Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Halloween II (1981)

Let's just get it out of the way, guys - you can go ahead and call me crazy right now. I'm fairly sure that a lot of you are going to either hate me for the things I'm about to say, or -hopefully- you're going to have a laugh along with me, here.

I love the Halloween movies. I love John Carpenter, and Michael Myers. I thought Jamie Lee Curtis kicked some serious ass in the first film. Hell, I even love Rob Zombie (although his part 2 made almost no sense and I didn't care for it, for the most part.)



I just rewatched Halloween II the other night, and I gotta tell you guys - there's a lot of shit in there that you need a large amount of suspended disbelief to get past, and some serious plot inconsistencies as well.
I know, I know, it's only a movie, but still - The original Halloween is considered a classic, you would think that the follow up would have been of the same high caliber, but it just isn't.

The first WTF of the movie for me was the balcony scene. In the original, The Shape very clearly falls into the backyard off the upstairs balcony/porch at 0:56 in the following video clip:


In part II, Myers seems to walk backwards off the front porch balcony. You would think he would bump into the railing with the back of his legs, but you can see he clearly WALKS OFF the railing! (See 2:33 in the following clip. Not great quality but you can still see what I'm talking about.)


I know he's not human and all, but really? I don't quite understand why they didn't just use the same footage they already had from part one. They didn't redo the entire ending of Halloween for part 2, so why is this scene different?

Most folks are aware that Halloween II really ups the volume of blood compared to the original, which barely had any. Yet the original remains far more frightening to this very day. Honestly, I found Halloween II to be so boring, that all I was looking out for after the first 20 minutes was more goofs. 

This shot, which is very reminiscent of many great giallo films of the 70's, serves as the start of a continuity problem...


Jimmy slips and falls in a pool of blood - but where was it in the beginning of the scene when he first walked into the room? How did he not slip on all that blood in the first place??
A little while later, when Jimmy stumbles out of the hospital and gets into his car, there seems to be no blood on him whatsoever.

Considering that they took "Continuity Polaroids" like the one below, you'd think there would have been a lot less of them in the movie!

2_2_021

What else? Oh, right... When did Laurie get stabbed in the shoulder? She got her shirt ripped and just barely scraped in part one. So why did the doctor say she had a stab wound?

2_2_010

When Loomis and Laurie start releasing the gas, how come they don't start getting loopy? Ether ain't nothin' ta fuck with! Also, if he knows so much about Samhain, why can't he pronounce it correctly? Sheesh.

There's a lot more continuity errors and goofs that I didn't even notice, you can take a look at the IMDB page for Halloween II here.







2 comments:

  1. Great read! Ive always been pissed about that scene where he walks/floats off the balcony, among other things you brought up. Your right though, the original is a classic, and for me its the only essential film in the whole franchise. That said, I do like two a helluva lot. The rest I either outright hate or couldnt give a rats ass about.

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  2. I strongly disagree with the above said comments concerning the original Halloween II! The viewer chose to focus and build on negatives... instead of balancing those comments with strong points in the film! Halloween II has strong continuity to the first film... the film recaptures many of the same locations and feel of the original Halloween through Dean Cundey's excellent POV shots. The viewer stated that Halloween II isn't as scary as the first, where in reality it is actually darker due to the film taking place on the night of October 31, 1978... only ending during the morning hours! Also, through Alan Howarth's musical talent, the soundtrack to Halloween II is a bit more intense due to superior electronic syncronization. As for the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)... this is based mainly on poorly judged critic reviews, also many horror films usually attract a young immature audience that are at times very blind! As for true gore and very little continuity, right down to the complete different filming locations, I point-out Friday the 13th & Friday the 13th Part 2!

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