Halloween II - Film Review

Halloweenthon Day 2

I love the "ALL NEW" on the poster.

Halloween II is directed by Rick Rosenthal and stars Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, Pamela Susan Shoop, Lance Guest, Leo Rossi, and Dick Warlock.

Plot
After Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) shoots Michael Myers (Dick Warlock) six times and falls off a balcony. Michael escapes and continues his massacre in Haddonfield, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is also sent to a hospital and Dr. Loomis gathers a group of cops to hunt down Michael and put an end to his rampage.

Review
This is probably my favorite sequel in the Halloween franchise. You really have to watch the first one to understand this one, because in this one there's not much explanation to what happened that night, and it's best watched back-to-back with the original Halloween, but to me it does feel like a natural progression of what would happen on that night.

It's got some weird stuff that's happened off-screen, like one doctor or nurse is laying dead while she has a UV thing attached to her and her blood is coming out, so what happened there? Also, apparently Michael went into a school and wrote "SAMHAIN" (which they pronounced completely wrong) on the blackboard, to give Michael more supernatural.

Also, this is the worst hospital ever, only eight people work there (I counted), one of the nurses just leaves pills out, and two of the workers go to the hydrotherapy tub, and then Michael kills them. And Laurie is the only patient in the entire hospital.

This movie actually has one scene that's physically hard to watch for me, and it's the scene where the kid has the razor-blade in his mouth, that is just hard to watch, and one of the few horror scenes that is hard for me to watch.

This film is gorier than the original, and Rick Rosenthal made a movie that is like the original, and he does do a good job at emulating John Carpenter's style, but he made it like the original with minimal gore, but because of the success of other slashers inspired by Halloween, such as Friday the 13th, John Carpenter edited the movie to have more gore and nudity, which wasn't needed but didn't hurt the movie or anything.

This film has one of the biggest reveals in the series, where Michael turns out to be Laurie's brother and he's hunting her specifically. This was kinda hinted at when Laurie dreams about Michael, but said explicitly when a woman tells Sam that Laurie was adopted by the Strodes after Michael killed his sister and their parents later died.

This movie does have parts I was laughing at, such as the parts when Bud (Leo Rossi) was on screen, he was pretty funny, but he dies, and there were some parts I was a laughing at that I'm not sure I was supposed to be laughing at, like this being a terrible hospital.

I can't talk much about the characters because a lot of them are just disposable horror movie victims, so I'll talk about a few.

Donald Pleasence is great again as Sam Loomis, trying as hard as he can to get rid of Michael, who then sacrifices himself in the hospital to kill Michael by blowing him up, but he survives this, at least until H20, which we'll talk about later.

Jamie Lee Curtis is also really good as Laurie, who seems to be traumatized by what happened, and is in the hospital, but she then learns that Michael is her brother.

Dick Warlock is good as Michael, and I actually met him once at a haunted trail back in 2016. There is a picture of me with him but I have no idea where it is, and he signed my Blu-ray of this movie, which I have right here. I recommend meeting him, he's really nice.

Overall, I love Halloween II despite its flaws, and it's my favorite Halloween sequel and my second favorite of the series.

I'm going to give Halloween II a 9/10.

Come back next time for a review of a very controversial (at the time) entry in the series, where we talk about Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Previous review - Halloween
Next review - Halloween III: Season of the Witch