Deeply Ambivalent Screenwriter John Carpenter Tried to Kill Off Michael Myers in 1981's Halloween II. He Did Not Succeed
Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where the Friday the 13th series stopped after the release of the 1980 film Friday the 13th and its 1981 sequel. In this weird world, the filmmakers quit while they were ostensibly still ahead rather than cranking out sequel after sequel for undiscriminating teenagers hungry for sex and violence.
Now, envision traveling to this alternate universe from our world for the sole purpose of discussing the Friday the 13th movies. You might begin the conversation by saying something like, “Wow, it’s crazy that, in your world, the iconic horror franchise about hockey mask-wearing serial killer Jason Voorhees ended after the original and sequel, rather than spawning a miniature industry out of sequels, a remake, a crossover film, and even a television anthology.”
The person you’re talking to in this scenario would probably stare at you blankly and respond, “What are you talking about? There’s a character named Jason Voorhees in the only two films, but he never wears a hockey mask. That’s silly. Why would he wear something dumb, like sports equipment, rather than the iconic burlap sack he wore in Friday the 13th II?”
That’s because, as fright fans are already aware, Jason Voorhees didn’t pick up his trademark hockey mask and start slaughtering horny stoner teens en masse until the second Friday the 13th sequel, 1982’s Friday the 13th 3, or Friday the 13th 3-D.
Looking good! And scary!
It’s not unusual for franchises to make up lore as they go along. For example, when George Lucas wrote Star Wars, Darth Vader was not Luke Skywalker’s dad. Leia similarly was not Luke’s sister.
On a similar note, when John Carpenter and Debra Hill co-wrote 1978’s Halloween, Laurie Strode was not Michael Myers’ younger sister. That was a twist Carpenter concocted, likely under the influence of alcohol, to give the mercenary follow-up to his surprise smash an element of novelty.
Making Michael Laurie’s brother combined the two main twists of the original Star Wars trilogy. It establishes that two of its main characters are furtively brother and sister, AND connects a hero to a villain through blood.
Rick Rosenthal’s goal in directing Halloween II was to make it look and feel as much like a John Carpenter movie as possible. Rumor has it that he even had a bracelet made reading, “WWJD?” for “What would John do?”
Rosenthal followed the dictates of a Carpenter with the initials J.C. because he is a god of horror, a morbid messiah, a deity of the disgusting.
It helps that Carpenter co-wrote the score with Alan Howarth and borrows/steals trademarks of the original, like voyeuristic shots that allow us to see the world from the killer’s perverse perspective.
Halloween II was released four years after the original but takes place immediately after the events of the first film.
Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has just pumped six bullets into his former patient, Michael Myers, who then tumbled off a balcony, presumably to his death. That should be enough to kill anyone, but Michael Myers isn’t just anyone; he’s the boogeyman. Men die. The boogeyman does not, because he’s an undying concept, not a flesh-and-blood human being. Dr. Loomis is understandably apoplectic, confused, and bewildered to discover that he didn’t do anywhere near as thorough a job of killing Michael Myers as he thought.
How can anyone survive being shot six times? It’s just not human. If Loomis wanted to know why a seemingly dead Michael Myers could rise from the grave, all he had to do was look at Halloween’s boffo box office.
The obsessed doctor is horrified to learn that Michael Myers is much less dead than they had foolishly assumed.
This introduces a second key innovation: the unkillable killer.
In Halloween, Michael Myers is an unstoppable maniac but also ostensibly human. That is no longer true here. He’s a supernatural beast, a masked murder monster without feelings, remorse, or vulnerability.
Having just barely survived the massacre at the heart of Halloween, Laurie Strode is rushed to the emptiest, spookiest hospital in human history.
Rosenthal justified the controversial choice to have much of the action take place in a hospital where Laurie is seemingly the only patient because he had once gone to a hospital that was spookily understaffed, and found the experience unnerving.
The problem is that the empty hospital feels less like a functional operation than a horror movie set. It’s a haunted hospital just waiting to be destroyed by a masked man with a murderous grudge against humanity.
In Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis is the quintessential Final Girl. She’s smart, gutsy, and resourceful. That makes it unfortunate that Curtis spends much of the film horizontal and barely conscious while her brother sets about killing everyone who gets in the way of his sibilicide.
Laurie Strode makes for a predictably passive protagonist. She’s a damsel in despair who learns the hard way that no one can protect her from someone, or rather, something that cannot be killed, at least while the box-office grosses were still healthy.
Michael Myers is methodical in his preparations. He steals a kitchen knife, learns where his big sis is recovering, and sets about working his malevolent magic. He cuts the phone lines for the hospital and slashes tires so that no one can get away.
Dr. Loomis, meanwhile, frantically tries to contain the supreme evil that has been unleashed. Despite being Michael Myers’ longtime doctor, he is shocked to learn that his arch-nemesis is the older brother of the unfortunate teenager he’s risked his life to protect.
Laurie is traumatized by her near-death experience and terrified by the very real possibility that she will not survive another mini-family-reunion.
In a development I found amusingly realistic, paramedic Jimmy Lloyd (The Last Starfighter’s Lance Guest) develops an instant crush on Laurie and decides that while it may not be the exact right moment, he’s going to shoot his shot with her anyway, because he’s young and horny and not about to let a mass murderer with a score to settle get in the way of getting laid.
Carpenter’s profound ambivalence about Halloween 2’s mercenary existence is palpable. He told the complete story of Michael Myers in the first film. He had no interest in continuing it, although his original idea for the sequel involved Laurie being pursued in a high-rise in Chicago. I don’t know if that would have resulted in a better film, but it would at least provide an element of novelty missing from this blandly competent exercise in exploitation.
To that end, he has Laurie shoot Michael in both eyes. After being blinded, he swings his scalpel around wildly in an unintentionally comic manner. Loomis isn’t taking any chances, so he risks certain death by intentionally creating a gas explosion that, in anything other than a slasher sequel, would result in his death as well as the death of Michael Myers.
Carpenter killed off the legendary boogeyman he and Debra Hill created, as well as the crazed zealot whose life revolves around stopping him. It didn’t take. Pleasance re-upped for three more go rounds, and Laurie Strode would return in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy.
The frightmaster behind Halloween thought the world was done with his sinister creation after he seemingly killed him off here. He had no idea just how wrong he ultimately was.
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