John Carpenter's classic 1978 horror/suspense film HALLOWEEN ended with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) firing into the body of his patient Michael Myers (a.k.a. the Shape), thus saving Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from the fate her friends suffered, only to see his patient walk away as if nothing had ever happened. It is right from this spot, some three years later, that HALLOWEEN II, the first of a seemingly interminable series of sequels to the classic original, takes off.

Curtis is ambulanced off to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to recover from wounds suffered at the hands of the Shape, while Pleasance, together with Haddonfield's finest, scours the town looking for his "patient." In the meantime, the bodies keep piling up (as does the blood) as the Shape makes a beeline for the hospital.

Surprisingly empty on Halloween night, the hospital is run by doctors and interns who, in the tradition of modern horror film victims, have a tendency to be in the wrong places at the wrong times. In particular the interns are either busy making out with the nurses (witness the characters played by Leo Rossi and Pamela Susan Shoop) or blissfully ignorant of Michael Myers entering their building while they're watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD on television. One by one, they get bumped off in various ways, some of them fairly gruesome, nearly all of them placed in a position where Michael can get at them.

Pleasance, meanwhile, is unsuccessful at locating his patient (with one case of mistaken identity resulting in a fiery car crash and the death of an innocent trick-or-treater) and he is ordered back to Smith's Grove. But as he is being escorted out of Haddonfield, his assistant (Nancy Stephens) reveals the real reason for the Shape going after Curtis: She is actually his second sister, the other one being the one he first killed in 1963. Pleasance forces the state marshal to turn back to town and head for the hospital.

With all the staff having been bumped off, Curtis staggers out of her room in a fearful stupor, only to find herself running from her "brother". Pleasance gets there in the nick of time, but is still unable to "kill" his patient. In a last-ditch effort, Pleasance and Curtis trap Michael in a roomful of tanks that include ether, oxygen, and nitrogen. As Curtis escapes, Pleasance clicks his lighter ("It's time, Michael"), resulting in a violent explosion. Curtis survives, and Michael Myers is finally killed...or so we thought.

Though they weren't exactly enthusiastic about doing it at first, it was a stroke of genius on the parts of the original writing/producing team of John Carpenter and Debra Hill to start HALLOWEEN II exactly where the first film let off. Because Carpenter was busy on post-production for ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and beginning pre-production on THE THING, the direction of HALLOWEEN II was entrusted to first-timer Rick Rosenthal. For the most part, Rosenthal does a highly credible job, creating a great amount of suspense, though he really can't do much about the sometimes inane characters and often clunky dialogue in the Carpenter/Hill screenplay. Carpenter's original musical themes, synthesized by Alan Howarth, make a welcome return. Best of all is the usual excellent cinematography from Dean Cundey, who worked on the original film and would later go on to JURASSIC PARK and APOLLO 13.

Apart from the thinness of the screenplay, however, HALLOWEEN II has one very serious thing wrong with it, and for that the blame rests with Carpenter himself. Supposedly, fearing that Rosenthal's suspense-laden approach (which closely follows the original) was now too old-fashioned in light of such HALLOWEEN-inspired clones as FRIDAY THE 13TH, Carpenter went back in during post-production and shot some extraneously graphic and gory murder inserts to spice up the film's box office potential. These scenes, among which included the slitting of the marshal's throat, the two hypos-in-the-eyeballs, and the horrific dunking of Shoop into an overheated hydrotherapy pool, were gratuitous and totally unnecessary. They didn't make the film better; arguably, they just made HALLOWEEN II into another HALLOWEEN clone.

But when the film concentrates solely on the Curtis-Pleasance-Shape triangle, it manages to overcome these gruesome problems. In particular, the chase scene through the hospital corridors in which Curtis, hobbling from her wounds and the anesthesia she had to take after first entering the hospital and unable to totally outrun the Shape, is atmospheric and suspenseful, and closely mirrors the similarly paced chase scene that concludes Michael Crichton's 1973 sci-fi classic WESTWORLD. Curtis and Pleasance are every bit as good as they were the first time around, and the film benefits from fairly good turns from Moyer, Ana Alicia, and Hunter Von Leer.

Overall, it may seem I am really putting HALLOWEEN II down as just another bad sequel. In truth, I am giving it a marginal recommendation because there is enough good stuff to outweigh the unnecessary blood and gore. I only wish Carpenter didn't feel the need to succumb to box office considerations. Had he just left Rosenthal's work alone, this film could have been the equal to its predecessor.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age