Halloween 2 (1981)

Tagline: “More of the Night HE Came Home.”
Duration: 92 minutes

Film Quality: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 2.5/5
Gore Content: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Introduction

Following the incredible success of John Carpenter’s original ‘Halloween’, a sequel seemed inevitable, especially considering the cliffhanger ending! Shelving notions of using the ‘Halloween’ franchise for a series of unconnected, standalone movies, Carpenter and Hill agreed to bring Myers back for a second outing, ultimately deciding on a hospital as the setting for a film that, largely, takes place in the early hours of November 1st!

In a Nutshell

You can’t kill the bogeyman! With Myers shot several times and plummeting out of a top floor window we know from the end of the first movie that he’s still at large. Picking up at the precise moment the first film left off, we are reunited with the survivors struggling to come to terms with the tragic events of Halloween night. Laurie is one of those and is taken to hospital suffering from shock and her physical wounds but, unfortunately for her, Myers knows where she is and, to paraphrase an 80s action classic, he absolutely will not stop…until she is dead.

So, what’s good about it?

I’ll freely admit that I have a few problems with ‘Halloween 2’. It was the last one of the first four movies that I saw so I was well versed in the formula and how the film was likely to play out. ‘Halloween’ is a belting classic and part 4 is a very well made follow up but there’s something about part 2 that doesn’t work for me. I’ll leave that for the next section and focus on what does work for the moment.

There is a clear commitment to trying something new and I’m glad that they didn’t go down the line of setting the film several years after the first one. By setting up an open ending from the first film there seemed to be an obligation to service that. I can’t think of another slasher movie that does this, which gives it the opportunity to focus on the survivors and the aftermath which provides the film with a bit of melodrama missing from most films of its type. You can see the anger directed at Loomis and the Haddonfield community looking for someone to blame. There’s emergency services trying to come to terms with what’s happened, including the Sherriff who is forced off duty to deal with the trauma of finding out that his daughter is one of the victims. By approaching the film in this way it gives it a fairly unique, even emotional feel, a darker edge that leaves you to think in more real terms about the consequences of the deaths you watched in the first film.

I do quite like the transference of the action to the hospital setting, even if it is unnaturally quiet! Hospitals can be eerie places when virtually deserted, we’re so used to seeing them as a hive of activity. It’s also a place that subconsciously arouses feelings of unease. You would usually visit a hospital either for treatment or to visit someone who is having treatment, it’s never for a good reason. With most slasher films set around places of fun (summer camp, fairground, house party, sorority house for example), it is a gloomy and interesting place to set the scene.

It allows the film to start with little or no exposition, we get straight into the action thanks to the heavy lifting of Carpenter’s original. It is reasonably well shot and director Rick Rosenthal (only his second feature and would go on to direct ‘Halloween: Resurrection’) went on record to say he had studied the original and tried to emulate its style, going so far as to avoid onscreen gore. This element was added in later, mainly at Carpenter’s request (apparently he re-edited an original submission because it wasn’t tense or gruesome enough) due to the trend amongst contemporary slashers of trying to outdo the last one. To that end it does deliver with some fairly violent scenes, including a burning/drowning lifted from Argento’s ‘Deep Red’, a couple of throat slashings and a tough to watch syringe in the eyeball scene.

It’s also good to see Jamie Leigh Curtis back although she’s not given as much to do in this film, spending much of it in a hospital bed in a catatonic state.

And what about the bad?

It just doesn’t seem right and, for me, has some serious pacing issues! So many slasher films rely on a slow build to increase the tension so perhaps this film suffers a little by dropping us straight into the action, not really leaving it with anywhere else to go. There are a couple of slayings that take place in houses before Myers gets to the hospital but this almost feels like ‘seen it before’ filler as the film slows down to a snail’s pace in order to reset itself at the hospital. Myers is already in the picture, he’s already there killing people from the very first minute. Carpenter said himself that he struggled with the script because he was forced to tell a story that had pretty much already been told. By doing something different it does deviate from the tried and tested formula whichis where those pacing issues come from – it’s a victim of its own bold intentions. As a consequence it’s very difficult to watch in isolation, it is very much attached to the original.

Whilst praising the setting, it provides major limitations. We’re subjected to laboured shots of empty corridors with Myers hiding in the various utility rooms and maintenance offices with relatively predictable results. Bizarrely, Myers seems less omnipotent within these corridors because of its confined nature. The murders seem so pointless with security guards and medical staff who get in his way rather than the slow stalking of babysitters that provided so much of the tension and prial scares of the original. No frightened children in this one, just doctors and nurses failing in their duty of care to patients!

And then there’s the music which, though utilising the same basic score of the original, the piano is replaced by a slightly underwhelming synthesiser. In many ways the score sums up the entire film. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it and it has many of the elements of the original, it just doesn’t satisfy in the same way and comes across as trying too hard to emulate something it can’t possibly match.

Any themes?

There’s an attempt to add some reason to why Michael Myers is stalking Laurie and it’s one that Carpenter acutely disliked but ended up shaping the entire series, in fact it still does with the latest ‘Halloween’ sequels. It’s the family connection that drives Myers to kill, wanting to finish off what he started in Haddonfield all those years ago as a child. It also introduces, albeit very fleetingly, the festival of Samhain that has very strong links to Halloween and the custom of dressing up in frightening and uncanny costumes. The festival also has strong links to family and sacrifice which gives the chasing of Laurie, and subsequent pursuit of Jamie in part 4 some meaning.

Some stories of the Samhain ritual included the burning of pumpkins that contained human fat, possibly a foreshadowing of Myers’ eventual death, along with the burning of witches. It’s interesting to note that you cannot kill a witch by burning and Myers comes back in further sequels despite succumbing to an inferno at the end of this film. It would be very easy to say that the introduction of the supernatural to replace the preternatural aspects of the original was a gimmick to continue the series but the intention appeared to be, certainly according to Carpenter, to end it all here.

Release history…

Carpenter insisted on the film having more blood to compete with the shock value of other slasher movies and these additional scenes did get it into trouble with UK censors. Though initially released uncut for the 1981 Thorn EMI VHS, a total of seventeen seconds were relieved of their sequel duties for the Castle re-release. It all came from the boiled dunking which presumably created problems with the BBFC due to the violent nature (five dunkings were reduced to just two) and the potentially sexual element of the bare breasted body sinking to the ground which was also edited. Subsequent versions have come through unscathed and by today’s standards it is quite tame. As was very common with studio pictures at the time, a TV version was edited that removed all of the violence and extra shots of dialogue whilst omnipresent camerawork was inserted to pad out the running time.

Cultural impact?

It had quite an impact in the series by providing that family link that runs all the way down the middle of pretty much every sequel and reboot. It may not have been popular with Carpenter but it is what gave the franchise some legs and a relatable element, even a sense of purpose for Myers’ future endeavours. Whilst the original did supremely well without it, it is hard to imagine the sequels without that link to Laurie, perhaps why Carpenter so disliked it given his intentions for the series. The link to the supernatural also provided a plot point for the lamentable 6th instalment which managed the dubious achievement of being worse than 5!

Final thoughts?

A strong entry in the slasher genre provided some unique moments in terms of setting but it suffers by comparison to it predecessor. I can’t reconcile this aspect of the film, it’s like listening to a cover version of your favourite song, it may well be very good for people hearing it for the first time but to ears that have already heard the original, it just doesn’t sound the same.

Memorable Quotes

Loomis: “He became an obsession with me until I realised that there was nothing within him, neither conscious nor reason that was even remotely human.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Halloween’, ‘Halloween 4’, ‘Black Christmas’, ‘Friday the 13th

Related Reviews…

Halloween – Click here for full review
Halloween 3: Season of the Witch – Click here for full review
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – Click here for full review
Black Christmas – Click here for full review
The Burning– Click here for article
Friday 13th – Click here for full review

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Title: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Tagline: “Ten years ago he changed the face of Halloween. Now he’s back.”
Duration: 88 minutes

Film Quality: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 3/5
Gore Content: 2/5
Originality: 2/5

Introduction

With audiences disappointed that everyone’s favourite serial killer was replaced with a mad Irish megalomaniac who put ground up pieces of Stonehenge in Halloween masks to satisfy his genocidal tendencies, it was time to give those fans the blood they’d been baying for. John Carpenter’s idea for the franchise to become a series of, ultimately unconnected standalone films was abandoned and the decision was taken to pretend that the Season of the Witch never happened and to bring Myers back from the dead.

In a Nutshell

With Myers in a comatose state for the past ten years and still under the unsympathetic treatment plan of Dr Loomis, the decision is made to transfer him. Of course it presents him with the perfect opportunity to abscond and plough a path of destruction towards Haddonfield where the seven year old daughter of the now deceased Laurie Strode still lives. He hasn’t gone there to make up for seven missed birthdays either, it’s time for another night of terror as Haddonfield relives its worst nightmare.

So, what’s good about it?

Considering that this is the third sequel to a fading horror franchise at a time when the slasher movie was so far past its prime it needed a stair lift to get onto the cinema screen, this is a pretty good effort all round. Perhaps it’s because it was the first Halloween film I had the pleasure of viewing and was already a little freaked out by the appearance of Myers’ mask but I found this to be a hugely enjoyable experience. Not realising on first viewing how close it sails to the waters of Carpenter’s original, it does enough to stand up well on its own and I’d perhaps go so far as to say that it comes, albeit a distant, second to the original in terms of those early franchise efforts.

It’s got some pretty good scares, including Jamie’s (Laurie’s 7 year old orphan) nightmares, that go some way to foreshadowing what is an incredible ending. But first I want to concentrate on that brilliant pre-credits scene at the very beginning. Perhaps it’s a nod to one of Carpenter’s original plans for unconnected films but those shots within an abandoned farm with damaged and weather beaten Halloween costumes surrounding rusty machinery is incredibly effective. It serves no purpose or relevance to the rest of the film other than to unnerve and get you in the mood for a few scares. The film doesn’t quite live up to this opening but it really is very classy, underpinned by an eerie score, and you’re left with a very uneasy feeling of what may have happened there.

The film takes a leaf out of the ‘Jaws’ playbook by wisely keeping Myers in the shadows for the most part, although this could have been due to the well-documented problems of recreating the infamous mask! After his escape we don’t see much of him and it’s really only during the last third when he comes into his own. It’s stylistically similar to Carpenter’s original in the sense that we get a few point of view shots before Myers moves into the frame, there’s an omnipresence about Myers that becomes literal at one point when Loomis and Sherriff Meeker are confronted by what ppears to be three of him. An initial, and very interesting premise looked at the effect the events of the original had on Haddonfield where the spirit and memory of Myers took on a life of its own, with the teenagers almost literally bringing Myers back to life in a spiritual sense. That scene appears to be all that remained of that interesting idea that was maybe inspired by Wes Craven’s Elm Street series.

There are a few sly winks to the original in terms of characters. No mention is made of Jamie’s Dad but her second name is Lloyd, the same surname as Jimmy in ‘Halloween 2’, whilst minor characters Tommy and Lindsay could well be the two child survivors of the original. It’s little knowing touches like that, as well as the autumnal feel from the golden leaves falling from the trees and overall feel of the movie that ensure that it fits in remarkably well as a ‘Halloween’ sequel.

And of course there’s Donald Pleasance. I always found him to be a little overbearing in the first two films. Of course Myers is a child killer but as he says himself “In many ways he was the perfect patient” which kind of makes his complete lack of compassion all the more strange. It makes more sense in this film. His rambling about pure evil and the devil’s eyes have a basis in the reality of the film so his character seems more rounded and the scars of his experience, both physical and mental are there for all to see.

And what about the bad?

It’s not that it’s a bad film, far from it. In terms of the ‘Halloween’ franchise it may well be the best of the Myers sequels, it’s just that it tries so hard to follow in the footsteps of the original that it’s in danger of bumping into it. Due to the nature of the date-themed title it will inevitably utilise similar themes and tropes of the season but come on. He escapes again, he leaves a trail of destruction again, he’s after a young family member again, his own doctor is after him again whilst rambling like a madman again. It’s a reasonably good carbon copy that is saved somewhat by the surprise ending and the fact that it’s a very accomplished film.

It also chooses to both acknowledge and ignore ‘Halloween 2’. Both Myers and Loomis have burns, despite Myers literally melting into a pile of goo in the hospital-set second instalment, yet the security guard at the start says he was shot six times, ignoring the ‘bullet wounds’ from ‘Halloween 2’. Is this a way of pretending that Laurie shot him in both eyes so would be, at best, blind never happened? Nit-picking maybe but make your mind up.

Still, if a few glaring continuity errors and not being as good as one of the greatest horror films of all time are the worst you can say about a film then they’re also doing a lot right!

Any themes?

There could have been! Carpenter’s original script suggested that the myth of Myers would somehow become real by repressing the Halloween holiday. That tremendously eerie opening scene kind of doffs its cap to that idea, suggesting that Halloween has long since been abandoned and been replaced by the frightening remnants of what it represents. As mentioned before and as referenced by Loomis himself “They’ll see his face on every corner” and that fear is made real as the ‘Simpsons’ style baying mob kill an innocent teenager believing him to be Myers. That would have been a genuinely interesting concept and it’s a shame it wasn’t properly pursued in favour of remaking the original.

When it all comes down to it it’s another family affair and it is interesting that the main deviation from the original sees Myers going for the kid instead of the babysitter which does add a different perspective to the scares. Yes, Rachael is a very resourceful final girl but it’s Jamie that we fear for most of all, putting a child at the centre of the vulnerability stakes…the scne where he chases Jmie across the rooftops is genuinely tense and frightening. It’s interesting that when she walks towards Myers and touches his hand, she shows no fear, made all the more significant by that very final scene. Another aspect of an original script that was removed involved Myers tracking down his niece to reconcile but is unable to show any emotion and resorts to violence, this remains at the very end but he’s gunned down before he can finish the act. That Jamie becomes possessed by his rage, wearing the very same clown costume worn by the young Myers all those years ago introduces the concept of destiny that is sadly discarded by Part 5 in favour of a telepathic link…sigh!

Release history…

No issue over censorship at all, in fact quite the opposite. Concerned that the film wasn’t violent enough they shot some additional gory scenes during post production which is when we get the thumb through the head, the throat ripping and the crowbar murder.

Cultural impact?

It’d become something of a cult favourite and many regard the film as one of, if not THE best Halloween sequel. In truth it’s an above average and fairly straight down the middle slasher film at a time when they were seriously out of fashion. What it did do was bring back the horror icon and we’ve not looked back with further, pretty dire sequels churned out, two Rob Zombie ‘reboots’ that divide opinion, further Jamie Leigh-Curtis starred efforts and a brand new one that ignores all of the above, including part 4! You can’t keep a good bogey man down so for that, Part 4, we thank you!

Final thoughts?

You can watch this film with a gentle nod of approval because it does most of what you expect it to do and it doe it with quiet efficiency. Other than the opening and closing two minutes it doesn’t really do anything progressive but it does deliver the goods and reintroduced a salivating public to the Michael Myers we know and love.

Memorable Quotes

Loomis: “Six bodies, Sheriff! That's what I've seen between here and Ridgemont! A filling station in flames! I'm telling you Michael Myers is here, in this town! He's here to kill that little girl and anybody who gets in his way!”

Loomis: “You're talking about him as if he were a human being. That part of him died years ago.”

Security Guard: “Jesus ain’t got nothing to do with this place.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Halloween’, ‘Halloween 2’, ‘Black Christmas’

Related Reviews…

Halloween – Click here for full review
Halloween 3: Season of the Witch – Click here for full review
Black Christmas – Click here for full review
The Burning– Click here for article
Friday 13th – Click here for full review

The DPP 39: Video Nasties List - Part 11

In 1984, the Video Recordings Act ushered in a terrifying new era in UK home video entertainment. The regulation and subsequent censorship of home videos by the British Board of Film Classification led to a number of films being seized by the authorities and prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. In total, 39 of these films were successfully prosecuted, over the coming months The Horror Video will look very briefly at the release history of each film and its current status. To view the rest of the series…

Part 1: ‘Absurd’, ‘Anthropophagus’ and ‘Axe’, click here
Part 2: ‘Bay of Blood’, ‘The Beast in Heat’ and ‘Blood Feast’, click here
Part 3: ‘Blood Rites’, ‘Bloody Moon’ and ‘The Burning’, click here
Part 4: ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’, ‘Cannibal Ferox’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, click here
Part 5: ‘The Cannibal Man’, ‘The Devil Hunter’ and ‘Don’t Go in the Woods’, click here
Part 6: ‘The Driller Killer’, ‘Evilspeak’ and ‘Expose’, click here
Part 7: ‘Faces of Death’, ‘Fight for Your Life’, ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’, click here
Part 8: ‘Forest of Fear’, ‘The Gestapo’s Last Orgy’ and ‘The House by the Cemetery’, click here
Part 9: ‘House on the Edge of the Park’, ‘I Spit on Your Grave’, ‘Island of Death’, click here
Part 10: ‘The Last House on the Left’, ‘Love Camp 7’, ‘Madhouse, click here

Title: Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)

Director: Jack Weis
Uncut Running Time: 95 minutes
Alternative Titles: None

A perfect example of how being placed on the DPP’s list and subsequently prosecuted has, on occasion, resulted in undeserved notoriety. Not quite a slasher film and not quite occult, it’s plot is not unlike H.G. Lewis’ classic piece of schlock ‘Blood Feast’ but without that all important side order of extra cheese…in fact this is more likely to induce unintentional outbursts of guffaws and smirks than anything else.

It’s not without a certain sleaze factor as an oddball named John scours the seedy underbelly of Louisiana for the most evil prostitutes so that he can tie them up, cut them up and then offer the most evil part (the heart, obviously) to a Peruvian goddess. It sounds like an entertaining premise but the execution (pun intended…sorry!) is not as good as the concept and, without the sense of delicious fun that embodied Lewis’ feast of fun, it all falls a little flat. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its place. I could well imagine watching this on the grindhouse circuit and, whilst the gore is repetitive in its use (the local butchers shop must have done a roaring trade during filming!), it is what it is…a straight shooting, very simple hybrid slasher movie that sets itself up for a sequel that never arrived.

Undeniably one of the lesser nasties, it does have something of a cult following and is still banned in the UK, though that’s most likely got nothing to do with any censorship issue and more to do with a distinct lack of interest. In terms of its release history, it saw a very brief VHS run in the UK on the Goldstar label but was courted and sacrificed to the goddess of moral panic in November 1983 and, just like any thoughts of a sequel, has never rematerialised. In terms of cuts, despite falling foul of the authorities, there has never been a censored version so if you can track it down online or on a shiny disc somewhere, it will be the full version.

Current Status: Still banned in the UK, available uncut on region free Code Red in the US.

Title: Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981)

Director: Romano Scavolini
Uncut Running Time: 97 minutes
Alternative Titles: ‘Nightmare’, ‘Schizo’, ‘Blood Splash’

One of the more notorious video nasties, the censorship history is just as entertaining as the film itself. Something of a ‘Halloween’ cash in with elements of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (that basic description probably makes it sound more artistic than it is) the story revolves around deviant George who undergoes a new form of psychotherapy to ‘correct’ his insanity following the brutal, sexually violent murder of his family. With his brain ‘reprogrammed’, it doesn’t stop the graphic nightmares and flashbacks, prompting him to seek out his ex-wife and family where the cycle of violence begins all over again.

As sleazy as it is nasty, there is a very unpleasant tone throughout the film that focusses on George’s sexual deviance as much as it revels in gruesome violence in glorious close up. Children are both the aggressors and the victims and there is something genuinely disturbing about seeing a child wielding an axe with hyper-violent consequences, arguably more so than seeing them as victims. We experience graphic evisceration, impalings, slicing and general destruction of bodies with lots of nudity…not surprising given that Scavolini’s history was in hardcore pornography; say no more! For fans of intense gore, his film truly delivers and it certainly stays in your (damaged?) brain for a while after the end credits, during which you will probably notice the name of a certain Tom Savini. The living legend has always denied working on the film, despite photographs and on set testimonies suggesting otherwise, some believing this could have been due to an issue over pay rather than any commentary on the quality of the film.

Moving onto censorship and the film takes on a life of its own. It’s the only one on the list that resulted in a personal prosecution with distributor David Hamilton Grant jailed for six months for the crime of releasing a version that was a whole minute longer than the BBFC-approved cut! What a time that must have been to be alive!!! Around three minutes was removed for the 1981 cinema release which led to the offending Oppidan VHS release that restored a minute of those cuts against the wishes of the authorities. Not helped by a publicity campaign that included vomit bag distribution and ‘guess the weight of the human brain in the jar’ competition (!), it wound up on the dependable DPP list in July 1983. An ‘uncut’ version was released in the UK in 2005 in Anchor Bay’s ‘Box of the Banned’, however this was another of those misleading incidents where it was simply not cut any further than the original cinema version. A shorter yet, paradoxically, more complete version was finally released by 88 Films in 2015, trimmed of non-offensive material only. Even that experienced problems and was withdrawn, likely due to paperwork not being filed correctly as it was eventually released with no incident later that year. In short…who knows what the full uncut version looks like!

Current Status: ‘Uncut’ version available on 88 Film in the UK, available in the US through Code Red missing 1’17” of material.

Title: Night of the Bloody Apes (1972)

Director: Rene Cardona
Uncut Running Time: 81 minutes
Alternative Titles: ‘The Horrible Human Beast’, ‘Horror and Sex’, ‘Gomar the Human Gorilla’


A man has open heart surgery to cure his leukaemia, turns into a man beast, goes on a kill crazy rampage and is brought to justice by a female wrestler…how many times have we heard that story? Well, in Mexico, at least once before because, believe it or not, this is a remake of the director’s earlier 1969 offering ‘La Horripilante Bestia Humana’. In fact it becomes apparent that, at the time, there was an appetite in the region for monsters and wrestlers to go toe to toe on the big screen so why not throw a bit of nudity, gore and violence into the mix. To be fair, this is fairly entertaining stuff and far too inoffensive to have wound up on the banned list, but there seems to have been a distinct lack of humour present in the appreciation of exploitation in the early 80s!

Glossing over the fact that the title promises apes in the plural (to be fair it’s not even an ape), it takes place over a period of days rather than a single night and that the most likely side effect of putting a gorilla heart into a human is tissue rejection, you can have some fun here. Some decent gore effects and nudity are present but the real highlight, and probably the reason for its inclusion on the list, was the appearance of genuine open heart surgery footage. It’s graphic, it’s far from brief and it’s the only thing about the film that is anything approaching realistic. One to watch with a beer and nachos!

The original cinema release was missing a minute, although this wasn’t the open heart surgery, instead removing much of the bedroom rape and murder as well as a stabbing. Iver released a very short lived, uncut VHS version in 1983 which was prosecuted by the end of the year, although even this version was missing two uncontentious scenes of just over a minute that was present in the 1993 Redemption DVD. Then comes a very odd 1993 VIPCO VHS release…it seems they accidentally unleashed an uncut version that was available for all of a few days before being withdrawn. Nobody seems to have seen this version but it was well documented at the time…if you have one then keep hold of it, it’s most likely highly collectible! This planned, cut version was never released until 1999 when Sovereign put it out, it was missing nearly three minutes of footage including a lot of the surgery, a beheading, scalping, eye gouging…there wasn’t much of interest left! Nucleus Films finally did the decent thing and put out the uncut version in 2012.

Current Status: Available Uncut in the UK on Nucleus Films and US via Something Weird.