Halloween II (1981)

Plot Outline: After her ordeal with Michael Myers, Laurie Strode is taken to the local hospital whilst Dr Loomis and the Sheriff look for the escaped killer around Haddonfield. But Myers isn't far behind Laurie and restarts his murderous mission to kill her at the hospital.

The Review: This is a very underrated sequel indeed. As it begins directly from the ending scene from the original, that makes it a lot easier to follow. You can get straight into it without having to build up characters from scratch (they do that but not for the first 20 or so minutes until the hospital staff are introduced). It also helped in the fact that Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance returned to film this. Without them this film would just be as mindless and distant from the original as the rest of the series. Obviously it's not going to be anything near as good as the original and that's because the suspense of the original has been somewhat replaced by elaborate death scenes - a fatal mistake that 80s slasher films took. Unfortunately (and a bad mistake in my opinion) the original cut was deemed not gory enough by John Carpenter so he went and did some re-shoots and added in extra gore. Just because every other horror film was piling on the blood didn't mean that this series had to follow suit. Some scenes are direct copies from the original too (i.e. chase scenes where Laurie gets stalked with Myers in hot pursuit) but who cares. They were excellent there and they are just as good now, if not better. Seeing a security camera view of Myers walking slowly down the corridor is very chilling indeed. I'm not a fan of the "more is more" approach of this film where it shows everything you didn't see before, most notably a lot more of Michael Myers. In the original he was always lurking towards the background or the side of the camera shot - here he is the focus. There is also an excellent little bit of a plot twist during this, in which this film and the previous one make complete sense (although the restored DVD version of the original does contain some extra scenes in which this is also revealed). Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't do much in the film this time and spends a good majority of it cowering out of the way and mumbling but Donald Pleasance is still great as the slightly barmy Dr Loomis, waving his gun around and claiming to have shot Myers six times.

Final Verdict: My advice is to watch the original and then watch this straight away as if you were watching a very long film. You won't regret it. Halloween II is a worthy follow-up.

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