Halloween 2

Halloween II (1981)

Directed by: Rick Rosenthal
Written by: John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer, Lance Guest, Pamela Susan Shoop, Hunter von Leer, Dick Warlock, Leo Rossi, Gloria Gifford, Tawny Moyer

Sequel to Halloween, obviously, the first of many many many many, and, as expected, inferior. It took a long time to get rolling. It did get rolling eventually, but that was about twenty minutes towards the end.

It picks up a little before the first one left off, and then goes from there. Michael Myers keeps on coming, Jamie Lee keeps on running and Dr. Sam keeps on babbling about evil or something.

Mikey doesn't really settle into his groove until the second half of the movie. Then the murders start piling up two at a time. Some of them are pretty nasty, but most of them aren't.

This one just kind of overdoes it a little bit. There are a shitload of murders, but they aren't especially shocking. I mean, the needle going in the old eyeball (cross my heart and hope to die...) was gross, but I didn't really give two shits. And the music got pretty annoying.

It was just like any sense of suspense that the first one had was mysteriously missing. The only interesting part was wondering how long Mike could hide behind a screen without anybody noticing him. He's very good at his job, so it was a long time.

And now his motives don't make any sense. I mean, if he just wanted to kill Jamie Lee because she was his sister, why the fuck did he kill all of those other people? Sigh. Nevermind. He was a lot more interesting (or rather scary. He isn't particularly interesting) when he didn't have a motive or anything. He just did it because he could, who cares why?

I'm over rationalizing, I know, but come on. He was actually kind of lame in this one. I mean, he could have just killed her, but no, every time he got within a twenty five foot radius he became completely incapacitated and could do little more than swing his knife around (and not hit anything).

And then there's the problem of Dr. Sam blowing himself up, because I was positive he was in at least one of the sequels. In fact, I thought he was in all of them up until Donald Pleasence's death. I'm sure they have a clever explanation for that, too.

Not that it matters. I just think to much, and this movie made me irritated. If it was actually good I could ignore it's many flaws. Like the first one.

END