Halloween 2

Alternate titles : None

Tagline : "More of the night HE came home."

Set straight after Part 1, Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is shocked to discover that, despite being shot and falling from an upstairs window, Myers obviously survived and is still on the prowl.

Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken to the hospital, whilst Doctor Loomis resumes his search with the Police to try and find Myer's before he can kill again. But Michael isn't too willing to give up his prey so easily and follows Laurie to the hospital, randomly bumping off a few townsfolk to satisfy his bloodlust en route.

On arrival he proceeds to do away with the defenceless staff, using some quite innovative but gruesome methods. Including drowning nurses in scalding water, stringing up guards with a lamp cord, sticking syringes into peoples eye's and bleeding patients to death by unplugging their hypodermic drips.

Whilst all this is going on, Dr Loomis discovers the REAL reason why Michael has returned to his home town of Haddonfield and gone on the rampage, so rushes to the hospital to save the day and stop Myers once and for all (putting a whole new shine on the phrase "going out with a bang")!

Though not one of John Carpenter's favourites, I found this highly enjoyable. Perhaps a touch darker and a bit gorier than the first, but equally chilling and overall a bloody good film!

Overall Marks : 8/10

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate tag line, "A Night of Terrifying Butchery".
• The part of Myers for this film was played by stuntman Dick Warlock, although he got the part quite by accident. Whilst visiting John Carpenters office about another film, he put on a Michael Myers mask (that he had in his office) and wandered down the hall to give the office girls a scare. John Carpenter liked it so much he offered him the part.
• Jamie Lee Curtis was actually wearing a wig in this film, so that her hair looked the same as it did in part 1.
• Dick Warlock was considerably shorter than his predecessor Nick Castle, so he had to have supports put into his boots to make him look taller. He also appears in a breif role as a police officer, during the scene where the person wearing a Myers mask accidentally gets run over by a police car. He played the officer that falls out of the car, just before it explodes.
• Dana Carvey, who went onto play Wayne, from Wayne's World, had a small role as one of the news journalists. If you look behind the TV reporter who's stood outside the Strode house you can see him in the background. Kind of ironic that he would go on to star opposite a TV comedian named Mike Meyers.
• Pamela Shoop, who plays the nurse Myers drowns in the Hydrotherapy Spa, got an ear infection after filming her death scene, as the water wasn't apparently very clean
• The young lad carrying the radio, who bumps into Myers, was played by Dick Warlock's son Lance.
• The original UK theatrical release and pre-cert video by Thorn EMI was uncut, but the version re-issued in 1990 by Castle Pictures was cut by the BBFC by 17s, which shortened Nurse Kate's death in the hydro-spa. The 2002 DVD by Sanctuary Entertainment was passed uncut.
• Several scenes were re-shot by John Carpenter as he felt Rick Rosenthall's version wasn't gory enough.
• A version shown on US TV, which is rarely screened these days, was of a different cut of the film. In this, the flashback to the end of the previous film doesn't occur until after the intro credits and there are some different lines of dialogue between Dr Loomis and the neighbour when he rushes out of Laurie's house. Other scenes, such as where Myers steals the knife, are shown at different points in the film and Dr Mixter and a couple of the nurses bodies aren't actually found, Lance just says "they're missing" so its not clear what Myers has done to them. Several other scenes use different takes, are paced different, run longer or have slightly different lines of dialogue. The ending contains an additional scare scene, after Laurie is loaded into the ambulance, we see someone moving behind her, which turns out to Lance. After Laurie has got over the shock cries "We made it" before the end credits role.

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