The phenomenal success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) opened the floodgates, birthing the modern slasher movie. While Carpenter's film has never been a personal favorite, it's easy to appreciate its craft, atmosphere and relative restraint compared to its successors, which jettisoned all those things for an interchangeable line-up of boogeymen, screaming (and oversexed) teenagers and buckets of gore. One sympathizes with Roger Ebert, who dismissed the likes of Friday the 13th as "dead teenager movies" that offered viewers no real scares, just stacks of nubile corpses.
It took three years before Carpenter reluctantly consented to a sequel, though he only wrote and co-produced it. Halloween II (1981) solidly demonstrates the law of diminishing returns. Everything mysterious and creepy about Halloween turns into another stalk-and-kill slasher movie, offering little than some improbable murder scenes.
Laurie Strode (Jamie Curtis) emerges from the events of Halloween and is transported to recover at the local hospital. The cops ignore Dr. Loomis's (Donald Pleasence) warning that Michael survived being shot and falling out a window. It's not long before Michael shows up at the hospital, cutting a swath through the medical staff while seeking to finish off Laurie. Loomis discovers that there might be something more unsettling than mere psychopathy motivating Michael, and that he might also be connected to Laurie.
A definite step down from the original, Halloween II still towers above its many imitators. Director Rick Rosenthal retains cinematographer Dean Cundey, and the movie still has a decent amount of style: eerie long takes, impressive deep focus shots and formalized death tableaux that, if anything, seem more elaborate than Carpenter's set ups. If Carpenter's film mated Hitchcock's craft to the stylish splatter of Italian horror, Halloween II is all giallo. Michael's victims here aren't just stabbed or throttled: they're scalded in hot water (borrowed directly from Deep Red), impaled with needles and exsanguinated with an IV. For those who demand nothing more than creative kills, Halloween II more than delivers.
The body count ensures that Halloween II is never boring, but also points up its biggest flaw. The original's suspense is completely abandoned for a less compelling stalk-and-kill structure; compared to Laurie's friend circle, Michael's victims here (Lance Guest as a paramedic, Ford Rainey a drunken doctor, Tawny Moyer a pushy nurse) are one-note, memorably only for their grisly demises. Michael no longer feels like an implacable Bogeyman; instead he's a Terminator-like killing machine, repeatedly shrugging off mortal injuries while lumbering towards his next kill. This movie suggests that he's a supernatural being, expanded on to ridiculous extremes in future sequels - an extremely unfortunate choice. Carpenter's original was smart enough to leave Michael's true nature to our imagination; made into something more concrete, he's just a standard issue movie monster.
At least Jamie Lee Curtis continues her solid work as Laurie. While lacking the Everygirl charm that made her so compelling in the original, Laurie the traumatized but crafty survivor retains our sympathy; Curtis performs with her usual empathy and smarts, earning the audience's affection. Her costars are here to serve as patsies (Charles Cyphers as Sheriff Brackett, much dumber and more reckless than before, kills an innocent man he mistakes for Michael) or pin cushions (poor Ford Rainey, last seen with a syringe in his eyeball). Donald Pleasence escalates Loomis's measured weirdness to wild scenery-chewing; it's not inappropriate, but it turns an iconic character into something sillier. Not unlike Michael himself, really.
If one must watch Halloween sequels, Halloween II isn't the worst choice. It retains enough grace notes and good will to be watchable; but it still feels like a big letdown after the original. Future sequels (aside from the bizarre third movie) take the series in even trashier directions, demoting Michael Myers from the OG slasher to just another mask in the crowd.
