Unlike the Friday the 13ths, which saw new installments arrive almost every year, Halloween sequels were not churned out on a regular basis in the '80s but yet hot on the heels of Halloween 4 in '88, suddenly we had Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers in theaters the following October. After striking gold with 4, producers had a newfound urgency in getting Michael Myers back on screen.
As it turns out, they really should've pumped the brakes and taken the time to put together a movie that was as well-crafted as 4. But hey, where's the fun in that? Better to rush through something shitty that will immediately blow up all the new momentum the series just got.
But at the time, from the fan's perspective at least, it felt pretty cool to be getting a new Halloween movie so soon. After 4, there was every reason to feel like things were in safe hands so there wasn't the feeling yet of "Oh, here we go again with another shitty sequel." And things had been so dry on that front throughout the '80s that it didn't seem so bad that the producers were eager to make up for lost time.
Halloween sequels in back to back years? Hell yeah, finally!
And hey, we can all agree that the trailer looked pretty good:
Ok, this is great! Loomis is back, Jamie Lloyd is back. Michael's back. We're picking up from where 4 left off and everything is awesome.
Then, of course the movie comes out and, well...
But hey. 1989 was a bad year for slashers all around with Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween all hitting rock bottom at once. It was probably the only way that the '80s could have ended, with all the big slasher franchises putting out their worst installments in one miserable year and everything collapsing into a trash heap.
Just the same, as time has gone on, I've learned to savor every Halloween sequel that gave us more Donald Pleasence, the true lynch pin of the franchise, the cinematography is the most stylized of the old school sequels, KNB's FX work (as much as the MPAA allowed to pass through) is solid, and it has to be said that Danielle Harris was excellent in her final performance as Jamie Lloyd. So Halloween 5...not a complete wash, in my adjusted for nostalgia opinion.
The craziest thing about 5 remains its cliffhanger ending. As much as it might've been a poorly planned move, I will attest that it really got the attention of my crowd back in '89. Who is this Man in Black? What the fuck is even going on?
As much as I'm glad we now live in a time where there's much more forethought given to sequels and where storylines are mapped out far in advance, I will say there is something charmingly bullshit about the way things used to be done.
I just wish that we had been able to get a Halloween 6 in 1990, with a still young Danielle Harris continuing as Jamie, Donald Pleasence still in good health and a more timely reveal for the Man in Black.
It would have been pretty wild though, don't you think, if we had never gotten another Halloween and 5's ending was the last we saw of Michael. Man, what an end to the franchise that would've been.
At one time, when a horror movie was successful it didn't automatically mean
that a franchise was born. For decades, Norman Bates remained incarcerated. After Leatherface danced by daybreak in the wake of Sally Hardesty's
escape, his chainsaw stayed silent for years.
So even though Michael Myers
disappeared from the lawn of the Doyle house after taking six bullets in the
chest at the end of Halloween, it didn't necessarily mean that audiences
would ever see him again.
Halloween's open ending may look like an
obvious, even cynical, sequel set up from today's standpoint but it was simply
ambiguous. The only curtain call Michael needed to make was the
sound of his breathing playing over the film's final shot of his childhood home.
That said, in 1981 it was hard not to be excited by the prospect of More of the Night He Came Home. The trailer promised to give us more of Dr. Loomis' dogged pursuit of Michael and more of Laurie Strode in peril. Slasher movies were booming and surely this sequel would show the makers of all the Halloween knock-offs how it's really supposed to be done. As it turned out, though, not so much.
Halloween II began the long tradition - celebrating 40 years now! - of fans finding themselves largely disappointed in Halloween sequels.
It also began the cherished tradition of fans continuing to hope, against all logic, that the magic of that first film might one day be recaptured.
The fact that II, even in the hands of Carpenter and Debra Hill, entirely missed the point of Halloween, though, should have been a strong indicator that this ship would never quite be righted. I don't think there's a single franchise that so immediately got off on the wrong foot with its first sequel as Halloween did. All the subsequent mistakes that other Halloween films have made were born from the mistakes of this one. They stumbled on the first try and they've been falling forward ever since.
Some of the Halloween sequels and reboots have been better than others. Some have been pretty nifty in their own right. But none of them have really, truly made a convincing case that Halloween should have ever gone past the first movie.
What Halloween II had that none of the other entries would (because of Halloween II!) is the benefit of the doubt. Once II was released, every future Halloween was forced to live in the shadow of that first disappointment. It will forever be the only sequel where the trailer had fans mostly expecting a treat rather than being wary of a trick.
Oh, what a trailer this is - what I wouldn't give to see something this promising coming soon to theaters! Also, why can't every trailer have the movie's title smashing through glass at the end?
If they did, I'd see a lot more movies, I'll tell you that!
By now it's probably not fair to describe John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness as underrated as its reputation as one of John Carpenter's finest films seems well established. In 1987 I remember being soooo excited for Carpenter's return to horror. This was the first Carpenter horror film I was able to see in theaters and it did not disappoint.
Released on October 23rd, 1987, this was not the sleeper hit that Halloween had been but it did respectable business and it marked a commercial bounce back for Carpenter.
For me, this is in the very upper ranks of Carpenter's films. I love the mood, the gonzo ideas, the funky, truly ghastly gore, and the amazing score by Carpenter and frequent collaborator Alan Howarth (not as iconic as Halloween's but every bit as good). A great cast here, too, with Carpenter reuniting one last time with both Donald Pleasence and Victor Wong.
Being that it's Halloween and I have many things to do, I don't have time for a long post. Then again, after 31 posts this month I've probably already said too much! To anyone who's stuck around with me this October, I hope it was a kick to spend time reminiscing about the Halloween releases of years past - some of them classics, some of them, ehhh, not so classic, but all were fun to look back on.
Here's hoping for a great crop of new horror next October!
These days, with so many different avenues for movies to be released, even movies that are toplined with fairly big stars can bypass theaters and go straight to Redbox or VOD or whatever. But in 1984, a collection of clips could garner a wide release, like it was a real movie or something. Of course, putting out a "greatest hits" of horror right before Halloween seems like a pretty safe move and sure enough, Universal did fine by releasing Terror in the Aisles on October 26th, 1984, as the movie grossed just over 10 million.
I actually saw this in theaters and, even as a young horror fan, I recognized it as a missed opportunity. Director Andrew J. Kuehn and writer Margery Doppelt are clearly not knowledgeable about horror and when the movie isn't asking dippy, perplexed questions about why on earth do people enjoy being scared, it's wasting way too much time on non-horror thrillers like Nighthawks and Klute. Great movies, sure, but do they belong in a horror documentary? One with an already brief running time of 84 minutes, no less?
On the upside, this did give me the opportunity to see clips from many classic movies on the big screen - many from movies I hadn't even seen on TV yet (I only knew the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dressed to Kill, and other R-rated features by reputation) - and Terror in the Aisles also exposed me to several films I hadn't heard of, like Alone in the Dark. Unfortunately, thanks to the fact that none of the clips were identified, it took me forever to figure out what some of these movies were.
What the trailers for Terror in the Aisles didn't bother selling was the real reason it's great - the priceless hosting segments starring Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen as they sit in a theater full of sketchy dirtbags and ponder aloud about the meaning of horror. Pleasence is especially great as he relentlessly hams it up (you've never heard anyone say "It's only a movie!" the way he says it here).
Forget the movies. Sitting next to someone acting as unhinged as Pleasence does here would likely force even the most hardened of horror fans to nervously flee up the aisles.
With the original Halloween (1978) now over thirty years old and with seven sequels, a remake and a sequel to that remake in its wake, it's hard to remember a time when Halloween was just a film and not a franchise. It's also hard to remember a time when a Halloween sequel was the cause of real anticipation, rather than skepticism, among fans. But in 1981, there was plenty of excitement to go around over the idea that the story of Halloween would continue. At least I know that excitement was the mood among the kids in my neighborhood (most of whom, like myself, hadn't yet seen the original) - I can't speak for the adult world of 1981. The tagline for Halloween II was perfect, promising fans "More of the night HE came home." Even though three years had passed in the real world since John Carpenter's film had altered the course of modern horror, Halloween II was going to pick up the story just after the Shape's body vanished at the conclusion of Halloween. Now that sounded like a hot plan.
Initial story concepts for Halloween II had involved Final Girl Laurie Strode fending off a new attack by Michael Myers in a high rise apartment years after the events of Halloween but the choice to make Halloween II a seamless continuation of the events of Halloween proved to be a wise decision. First time feature director Rick Rosenthal was assigned the thankless task of following in Carpenter's footsteps (Rosenthal was hand-picked for the job by Carpenter based on the strength of a short Rosenthal had directed called Toyer) while Carpenter and Halloween producer Debra Hill co-wrote Halloween II's screenplay, with a story that featuring heroine Laurie Strode doped-up on meds and going into a second round with Michael Myers (now played by veteran stuntman Dick Warlock rather than Nick Castle) in the largely empty halls of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital.
The members of the original cast who's characters had survived the first film loyally returned to their roles with Jamie Lee Curtis now a full-fledged Scream Queen sharing top billing with Donald Pleasence and Charles Cyphers and Nancy Stephens returning in smaller appearances as Sheriff Brackett and Nurse Marion Chambers respectively (Stephens would go on to marry director Rosenthal) - and even Nancy Loomis (today known as Nancy Kyes) came back to appear in one shot of the late Annie Brackett lying on a gurney. But even with so much returning talent in front of and behind the camera (the indispensible Dean Cundey encored as cinematographer), Halloween II was mostly greeted as a letdown from the original. Because, well, it was. Carpenter famously - or infamously - stepped in after Rosenthal handed in his director's cut and filmed some graphic new footage meant to help the film compete with the kind of explicit horror films that had come into vogue since the release of Friday the 13th (1980). Rosenthal denounced these changes as tampering with his vision but without the kind of virtuoso suspense of the original, Halloween II clearly needed something to boost its chances with increasingly jaded audiences. The result was that Halloween II became something that Halloween hadn't been - a splatter movie. Today that doesn't seem like such a big deal but at the time, it was taken by some as a betrayal of Halloween's much-admired aesthetics.
More controversial than the added gore - and arguably more damaging in the long run for the series - was the unexpected plot development that Laurie and Michael were actually siblings. Even though this has been a part of the Halloween mythology for so long that most fans don't think twice about it, for those old enough to remember when the only Halloween movie in town was Halloween, I think there's almost universal agreement that having Michael and Laurie turn out to be brother and sister was a creative fuck-up on Carpenter and Hill's part. It was a lazy move, cribbed from the playbook of a soap opera, and it immediately took away a good deal of the original's mystique.
A large part of what was scary about Halloween was that Michael was an implacable boogeyman, stalking and slaughtering girls who had done nothing to invite his wrath. To find out that Laurie was really his sister was just lame - lame, I tell you! - and the series has had to deal with that misstep ever since. If Rob Zombie could've accomplished one great thing with his 2007 reboot, it would've been to finally free the series of that baggage. Of course, it reappeared right there in the first film - Zombie couldn't even put that shit off until the sequel! Now here we are with the new Halloween II bearing the tagline "Family Is Forever."
But it all started back in 1981. In a Halloween II flashback Laurie visits Michael in Smith's Grove Sanitarium when they were kids and in one of the new scenes cut into the TV airing of the original Halloween prior to Halloween II's theatrical release, Loomis finds the word 'Sister' scrawled on the door in Michael's abandoned cell. Despite delivering a crippling kidney punch to the series, however, there's still plenty to enjoy in OSHII (old-school Halloween II, natch!).
The film's single best asset, of course, is the returning Donald Pleasence as Michael's ever-batty nemesis. In fact, Pleasence remained the best thing about all the Michael-themed sequels until his death in 1995. In Halloween II, Pleasence puts the Loomis persona back on like a glove and his portrayal of Loomis as a twitchy, belligerent nut is endless fun. Loomis is the indefatigable Van Helsing of slasher cinema and it's the ongoing duel between him and Michael (with all his shouting about the inhuman, evil nature of Michael, Loomis is ironically the best press agent a boogeyman ever had!) that made the Halloween series distinct from its competition.
Sadly, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't fare so well in her return performance as Laurie Strode. Whether Curtis didn't feel the same enthusiasm for the part as she did in the first film or the fact that Laurie had little else to do in this film other than lie in a hospital bed, Curtis' performance isn't nearly as strong this time around. What's worse is that what we do see of Laurie seems contradictory to - or at least inconsistent with - the character as established in the first film. When Laurie reacts to the attention of Lance Guest as Jimmy, the smitten EMS, it's with a visible confidence that doesn't seem at all like the same painfully shy wallflower we knew Laurie to be in Halloween where she was beside herself at the idea that dreamy Ben Tramer might know she liked him (in a nice touch, Carpenter and Hill have the Tramer character killed off in a traffic accident, briefly mistaken for Michael). The Laurie in Halloween II seems too much like a Laurie who's gotten three years older between films, not the mere three hours older that's she meant to be (on a side note, the real life time gap makes for an amusing moment as Loomis is reacquainted with Nurse Chambers - even though in terms of the story he was just with her hours ago, he has to take a moment to 'recognize' who she is for the benefit of those viewers who might not remember such a minor character from the original).
Whatever faults Halloween II may have, though, they're all but forgiven with the film's fiery finale. Carpenter and Hill meant to end the story here and it shows. The conclusion of this movie - where Loomis and Michael suffer a mutual immolation - remains an awesome sight. There's been plenty of scenes in movies over the years where stuntmen are burning from head to toe but this is the best of the bunch to my eyes. Maybe because usually when you see these kind of fire gags, the stuntman is always - understandably - flailing around. Whether it be the Thing in both the original and the remake, or Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, you always see characters on fire acting like people are supposed to act when they're on fire. They're panicking, running - doing everything they can to stop the fucking flames. But in Halloween II, to see Michael still doing the classic Michael Myers walk while enveloped in a full body burn - and having strolled out of a raging inferno in the first place - well, it's a sight that continues to impress. I don't know if Dick Warlock did that specific stunt himself but whoever did it really earned their paycheck that day. I've got to hand it to anyone who can stand there lit up like a roman candle.
While Rosenthal returned to the series to zero acclaim with the maligned Halloween: Resurrection (2002), Halloween II remains one of the most popular of the sequels. It may be a flawed film but in that its story is so linked to the original, it's hard to disregard it - and unlike any of the series' entries that followed, Carpenter and Hill's participation lends it the stamp of the genuine article. Had they known where their boogeyman would go, though, perhaps they would've concluded Halloween II with Loomis riding on a nuke a la Slim Pickens on his way to obliterate Michael along with the rest of Haddonfield.
