This story originally ran in the baiduhai on Oct. 30, 1981.
One of the things that separated John Carpenter’s terrific 1978 horror film “Halloween” from the rest of the mad-slasher movies was that director Carpenter was able to scare us even in scenes set in daylight. If you see Friday night’s network presentation of “Halloween,” you probably will notice the wonderful scene in which the killer appears and disappears in broad daylight behind a huge hedge on one of the sleepy residential streets in mythical Haddonfield, Ill.
Anybody can scare you at night; but in daylight, that’s rare. And “Halloween” went on to become an enormous critical and commercial hit. By some reckoning it’s the most financially successful film ever made by an independent production company.
There was, of course, a lot of negative fallout from the success of the film. As with every unexpected huge hit in the movie business, many imitations followed. Carpenter had tapped a big market, and each studio rushed to make or at least distribute “another Halloween.” The result was a lot of films that were hacking apart beautiful young women.
Now comes another predictable result from the success of “Halloween”: “Halloween II.” Director Carpenter is credited in part with writing the script, but, in his eagerness to grow out of the horror film genre, he turned over the director’s reins to Rick Rosenthal, who previously has made documentaries for the New Hampshire Public Television Network. Rosenthal is out of his league here, although Carpenter’s script has more than its own share of problems.
The result is a standard mad-slasher movie with more killings than thrills. In fact, if it didn’t have the same unnerving killer with the face that glows in the dark, you wouldn’t pay any attention to this film. It’s sort of dumb; it takes place only at night; and it moves slowly until the last quarter-hour.
For those who haven’t seen the original, “Halloween” was the story of a 6-year-old boy who was disturbed at the sight of his older sister making love to her boyfriend. He killed his sister, was put away in a mental home, and escaped 15 years later on Halloween to terrorize his hometown and, in particular, a young baby sitter (Jamie Lee Curtis). The film ended with the doctor (Donald Pleasance) who treated the boy in the hospital firing six shots point-blank into the now-grown young man. The seemingly dead killer fell out of a second-story window, and we presumed he was dead. But just at the end of the film, he no longer was dead on the ground. He lived!
“Halloween” picks up that story, reprising the end of the first film (with a couple of new camera angles), and goes on to tell what happened during the rest of that Halloween.
Unfortunately, what happened turns out to be a lot of predictable killing scenes. You know them well by now. The music cues you to a big moment, but death is forestalled. It’s only a cat or some such thing. Then, as the potential victim relaxes — whammo! — he or she is nailed.
The one big plot development in the story is that “Halloween II” explains why the killer is particularly drawn to Jamie Lee Curtis. Who cares? We want tension and excitement, not explanations.
It’s not really meaningful to talk about performances in a film such as this; the director is always the star in a horror film. We are supposed to feel locked in his (or her) control. But I watched “Halloween II” from afar, checking off the implausibilities right down to the very last shot.
The only thing this film has going for it is the presence of the killer. He never speaks. He never runs. He just walks steadily forward, carrying a knife. He just appears — out of nowhere. We spot him with his whitened face. It’s a very creepy effect.
But we experienced that in “Halloween.” Then new film offers nothing more and a lot less.
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