John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote a great sequel. They continue their use of lighting tricks and psychological tricks to keep the terror going. John Carpenter and Debra Hill almost single handedly jump started the horror genre.
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to get treatment of her injuries. Michael Myers finds out where Laurie is and makes his way to the hospital. Somehow he gets inside.
I love this whole series, not so much the third one, but for most part the whole series. There are plenty of scenes I like that others like just as much.
The first scene I like is when Jimmy Lloyd (Lance Guest) walks into a minor surgery room to get Mrs. Alves (Gloria Gifford), the head nurse. Jimmy doesn't notice the red liquid on the floor under Mrs. Alves until he see the needle and hose sticking out of Mrs. Alves's arm. He quickly stands up to leave the room, but slips on what turns out to be blood, and is knocked unconscious.
The second scene I like is when Michael finds Laurie. Laurie runs, as best she can on a fractured ankle, from Michael. She makes her way down a set of stairs into the basement, Michael follows. Laurie gets cornered, but sees a window that leads into another section of the basement and she climbs through just as Michael gets to her. Laurie gets to the elevator and the doors close just as Michael reaches them.
The third scene I liked was when Dr. Loomis and Laurie are pursued into an operating room by Michael. Michael stabs Loomis with a scalpel, but doesn't kill him. Laurie takes the gun that Loomis gave her and shoots Michael, apparently, in both eyes. Loomis opens the compressed tanks, pure oxygen and ether, and uses a lighter to ignite the gas. Fortunately, Laurie has escaped, but witnesses Michael walk out of the surgical room engulfed in flames. He falls to the ground, again, apparently dead.
Some other great scenes are when it is discovered that Michael had been to the elementary school and he stabbed the sister of a drawing of a family. Michael also wrote the word "Samhain" on the chalk board in blood. Dr. Loomis explains that "Samhain" is the Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "dark half" of the year. Samhain is celebrated between sunset on October 31 to sunset on November 1. In Halloween II it is explained that Samhain is also the Druid God of Death.
Or when Annie Brackett (Nancy Kyes), Lynda van der Klok (P.J. Soles) and Bob Simms (John Michael Graham) are taken out of the Wallace house. Annie's father, Sheriff Lee Brackett (Charles Cyphers), pulls back the sheet covering her face. Before going home to tell his wife their daughter is dead, Sheriff Brackett berates Dr. Loomis for letting Michael escape in the first place.
Also in Halloween II we find out that Laurie Strode and Michael Myers are brother and sister. Laurie was born two years before Michael killed his older sister, Judith Myers (portrayed by Sandy Johnson in Halloween). A few years after Michael killed Judith, Laurie's birth parents were killed in a car accident and she was adopted by the Strode family.
I give Halloween II 10 stars out of 10. If they haven't been already, I declare that the first two movies of the Halloween Franchise are classics. They are pure psychological thrillers. John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote perhaps the two best Horror/Thriller movies of the last 35 years. Carpenter and Hill take what Alfred Hitchcock did during his career and expanded on his psychological genius.
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