Halloween II (

1981

) ½

When Halloween (1978) came out, the figure of Michael Myers struck a chord with audiences. He had no sane or human motivation, indeed he had less motivation than virtually any horror movie protagonist that preceded him, lacking even the basic animalistic desire to feed of the shark from Jaws (1975). He killed not to further some plan or enact some vengeance but simply because that was what he did. The result was a cosmic, existential dread fashioned into the shape of a man. His mask, a white face devoid of all features, is a better representation of his inner character than his real visage. He is a blank canvas waiting for over-eager film scholars to try to shoehorn in whatever chosen interpretation fits their political biases, but try as they might none will stick because when dealing with Myers one quickly discovers that there is nothing there at all. He is an archetype, a stand-in for ever spooky noise we hear in the middle of the night and every nightmare that eludes our understanding and memory upon waking. The characters in the film call him the boogeyman, which is a suitably abstract term for the character, but the film’s credits dub him “The Shape” which gets closer to the meat of things.

Myers horrified audiences because he was such a simple, direct figure of fear. So why the hell would you decide in the sequel that what he really needed was a motivation? Albeit the motivations assigned to Myers are pretty vague and simple, but it’s a classic case of the more we know about a monster the less we fear it. Towards the end of Halloween II, we learn that Laurie Strode is Michael Myer’s sister, who was adopted as an infant and adopted by the Strodes. Meyers has returned to Haddonfield to kill Laurie the same way that he killed Judith fifteen years ago. This doesn’t make a lot of sense on the face of it, as what possible reason could he have for killing a sister every decade and a half (and what does he plan to do On Halloween 1993 when he’s fresh out of sisters?). To buttress this motivation the film tries to tie Myers’ actions in with ancient druidic sacrifices which only further undermines his ability to scare us. We’ve all been frightened of a lurking shape seen out of the corner of the eye, but how many people in 20th century America had a deep fear of druids?

Giving Myers a motivation also creates several issues with the plot. Most significantly, there’s the question of all the collateral damage. Myers does not just try to kill Laurie, eradicating anyone that gets in his way as a mere nuisance. No, he actively hunts down anyone in the vicinity even when it would be far easier to simply chase down his primary target. This was not a problem in the original Halloween (1978) because we knew so little of Myers’ motivations that there was no reason to suspect he wasn’t just killing anyone he could find. However, if his goal all along was to kill Laurie then why does he waste so much time slaughtering other teens? Does he just not know which girl is his sister? If that’s the case how does he realize that Laurie is the girl he’s after? There’s no way he’d be able to identify her on sight when the last time he saw her she was an infant. Then there’s the question of what happened to Laurie and Michael’s parents, as we know they were not killed by Michael, so what happened to them and why was the infant Laurie secretly adopted by the Strodes? The film offers no adequate explanation will be given for any of these questions.

This is the worst sort of plot twist that a movie can have, in that it offers nothing aside from the initial shock of the revelation and if you spend more than a second thinking about it, then it causes the rest of the film’s plot to unravel. One might wonder how in the world a film written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, the same pair that wrote Halloween (1978), could turn out so bad. It’s not like a great deal of time had passed since the original, and in the intervening years, the pair had neither proven they were one-hit wonders nor devolved into worthless has-beens. Indeed, their previous outings The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981) were both excellent. So, what gives?

To answer that we’ll need to dig a little bit into the background of Halloween II’s production history. After the massive hit that was Halloween (1978), producer Irwin Yablans was keen on making a sequel and having Carpenter write and direct that as well. However, Carpenter wanted to focus all of his efforts on The Fog (1980) instead and was not especially interested in making a rehash of Halloween (1978). Carpenter always was a genre filmmaker who did not want to be contained to a single genre, much less a recurring series that was all but obligated to reproduce the same formulaic beats. Yablans was amenable to this and assumed that he had a verbal deal to produce The Fog (1980) so when he learned that Avco-Embassy was producing it instead he promptly went ballistic and sued both Carpenter and Avco-Embassy. The end of the ensuing legal battle saw Avco-Embassy maintain the rights to The Fog (1980) but as part of the agreement, Carpenter was required to produce a sequel to Halloween (1978) for Yablans. Being legally obligated to write a script may have caused the end product to suffer more than a bit.

That said, despite the unusual circumstances behind its production, Halloween II does have a fair share of charming elements to it. For one, it is extremely good at inventing shots where the audience can see Meyers sneaking up on his unsuspecting prey. I lost count of the lovely scenes where Meyers emerges from the darkness while his hapless victim in the foreground is distracted by their job, or some petty concerns, of their lover’s rocking pair of tits. This is crucial for a slasher film where much of the joy comes from the anticipation of the inevitable murders as does from the killings themselves. This allows the audience to start shouting out “Turn around you idiots! Don’t you know he’s right there!” It’s a basic trick of horror films of this genre and era, but Halloween II handles this better than most. Indeed, despite the shortcomings of its scripts Halloween II remains an average to an above-average 80s slasher movie, depending on how forgiving you are.

The film begins immediately after the end of the first film, indeed given the use of a flashback reel technique that later entries in the Friday the 13th series would employ to great effect, it could be said that Halloween II begins shortly before the end of Halloween (1978). Michael Myers has disappeared having taken six slugs to the chest and crashed out a 2nd story window. The authorities are on the scene, but somehow the mute bastard slipped the dragnet and escaped into the surrounding town. Laurie is rushed to the hospital, having suffered a few nasty injuries during the climax of the last film. Indeed, she’s so worse for wear that she seems to have aged a couple of years in a matter of minutes (funny how that works).

Beginning the new story at the very ending of the previous movie works fairly well here, as the monster from the first movie simply vanished without a trace. It stands to reason that the police and Loomis would continue their hunt for the masked killer and that Meyers would continue to murder unabated. It also saves the screenwriters the trouble of contriving an excuse to bring all the principal characters together again in a different location at a different time. Though this technique is not without its downsides. Since Michael Meyers is effectively immune to bullets there’s no reason to show his slow recuperation. However, given the fact that Laurie suffered such grievous injuries during the climax of Halloween (1978), logic dictates that she’ll have to spend most of this film lying unconscious in a hospital bed. This means that it will be sometime before the central dynamic between Laurie and Michael will be relevant, which is even more of an issue now that the script has decided that Laurie is Michael’s primary target rather than just a lucky sole-survivor.

In the meantime, Loomis and the local police force tries to track down Myers. Their investigation is temporarily slowed when some idiot deputy runs over a kid in a white mask with the body being rendered unidentifiable by a massive explosion. Local law enforcement is prepared to congratulate themselves on having ended the Myers threat and only reluctantly continue their search while the medical examiner checks the corpse’s dental records. This isn’t the only obstacle that Loomis will run into along the way either. Later that night, the Governor of Illinois sends a state trooper to haul Loomis away from the manhunt. He’s under the impression that it will look bad for a psychiatrist on the state payroll to be seen snooping around all these grisly murders, though I fail to see how doing absolutely nothing about the killings is going to make the Governor’s office look any better. While all this is going on the real Michael makes a B-line for the hospital and begins to systematically eliminate all the staff, until Laurie is left alone. Even if you haven’t seen Halloween (1978) I think you can guess what’s coming next.

This is the textbook case of an unnecessary sequel. Halloween (1978) ended perfectly, with the mysterious boogeyman vanishing into the night leaving nothing aside from a faint impression on the lawn and a bloody pile of corpses. Halloween II adds nothing to this and indeed detracts considerably from the charms of the original. That said, it’s still a perfectly watchable middle-of-the-road 1980s slasher. If it were a separate movie altogether with Mitchel Meyers tracking down Laura Straub on Thanksgiving night, I suspect that it would have received a more charitable reception. But as a sequel to Halloween (1978), it is an out-and-out disaster.