HALLOWEEN II: HALLOWEENIER

I've been putting this off for quite some time, but it's finally here. Halloween 2 in hotdogvision. The live blogging event of the century. Presented in minor installments over the course of the movie. I bought the combo with Halloween III, which I've actually never seen in its entirety, so if this goes well maybe I'll embarrass myself some more with that one.

I should make it clear that though I have ranked this as high as #6 of my favorite horror movies, I haven't seen this in a long time. In my apartment on a sunny enough Sunday afternoon, it won't compare to seeing it on the ceiling of the Fels Planetarium, but it'll do. So yeah, as soon as the basketball game (Go Davidson) is over, It's on.

Okay, before I start, things I remember about this movie.
-Donald Pleasance talking about Samhaim
-the kid from The Last Starfighter paired with the dad from the Fast Getaway movies*.
-helloooo nurse!
-hot tub scene.
-Jamie Lee Curtis trying to scream, in one of the most horrific (to me, at least) horror movie moments EVER.

So without further delay, we will begin momentarily.

Opening credits: "Mr. Sandman"

the scene opens just seconds before the last movie ends. From this vantage point, we see Donald Pleasance** showing up in time to shoot Mike Myers in the head.

I love this intro. I love that you're sucked right back into the events of the first movie. I almost wished I'd watched it as a preamble.

oh snap Myers' body has done up and run off!

whatever can Sam Loomis do about this?

great line: "Is this some kinda joke? I been trick-or-treated to death out here"
loomis: "you don't know what death is!"

BAM

music by John Carpenter. Almost always a plus. Notice the jazzed up intro music. Synth!

it opens with creepy mask-breathing and walking through some alleys. a dog barking. Loomis in the background, raving like the lunatic that he is. It's awesome.
"I shot him six times! He's not human!"
beautiful.

then he descends on an elderly couple.

which is almost refreshing. You almost never see the elderly in horror movies, especially teen-based (i.e. most of them). It's nice to know how susceptible the are to supernatural serial killers as well as sex-and-alcohol-driven teens.

but, in a shock move, he's not killing them. You just see him in the background, stealing a kitchen knife. Also a nice touch. Let that be a lesson to you kids. Wanna not get stabbed by Michael Myers? GROW OLD AND CRANKY.

notice Night of the Living Dead playing in the background.

heh.
"teenagers murdered? that's just three blocks from here. I can hear the sirens coming"
"they say the guy got away"

yeah... I think we saw that coming. I feel like this movie becomes a lot gorier than the first one, possibly to keep up with the slashfest that was taking place at the time in rival series.

A drugged up Jamie Lee Curtis is stuffed into an ambulance and our two bumbling drivers picked up the ride of their lives!

sorry. I had to say it.

Random shot of a little girl bleeding, and her mom consoling her. I have no idea what this is in relation to.

16:00
"where's doc richards?"
"he's been at the country club. I think he's drunk!"
"great"

followed by a slightly pervy and clearly wasted doctor trying to drug a clearly terrified Jamie Lee Curtis/Laurie Strode.

the ambulance drivers look on

I love the idea of a possibly senile and certainly unaccredited psychiatrist fiddling with a gun in the passenger seat of cop car. Talking about the devil.

and then then the most random and violent death ever.
apparently, there's a lot of dynamite delivery trucks in Haddonfield, IL.

Last Starfighter Ambulance driver guy walks in on a drugged up Laurie Strode. It's pretty creepy, as you get this barely coherent vibe from her while he's totally hot to trot.

"you cracked a bone"
shit, she fended off a serial killer all night. lay off.

dude is still hitting on her. Hey pay, next time wait until it doesn't seem so date-rapey.

22:00
the sheriff's daughter (who you may remember smoking dope and then later getting murdered in the first movie) is found slaughtered.

a clearly befuddled Dr. Loomis stammers for a few minutes.

that may not be Michael Myers that died? you so crazy, Dr. Loomis.

"there was nothing within him, neither conscience not reason that wasn't even remotely human."

word.

Let's go ID the body.

we're introduced now to a seemingly random ditzy woman leaving a party? What's her connection to this whole sordid affair?

then, the best shot ever of a kid in a cowboy hat and a radio on his shoulder bumps into Mike Myers before shuffling off.

26:00
it turns out the ditz is a nurse at the very same hospital where our heroine Laurie Strode has been taken! and MM somehow knew that and followed her to work!
this also introduces a nurse who more than likeyl is going to work good and liquored up. I'm just saying.

28:00
"hi, I'm an out of shape and inept security guard"
"hi, you've got minutes to live"

"amazing grace, come sit on my face.
don't make me cry, I need your pie"
-Leo Rossi, breaking shit down.

we see a slightly adjacent door and suddenly we're in MM's point of view. he's just cruisin the hallways. of course slutty nurse emerges, adjusting her uniform. she's late, and in trouble. You see MM cross your line of site a few times in the back. it's awesome.

then, Laurie finds out who it was that attacked her. I completely forgot that it wouldn't have been drilled into her head like it has in mine by now.

Billy's still hitting on the semi-conscious chick.
creep city.

the phones in the hospital are out. Because Laurie may be drugged up, she's not a complete idiot and realizes that something is up.

security guard signs his death warrant. if you see a disturbance on a remote part of your workplace while an escaped mental patient serial killer is on the loose in your area, you sit tight until morning. I'd be drining coffee and loading weapons INSIDE.

but son't worry. At first it's just a cat.
then it's "hey, there's a lot of lawn care tools missing from this shed. Where's the machete?"
he tries to radio for help, but the nurse he left in charge of the walkie talkie happens to be an idiot.

a great scene where the security guard opens a closet door to be deluged in paint cans. ha!
you can pretty much see the grim spectre of death behind this guy. and there it is. the sharp end of a hammer.

sut to the lab. the coroner can't say who this body it is. But we the viewers KNOW that MM is on the loose and feeling stabby. or slashy. or both.

now, people are rioting and throwing bricks at the Myers' house. ummm, why? Right about now, I'd be throwing rocks at people that look like Michael Myers...

So Loomis and the cops show up. They're gonna get into the Myers house to see what all this mess is about.

43:00
Loomis has a lot of giant exaggerations about MM. He must sit around at the asylum, writing these up for when he'll need them.
then we find out a teen in a mask is missing. THEY KILLED THE WRONG PERSON IN AN OLD WILLIAM SHATNER MASK BY ACCIDENT!

and Leo Rossi picks a gret night to make a pass at a co-worker. again.

Rossi: "what's the big deal? everyone's all weirded out"
dude, did you see the disemboweled folks on the news?

48:00
and we've got the one nurse naked in the standard hospital hot tub naked. She shows up late for work, drunk. and she works in the NICU.
and 15 minutes later she's naked in the hot tub with Leo Rossi.
I guess it happens to the best of us.

OH AND THE HOT TUB IS GETTING HOTTER!!!

50:00
Rossi's bare ass. He's gonna go "fix" the hot tub. and by "fix" we all know that means "die".
there's a great shot of the nurse drying off as we see Leo Rossi get manhandled to death by MM in the background.

Then he sneaks in and is giving the nurse a massage!

I find it great that she
A) doesn't realize se's nibbling on giant, blood-stained hands and
B) it's highly unlikely that Leo Rossi went, fixed the hot tub, and then decided to put on a ratty jumpsuit and rejoin with you for some sexual hijinx.

then he shovers her face in boiling water.
but they show her boobs once more before she's fleshless and dead.

53:00
next scene. Loomis and the cops are checking out the local elementary school, the first place to check in any ase of serial killings.
"Samhain".
excellent.

this nurse from the old Myers case shows up. It would seem she's here just to ruffle Loomis' feathers. Which is totally fine by me because that dude's hilarious.

55:00
more footage of driver whispering to drugged up Laurie Strode. I swear of this movie was remotely realistic, he'd be the villain.

then, we get a shot of a nurse trying to raise a doctor from sleep only to discover that he's been HYPODERMIC NEEDLED IN THE EYEBALL
and that unfortunately, that same fate awaits her.

59:00
M uses his hoodoo to break into Laurie's room and stab the shit out of... HER PILLOWS!
turns out she's smarter than that and left the room to wander the halls.

1:01:00
Laurie makes her way into a room, remembers suddenly that the phones are out.
she inches along the floor some more and falls asleep.

1:03:00
now we catch up with the blond nurse, who has no idea what's going on (apparently there's an xbox lounge for the staff at this hospital or somrething). she's looking for out departed security guard and comes across creepy las starfightin' ambo diver.

something is afoot. people are missing.

He then stumbles into the doctor's office from earlier and sees the nurse tied up and unconscious. Then he slips and passes out in a massive puddle of blood. I will say this again. He slips and passes out in a massive puddle of blood.

Blond nurse leaves to drive to get help and somebody's rigged it so her car wouldn't start. and slashed the tires on all the cars in the parking lot. Why he slashed all those tires but fucked with her motor is beyond me, but it shows foresight, I guess.

1:08
Laurie is still dazed, and wandering the halls from thehospital. Then the blond nurse sees her and, running after Laurie- is caught by MM and stabbed, then suspended, with a hypodermic needle. Laurie's like "yeah, I'm running away to the safest, easily escaped place ever"
yup. the basement. Where we see out pal the security guard.

1:10:00
a genuinely hair-raising escape from the basement. Since you know she's at least momentarily safe from stabbings and slashing, it's pretty much time to discover some bodies.

and the escape in the elevator. I think James Cameron stole this scene for T2, but what's important is that the elevator door that closes on MM's hand is so a safety door and that they have to cut just before the door would spring open again, leaving poor Laurie Strode to her death.

1:13:45
"In order the appease the gods, the druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners, war criminals, the insane, animals were...burned alive...in baskets. by observing the way they died, the druids believed they could see omens of the future. 2,000 years later we've come no further. Samhain isn't evil spirits, it isn't goblins, ghosts or witches. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the dark in ourselves.

the nurse brings up a secret file. Pleasance saying "I'VE SEEN ALL THE FILES" is priceless.
Jamie Lee/Laurie Strode is Michael Myer's sister?

oh, Loomis is pissed. He's gon go buckwild! He pulls a gun on a cop! and fires it in a closed police car, surely damaging the ears of everyone there.

Laurie's hiding in the car in the parking lot that Jimmy shows up in, tries to start for 5 minute, then passes out on the horn.

yeah, nobody wants that. She knocks him off, and falls to her feet in the parking lot, remembering suddenly that she's traumatic and drugged up.
Loomis and the gang arive and enter the hospital, walking right past the crawling Laurie Stride.
she cannot raise her voice.
then, as soon as the door closes, she lets out a blood-curdling scream.

of course MM then enters the parking lot. Laurie discovers a whole lot of energy in reserve and springs to her feet, pounding on the door for help.

Loomis lets her in, then locks the door.

t's a glass door, so of course MM walks RIGHT THROUGH IT.
then Loomis shoots him in the head 3 times. He exclaims that MM isn't dead. But the deputy is stupid enough to gawk over Myers' body. and of course he gets knifed in the chest. You'd think it'd be standard operating procedure at this point to just start hacking limbs off Myers' body at this point.

1:22:00
Dr. Loomis and Laurie Stroed (together again!) make their way into an OR. Loomis decides starts producing firearms and makes a play at shooting MM when he walks through the door. but his gun jams.
so yeah, scalpel to the chest.

Laurie shoots Michael twice in the head. and despite logic, manages to hit him in each eye.
then, to defy logic even further, he's still alive and swinging that scalpel!

Loomis, with his dying breath, decides he wants to get his buzz on, so he starts opening up all the cannisters of ether. Niiiice.

Laurie sneaks out while Loomis coaxes MM over towards him by saying "It's time, Michael".
Personally, I'd take that as a cue to leave, but of course MM walks towards his voice, only to see Loomis light his lighter and blow shit up in the process.

Laurie, hiding a hallway away fromt he explosion, sees a masked figure and emerge from the fiery wreckage and approach. slowly and unstoppable...

until it stops, a few steps later. closeup of the mask burning.

Michael Myers is dead! at least for one more movie.

They load Laurie Strode into another ambulance. At this point, I'd rather just lie in a ditch and hope to heal through the power of prayer or something.

1:27:00
Laurie Strode is seen in the passenger seat, clearly with a lot on her mind. The screen goes dark, and "Mr. Sandman" starts up.

END.

so there you go, Halloween 2 in an extraneously large nutshell.

hey, I never said it'd be entertaining.



*I'm not nearly embarrassed enough for knowing that as I should be.
**a great actor, or the greatest actor?