MOVIE RECAP: HALLOWEEN II

We begin with the strains of “Mr Sandman”, a jolly pop song that indicates we’re in for some light-hearted hijinks.

But oh no! IRONY! We now cut directly to the climax of Halloween, where Michael Myers — who I remind you in this context is NOT the star and auteur of the Austin Powers franchise attacked Laurie Strode in the Doyle house, before Donald Pleasence, the badass psychiatrist, totally shot him repeatedly and made him fall off a balcony. Pleasence tells Laurie it was the boogeyman which is a lie, it was Michael Myers. Who is now not on the lawn where he fell He’s run off despite his many bullet, coathanger and knitting needle wounds, and Donald Pleasence sighs a heavy sigh because he knows he now has to do a sequel.

Donald Pleasence kneels on the grass to check whether Michael Myers has shrunk down into a wee pixie. He hasn’t but there is blood, proving the doctor’s hypothesis that Michael Myers has blood.

Donald Pleasence tells a neighbour to call the police. The neighbour thinks he’s being pranked. “I’ve been trick-or-treated to death tonight,” he says, suspecting the bald, middle-aged man to be a small child in an elaborate costume. “You don’t know what death is,” Pleasence says, which doesn’t really help elaborate on the situation at all. Still, didn’t this dude hear the gunshots? Just call the damn police.

Anyway Michael is now walking through some backyards, having refitted his GoPro so we can see his POV shot. He meets a dog, but he’s already eaten one dog tonight and he is absolutely stuffed, honestly. He hears a police siren and then Donald Pleasence yelling, “I shot him six times!” Michael immediately logs on to IMDB to record this as a Goof, as he knows full well that he was shot seven times. Haha, Donald, inaccurate as ever.

Michael looks through the window of a house containing a well-made jack-o-lantern, a frumpy woman in a dressing gown, and a sleeping slob husband in front of a TV showing Night Of The Living Dead. Oooooooh — apt!

In comes Michael Myers and grabs the knife the frumpy woman was using to make sandwiches. This displeases the frumpy woman, who screams in frustration at the fact she won’t be able to finish making her sandwiches. Also, maybe Michael kills her. He probably does. We don’t see him do it but it would be weird if he didn’t.

The screaming woman’s next-door neighbour calls out to see if she’s OK, but she doesn’t care all that much, so getting no response she just goes inside to resume her phone conversation and make flippant remarks about domestic violence.

Michael Myers comes into the girl’s house, because nobody locks their fucking doors in this town. “Who is it?” she asks. She gets no response to this either, but this time getting no response seems to make her, if anything, MORE nervous. Then Michael pops up and squirts fake blood all over her while she makes a weird face.

Back at the Doyle house, Laurie has put on a long wig to disguise the fact she cut her hair since the first movie, and is being taken to an ambulance. All’s well that ends well. The End.

Wait, there’s more? Jesus.

Over at the Haddonfield Hospital, the Halloween score is playing, making the hospital seem a lot more sinister than it really deserves. I mean, yes there will be lots of murders at this hospital tonight, but murder is not an inherent part of the local healthcare system. Even the least-sinister hospital can sometimes have sinister things happen in it.

At the hospital, the duty nurse dismisses the concerns of a woman whose little boy’s mouth is all cut up by traditional Halloween razorblades, and is then shocked by the arrival of Laurie Strode. Everyone who works at the hospital apparently knows Laurie Strode, she must have Munchausen’s Syndrome or something. Laurie begs the doctor not to put her to sleep, because she had a dog who they did that to once and it did not end well for him.

Speaking of dogs, a dog is barking as the sheriff and Donald Pleasence drive around looking for Michael Myers. The sheriff is sick of Donald’s crap, but frankly I think as a sheriff he could be a bit less irascible and a bit more concerned for the safety of his community, given that he knows for a fact there’s a goddamn serial killer walking around.

Donald Pleasence sees a dude walking around in a Michael Myers mask. He points his gun at him but then a police car smashes the dude into a van and everything goes up in flames. They don’t realise it’s not Michael Myers yet, although it’s definitely not. It’s good that he was wearing that mask, though — it establishes that “Creepy White Face” was a popular character to dress up as in Haddonfield, which explains why Michael Myers could steal his mask. Doesn’t explain why he got it from a hardware store, but still.

More cops show up and one of them yells at the sheriff that there are three dead kids and one of them is the sheriff’s daughter. He could’ve been a bit more tactful with this news, in my opinion. Don’t just blurt it out like that. The cops and Donald Pleasence speed away, leaving the burning dude in the mask to burn in his mask.

Meanwhile at the hospital the handsome paramedic is using this moment to try to get into Laurie’s pants.

Back to the murder house, where Sheriff Brackett discovers that his daughter Annie is indeed deceased. He’s very sad about this, but his grief is tempered by his knowledge that Annie was kind of a douchebag. The sheriff yells at Donald Pleasence, “DAMN YOU! YOU LET HIM OUT!” This is clearly untrue and the sheriff knows it — he is being very unfair and the fact that his douchebag daughter just died is no excuse.

Donald Pleasence tells the deputy that Michael Myers is not dead because he’s some kind of supernatural monster who can survive fatal car crashes and fires. This is ridiculous as Michael Myers doesn’t really become fully supernatural until Halloween 4 at the earliest.

On the streets of Haddonfield, two irritating young women are talking bullshit. Hopefully that’ll pay off in some way later. Michael Myers is also walking around, in pretty good shape for a severely wounded person. Nobody knows it’s him because he’s wearing a Creepy White Face mask, America’s most popular Halloween costume.

One of the irritating young women has arrived at the hospital. She is a nurse. The other irritating young woman will seemingly never enter our lives again. Michael Myers is in the hospital carpark. But give him a chance: he might just be seeking medical attention for his many injuries.

Inside the hospital, a security guard is acting like every movie security guard by not watching the CCTV screens. If he did he would see Michael wandering the hospital grounds. This is why you failed the Police Academy entrance exams, dickhead.

Irritating nurse arrives and greets her co-workers, the handsome paramedic — who is named Jimmy — and the ugly foul-mouthed paramedic. Ugly paramedic tells Jimmy not to get involved with patients, but Jimmy is a natural rebel and stalks off to get as involved as possible with his patient.

Michael Myers walks the hospital corridors, breathing heavily as his asthma is still playing up. Hiding in the room that hospitals in America apparently have where babies all get lined up in rows, he watches the irritating nurse walk by. You get the definite sense that he is feeling a bit naughty.

In Laurie’s room, Jimmy is putting the moves on her. He tells her that it was Michael Myers who attacked her. “Why me?” Laurie asks, to which the answer is, “he’s just a fucking psycho, there’s no particular reason to it”, but this is a horror sequel, so the answer is going to turn out to be something far more unrealistic.

There is something wrong with the phones at the hospital. The boss nurse says this is nothing for Laurie to worry about, but frankly it is. It feels like the phenomenon of everybody in Haddonfield acting like there’s not a psychotic murderer loose in the town was a lot more plausible in the first movie, when nobody knew about Michael Myers, than it is the second, when literally everyone knows about Michael Myers but seems to forget about him at precisely the moment when remembering about him would be most useful.

Behind the hospital the security guard looks in a dumpster and a cat jumps on him. I’m not sure whether this was a cliche yet: if it wasn’t, then clever fake scare. If it was, clever subverting of genre tropes.

The security guard hasn’t done anything yet but he already looks like he’s been through some pretty rough times. Looking around the storeroom, he walkie talkies to Janet that the storeroom has been broken into, but Janet doesn’t know how to work the walkie talkie and doesn’t hear him. The guard opens a closet and a bunch of boxes fall on him. Possibly the rest of the movie will just be him comically not getting attacked by anyone.

Nope, spoke too soon: Michael Myers is behind a door and he smashes his skull open with a claw hammer. Gross.

Donald Pleasence and the deputy are consulting a doctor who examines the charred body of the dude with the mask who isn’t Michael Myers but just a dude with a mask. The doctor thinks the body is about 17 or 18. Donald Pleasence says Michael Myers is 21. The deputy is surprisingly sensible so he decides to go with Donald’s advice and set all the cops looking for Michael Myers.

At the old Myers house, a crowd has formed, shouting and throwing rocks at the windows. This is a fairly pointless exercise as nobody actually lives in the old Myers house and it’s not clear exactly what they think they’re protesting against. The people of Haddonfield are a bunch of morons. Donald Pleasence and the deputy, whose name I didn’t catch but I will call Blondie, arrive and have a chat about Michael. Donald Pleasence tells Blondie that for fifteen years Michael didn’t talk or move, just waited for his opportunity. This raises the question: without regular exercise, how did Michael maintain muscle tone? How is he even walking around Haddonfield with such advanced atrophy?

Two kids run up and reveal that the dude who got fried in the mask was Ben Tramer, the guy who Laurie had a crush on in the first film. So there is one awkward conversation Laurie has been saved.

Back at the hospital the irritating nurse and the ugly paramedic are being suggestive with each other. The ugly paramedic is put out because the irritating nurse won’t put out. “Everyone’s weirded out tonight because of this Michael Myers thing,” he complains, regarding the triple homicide committed several hours earlier by a maniac who is still on the loose in the vicinity.

Meanwhile Laurie is having a flashback about her mother telling her she’s not her mother, which is a hint as to how stupid the plot is about to get.

Cut back to…a hot tub? In the hospital’s…hot tub room? Irritating nurse and ugly paramedic are in the hot tub, making sure the movie has enough nudity in it to score decent box office. Michael Myers turns up the heat in the hot tub to make the ugly paramedic step out to turn the heat down, whereupon he strangles the ugly paramedic fully to death.

The irritating nurse doesn’t notice her boyfriend being murdered because she is too distracted by how essential to the plot her breasts are. She also doesn’t notice that the guy standing behind her whose finger she’s nibbling on isn’t her boyfriend, and then Michael Myers holds her face in the hot tub until she’s utterly dead.

Donald Pleasence and two deputies have arrived at a school, where they discover that Michael Myers has stabbed a child’s drawing and written “SAMHAIN” in blood on a blackboard, confirming the doctor’s worst fears: Michael Myers is a pretentious Wiccan.

Donald Pleasence’s nurse shows up to tell him he has to come back to the mental hospital: he’s in big trouble for being the only person in the entire world to be right about Michael Myers.

Back at the non-mental hospital Jimmy discovers that Laurie has gone catatonic. Janet runs to find Dr Mixter, Haddonfield’s only doctor, to tell him, but he’s dead, stabbed in the face with a syringe. Michael Myers appears out of the darkness in one of those cool shots that they do, and stabs Janet with a syringe too.

Jimmy, sick of waiting for Dr Mixter to come and help out the catatonic girl who he’s been creeping on, runs off to find help, leaving the hospital’s blondest nurse all alone to walk around a bit for no reason. We then cut to Michael’s GoPro, as it enters Laurie’s room. Michael is carrying a scalpel, with which he repeatedly stabs the occupant of the bed….but it’s just a bunch of pillows! Classic Laurie Strode!

The blonde nurse finds Laurie has left her bed and runs off to track her down. Laurie is limping wearily around the hospital, trying to find a vending machine that works. She sneaks into another room and tries to make a phone call but is interrupted by the soundtrack, which is extremely intrusive. She peeks around the corner of the doorway and sees…nothing. Relieved that there is no danger, she lives a full and happy life from this point on. At least I assume so. But before that there’s a whole bunch of other crap.

Donald Pleasence is being escorted out of Haddonfield by a marshal. And…well that’s that scene.

Blonde nurse is still running around like an idiot. She finds that the security guard is not at his post and assumes that it’s his diarrhoea again. The CCTV shows exactly what is happening in the hospital but the nurse is from Haddonfield and therefore too stupid to look at it. As she wanders the halls some more, she is startled by a hand on her shoulder from behind. It’s only Jimmy, the friendly paramedic who wants to fuck his patients and has acted so suspiciously throughout this movie that the most logical ending it could have would be a reveal that Jimmy was Michael Myers all along.

Jimmy goes looking for Michael Myers, but only finds the body of the boss nurse, whose body has been drained of blood. Jimmy is upset by this discovery, but lightens the mood by slipping on the blood on the floor and falling on his back in a hilarious homage to the Three Stooges.

Out in the carpark the blonde nurse finds that her car’s tyres have been slashed. Feeling that Michael Myers has really gone too far this time, she does the only sensible thing in such a situation: runs back into the building where she knows for a fact the murderer is.

Inside she finds Laurie wandering around in a daze. Laurie looks at her but forgets to tell her that Michael Myers is right behind her. He stabs the blonde nurse right in her vitals, and then comes after Laurie. Laurie has a leg injury and can’t run very fast but Michael Myers never learnt to run at all, so it’s a pretty fair race.

Laurie flees into the basement of the hospital, where she finds the security guard dangling on wall in a macabre but still pretty comical way. Michael is coming up behind her, so she goes through a window into what can only be described as “another bit of the hospital”.

She finds an elevator and waits frantically for it to come down to the basement. She can hear Michael Myers coming for her, his feet crunching on broken glass. Fortunately, he has become at least 50% slower in the last couple of hours, and the lift doors close just before he can saunter in. Laurie runs out to the carpark and hides in a car, making sure to not lock the door because above all we must not give in to fear.

In the marshal’s car, Donald Pleasence explains Samhain to his nurse, who is bored as hell. “We’re all afraid of the dark inside ourselves,” he says, but this isn’t strictly true: we’re actually all afraid of the dark inside Michael Myers. The nurse, desperate to change the subject, tells Donald Pleasence that surprise surprise, Laurie Strode is actually Michael Myers’s sister. It’s hard to decide what makes less sense: that she’s his sister, or that knowing this, the authorities took no steps to put a guard on the hospital where she had been taken.

Donald Pleasence demands the marshal turn the car around so he can go and complain to the screenwriters about this nonsensical twist. The marshal refuses so Donald Pleasence shoots out the window of his car. That seems to do the trick.

Meanwhile Jimmy has joined Laurie in the car at the hospital, and immediately proves his action-hero credentials by passing out at the wheel. Laurie begins crawling across the carpark as the marshal’s car shows up. She calls out in a faint, weak voice to Donald Pleasence, only screaming loudly once he’s inside and can’t hear her. She gets up and starts limping back towards the hospital, when Michael appears from somewhere or other and begins walking incredibly slowly towards her. Before he can attack her — or rather, way after he CAN attack her, but before he DOES attack her because he’s so fucking slow — Donald Pleasence hears her screams and lets her in. See what happens when you PROJECT, Laurie?

Michael crashes through the hospital doors and Donald Pleasence shoots him several times, enjoying the warm nostalgic feeling this produces. The marshal is sure Myers is dead, but Donald Pleasence is not. Even though Donald Pleasence has been proven to be right about everything in every instance ever, the marshal kneels down to examine the body and is immediately murdered as Michael sits up and slashes his throat. Donald Pleasence and Laurie flee to the operating theatre.

Donald Pleasence tries to give Laurie a gun. Laurie doesn’t want to take it because she has short-term memory loss or something. Michael Myers breaks through the operating theatre door. Donald Pleasence tries to shoot him but he has no bullets. Michael stabs him in the belly and he goes down like a sack of elderly bald British man.

Laurie, cowering on the floor, calls out, “Michael!” This causes Michael to tilt his head to the side in that adorable way he has. He keeps coming though, causing Laurie to shoot him in the face. This makes blood come out of the mask’s eyeholes, but it doesn’t stop him waving his scalpel around blindly in a patent waste of energy.

Donald Pleasence, who is very resistant to stab wounds, turns on the gas. He tells Laurie to run for it, and then flicks open his lighter. The operating theatre goes up in a ball of flame, killing both Donald Pleasence and Michael Myers forev-

Oops, no, here comes Michael, wreathed in flame, walking down the corridor towards Laurie. He doesn’t make it to her though — the multiple bullet wounds and fatal burns to his entire body finally take their toll, and he falls to floor, where he burns to death until Halloween III fails at the box office and the producers decide they need to find a way for him to be alive again.

Laurie is taken to an ambulance and taken away to what is hopefully a much better hospital, while “Mr Sandman” plays and cheers us all up. And so they lived happily ever after except for the ones who died. However, several key questions remain unanswered:

1. What happened to that poor kid with the bleeding mouth from the start? Nobody ever actually got around to treating him. Did he go home to bleed to death from his injuries? Is he still in there, burning up with Michael?
2. Where are Laurie’s parents? By the end of the movie it’s daylight. How long did the party they went to go for? Did nobody let them know their daughter was in hospital? Or is it just that, since Laurie is adopted, they never really attend to her with all that much urgency?
3. Why does everyone in Haddonfield have such poor peripheral vision?

All of these questions, and more, will remain unanswered in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which is a completely unrelated story about Stonehenge. So that’ll be fun.