980s rather than to the original. "By the standards of most recent horror films, this—like its predecessor—is a class act." She notes that there "is some variety to the crimes, as there is to the characters, and an audience is more likely to do more screaming at suspenseful moments than at scary ones." Maslin applauds the performance of the cast and Rosenthal and concludes, "That may not be much to ask of a horror film, but it's more than many of them offer."^[41] David Pirie's review in Time Out magazine gave Rosenthal's film positive marks, stating, "Rosenthal is no Carpenter, but he makes a fair job of emulating the latter's visual style in this sequel." He writes that the Myers character evolved since the first film to become "an agent of Absolute Evil."^[42] Film historian Jim Harper suggests, "Time has been a little fairer to the film" than original critics. In retrospect, "many critics have come to recognise that it's considerably better than the slew of imitation slashers that swamped the genre in the eighties."^[43]

[edit] Television version

An alternate version of Halloween II was aired on television in the early 1980s in which most of the graphic violence and gore had been edited out and several minor additional scenes had been added. This version is sometimes referred to as the "Rick Rosenthal Version" or "Television Version" and occasionally resurfaces on the AMC network. It has been suggested that the redacted film represents director Rick Rosenthal's original vision of the movie before John Carpenter's edits. A special edition DVD of the alternate version was planned for release in 2001, but Universal released the original theatrical version instead.^[33]

A pronounced difference between the film and television versions is found in the plot. While the theatrical version has the movie ending with Myers and Loomis' presumed destruction, the alternate version shows Jimmy Lloyd (with head wound) alive in the ambulance with Laurie. They hold hands and Laurie says, "We made it."^[33]

[edit] Halloween II murders

Detractors of horror films have blamed the genre for the perceived decrease in the morality and increase in crime among America's youth. As moral critic Peter Peeters explains, fragile minds are being warped by "unlimited lust and sex, horror, the gruesome world of corpses and ghosts, torture, butchery and cannibalism, violence and destruction, the unsavory details all vividly depicted and accompanied by the appropriate screams and sound effects."^[44] A tragic incident associated with the film Halloween II only heightened such attitudes.

On December 7, 1982, Richard Delmer Boyer of El Monte, California, murdered Francis and Eileen Harbitz, an elderly couple in Fullerton, California, leading to the trial People v. Boyer (1989). The couple was stabbed a total of 43 times by Boyer. According to the trial transcript, Boyer's defense was that he suffered from hallucinations in the Harbitz residence brought on by "the movie Halloween II, which defendant had seen under the influence of PCP, marijuana, and alcohol." The film was played for the jury, and a psychopharmacologist "pointed out various similarities between its scenes and the visions defendant described."^[45]

Boyer was found guilty and sentenced to death. The incident became known as the "Halloween II Murders" and was featured in a short segment on TNT's Monstervision, hosted by film critic Joe Bob Briggs.^[21] Following the trial, moral critics and libertarians came to the defense of horror films and rejected calls to ban them. Thomas M. Sipos, for instance, stated,

It would be silly, after all, to ban horror films just because Boyer claims to have thought that he was reenacting Halloween 2, or to ban cars because Texas housewife Clara Harris intentionally ran down and killed her husband. Nor does it make sense to ban otherwise useful items such as drugs or guns just because some individuals misuse them.^[46]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Official site of the Halloween series.
• Halloween II at the Internet Movie Database.
• Halloween II at All Movie Guide