Halloween II (1981) Review – Michael Myers Returns

Following up John Carpenter’s Halloween was never going to be easy. To me, that 1978 classic is still one of my favourite horror films, so to follow it up three years later with an interesting choice to immediately pick up where it left off

Same night, same town, same Michael Myers.

And it gets off to a bloody fantastic start.

We rejoin the sequence where Dr. Loomis fires six shots into Michael, sending him toppling from the balcony. Loomis runs outside to find him gone, only for him to find blood on the grass and realize the terror is far from over.

Then a neighbour comes along, moaning about getting trick-or-treated to death.

Loomis replies with what can arguably be the single most iconic line from the franchise.

“You don’t know what death is!”

Cue the Halloween theme.

Fucking brilliant.

It’s a great opener that picks up right where Carpenter’s film left off, and Donald Pleasance delivers the line with such conviction you really believe Loomis has seen something beyond comprehension.

And so the hunt begins as Michael stalks his way through the backyards and alleys of Haddonfield before eventually finding himself at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, where Laurie Strode is recovering from what happened that night.

And here things change.

We’re used to the idea of Michael randomly picking people off the street in the original Halloween. It’s that feeling of dread as this masked figure wanders through your suburb, picking his victims at random and vanishing again.

Here, we get the revelation that Laurie is in fact Michael’s sister, which gives him a reason to be hunting her down.

I can see why they wanted to establish this link, but I’ve always preferred Michael as a completely unknowable force. What he does and why is far more terrifying than anything with a logical explanation.

Adding that family connection only detracts from that.

Rick Rosenthal picks up the directorial reigns from Carpenter and he seems to be going for a similar approach. Only this time the hospital setting means we get far more of the conventionally slashery aspects of the movie.

There are definitely some entertaining set pieces, mainly as Michael begins to pick off the staff, but it’s not the same eerie quality as we get from Carpenter.

The characters are largely uninteresting, serving only as cannon fodder for Michael.

Although it must be said, there are some great kills.

Garrett getting the claw end of a hammer to his cranium, the syringe to the eye, these are all nice little moments that make you remember that Michael is still capable of some truly gruesome finishes.

And poor old Ben Tramer.

The poor guy barely gets a chance to exist before he gets hit by a police car, flung into a van, and set on fire.

Because running over people wasn’t enough, apparently. We needed an explosion too.

You have to love the eighties.

But there is one major problem with this new incarnation of Michael.

The way he moves.

See Nick Castle’s portrayal of Michael in the original was so effective precisely because of the way he moved. He had an almost natural grace to his motions. He never really had to act it out, he just wandered onto the scene, stood there or crept up slowly behind his victims and that was enough.

Dick Warlock takes over as Michael and his movements are incredibly stiff.

When he walked around the hospital with a scalpel in hand I couldn’t help but get the image in my head that this poor bastard was trying to contain a shit.

It’s hard to get the same reaction when someone looks like that while they’re trying to sneak up on you.

And this Michael’s mask just doesn’t look as good.

I know it’s supposed to be the same one from the first film, but something about its appearance is wrong. Combined with Warlock’s stiffness and this Michael just doesn’t have the same impact as his original incarnation.

Jamie Lee Curtis also doesn’t get much to do.

Laurie is a victim here, her injuries, sedation and hospital bed taking much of the resourcefulness out of her character. It’s understandable given what she went through only hours before, but she really feels more like a patient waiting for the events of this film to catch up with her than the plucky survivor we met in the first movie.

Even the chase through the hospital doesn’t reach the same levels of tension as Carpenter’s finale.

Thankfully Donald Pleasence is there to pick up the slack.

Actually, if anything, Halloween II feels more like Loomis’s film than Laurie’s.

Pleasance gets to explore his character’s growing desperation as he realizes that shooting six bullets into Michael’s chest just isn’t enough. He’s more determined than ever to put an end to this, even as the world around him tries to comprehend what exactly is going on.

There’s also a really good moment involving Sheriff Brackett, who discovers his daughter Annie has been murdered.

His anger at Loomis towards provides some real emotional fuel for the characters limited appearance. Loomks knows people are dying but doesn’t want to admit that the man he’s shooting at is beyond reason.

I also liked the brief scene of the townspeople turning on the Myers house and gathering outside, angry at what had happened.

We never really get to explore this, but it’s an interesting idea that could have led into some really effective material. Imagine the residents of Haddonfield uniting in an effort to track down Michael and take justice into their own hands.

The franchise later explores that angle in Halloween Kills, but here it’s only a hint that appears and promptly disappears.

It’s shame really, because the finale has Loomis becoming more and more desperate as he tries a series of increasingly futile attempts to stop Michael before finally sacrificing himself in an effort to kill Michael in an exploding blaze of glory.

It’s a fitting end to an ultimately disappointing sequel, and Pleasance delivers once again as Loomis reaches his breaking point. In fact, you can almost feel him reaching that point, knowing there’s nothing more he can do to make this stop.

But while Halloween II has all the ingredients to make a great slasher film, it simply lacks that spark of inspiration that made the original so frightening.

The characters are flat, Laurie has very little to do, and Michael doesn’t have the same presence. On the plus side, there are some really good kills, an excellent opening and another great performance from Donald Pleasance, but none of those positives quite fill the gap left by Carpenter’s absence.

It’s an enjoyable enough film that fans of the original will want to check out, but I can’t help but feel like Rick Rosenthal was trying to copy what Carpenter had done so well.

Halloween worked because it was contained, mysterious and genuinely scary. This attempt at a sequel only serves to highlight that by providing us with a far more conventional slashery horror that doesn’t quite fit with the events of the first film.

Halloween II is an interesting continuation but lacks John Carpenter’s final touch, and that bloody mask still doesn’t look good.