☆★☆★☆★☆★
Roger Ebert gave Halloween II two stars, called it a fall from greatness, and criticized its violent escalation and “idiot plot”; the hosts defend horror as a thrill-focused amusement ride.
In the discussion (2)
- Ebert argues common sense would end the movie, while the panel says plotting is the wrapper around murder-set-piece thrills.
- The hosts land around two to two-and-a-half stars while acknowledging nostalgia and its effectiveness for a first-time child viewer.
Ben Tramer’s mistaken-identity incineration wins over the remixed opening, neighborhood kitchen murder, Brackett finding Annie, hot-tub murders, hospital chase, and gas-soaked finale.
In the discussion (7)
- The reprise remixes the original ending, Loomis’s “you don’t know what death is,” the opening score, and Michael stealing a kitchen knife into a propulsive first twelve minutes.
- An elderly couple watching Night of the Living Dead while preparing a huge midnight sandwich creates domestic calm before Michael enters the neighborhood.
- Ben Tramer is hit by a speeding police car, pinned to a van, and incinerated while Loomis and Brackett immediately leave; its grotesque scale and lack of aftermath make it the unanimous comic favorite.
- Brackett closing Annie’s eyes and blaming Loomis is unexpectedly moving, while Loomis responds with monomaniacal indifference.
- Loomis repeats his inhuman-patience speech like stand-up material and grows increasingly frantic as nobody believes Michael cannot die.
- Karen and Bud’s workplace hot-tub tryst combines unhygienic absurdity, coercive set history, nudity, and the movie’s most iconic scalding murder.
- The hypodermic deaths, scalpel lift, Laurie’s car hiding, blind Michael, and Loomis’s willingness to explode an occupied hospital are additional set pieces.
Leo Rossi wins narrowly over Jeffrey Kramer, the mortician also known as Deputy Hendricks in Jaws and Jaws 2.
In the discussion (1)
- Rossi’s later role as one of The Accused’s attackers makes Bud immediately recognizable.
The Datsun truck narrowly leads nurses’ caps, transistor-radio news, walkie-talkies, and razor-blade candy as the most 1981 element.
In the discussion (3)
- A teenager carrying a boombox late downtown is the initiating example.
- The nurses’ formal caps stand for vanished workplace uniforms.
- The razor-blade-in-an-apple injury captures a powerful but possibly baseless era-specific Halloween panic.
The deserted-night hospital, delayed setup, erotic-to-repulsive murder pattern, messy vignettes, varied kills, Loomis’s speeches, Michael’s operational efficiency, and maternity-ward image age best.
In the discussion (7)
- A nearly empty hospital is unrealistic at this scale but authentically eerie to anyone who has visited one late.
- The sequel spends thirty minutes continuing Halloween before introducing its own quiet hospital ensemble.
- The film weaponizes arousal immediately before violent disgust and gives incidental newscaster and candy-injury vignettes texture.
- Hammer, scalpel, needle, and scalding water show the genre learning to vary kills into distinct set pieces.
- Pleasence’s reported chaotic 1981 SNL hosting and Loomis’s endlessly repeated warnings increase the character’s comic afterlife.
- Michael follows the hospital sign, disables phones, lights, tires, fuel, security, the doctor, and nurses with systematic efficiency.
- Michael standing among unattended newborns is among the franchise’s creepiest images.
The razor-blade apple edges the huge midnight sandwich as best use of food.
In the discussion (1)
- The razor-blade apple edges the huge midnight sandwich as best use of food.
Michael stepping into the light behind Nurse Jill as she finds Dr. Mixter wins.
In the discussion (1)
- Michael stepping into the light behind Nurse Jill as she finds Dr. Mixter wins.
“Mr. Sandman” wins.
In the discussion (1)
Bud Scarlotti wins best character name.
In the discussion (1)
- Bud Scarlotti wins best character name.
Loomis’s “you don’t know what death is” and the score kicking in mark the chosen step-up moment.
Flex pick · Picker not identified
In the discussion (1)
- Loomis’s “you don’t know what death is” and the score kicking in mark the chosen step-up moment.
Yes: Pamela Susan Shoop’s reported experience with an inadequately closed set and pressure for more nudity establishes the need.
Flex pick · Picker not identified
In the discussion (1)
- Shoop reportedly expected a closed set, encountered many male crew members, and was protected by Debra Hill from pressure to perform full-frontal nudity.
Laurie’s drugged incapacitation is the majority weak link; Dick Warlock’s shorter, stiffer, ill-fitting-mask Michael is the dissent.
In the discussion (2)
- Two hosts object that the sequel mythologizes Laurie while giving Jamie Lee Curtis almost nothing to do; alternatives include killing her early or moving her to another hospital.
- The dissent prefers the athletic original Michael to Warlock’s zombie-like movement and mask fit, while acknowledging fan arguments that six gunshots justify the stiffness.
Laurie’s visible wig, the marshal’s blank response to the sibling reveal, fake blood, pointless school vandalism, the nicotine-yellowed mask, and hot-tub death mechanics age worst.
In the discussion (5)
- Curtis’s shorter hair from another production makes the wig increasingly obvious on modern screens.
- The marshal registers no information while Marion explains the newly unsealed sibling file.
- The effects blood, Annie’s neck wound, and Michael’s school detour look artificial or purposeless.
- Debra Hill’s cigarette smoke reportedly discolored the original mask in storage, and Warlock’s head changed its fit.
- The panel debates whether Karen dies from burns or drowning and why Michael’s hands withstand scalding water.
The elderly ER doctor’s inexplicably drunk performance wins.
In the discussion (1)
- The elderly ER doctor’s inexplicably drunk performance wins.
Yes: a Halloween-night homecoming football gathering could let Michael attack players and even suit up as an unstoppable tight end.
Flex pick · Picker not identified
In the discussion (1)
- A football game or team gathering would widen Haddonfield beyond the hospital and give Michael athletic victims.
Michael Myers did not kill a Black person on screen until 2002 and was therefore jokingly radicalized by the O.J. trial.
In the discussion (2)
- The argument excludes Nurse Alves because her death is offscreen and imagines 1990s court-TV and late-night coverage changing Michael’s politics.
- Later films’ Black victims are presented as the invented evidence for the transformation.
Laurie’s absent adoptive parents may be worse than the Home Alone parents; Brackett and every Haddonfield adult also fail to protect children.
In the discussion (2)
- They never appear despite their daughter being stabbed, hospitalized, attacked again, and transferred after dawn.
- Adoption might explain emotional distance but not their total absence; an all-night adult party is the comic alternate explanation.
Marion Chambers becomes three times hotter when she lights a cigarette after confronting Loomis.
In the discussion (1)
- Marion Chambers becomes three times hotter when she lights a cigarette after confronting Loomis.
No: Haddonfield is accepted as predominantly white, while Nurse Alves’s authority and professionalism are praised as unusually progressive.
In the discussion (2)
- The sole Black nurse lectures a white nurse about punctuality and professionalism.
- Her offscreen death is jokingly treated as insufficient proof that Michael killed her.
No casting what-ifs are found.
In the discussion (1)
- No casting what-ifs are found.
Dana Carvey wins for a nonspeaking media-scene appearance that placed Halloween II on his résumé before fame.
In the discussion (1)
- The cameo is too small to justify later VHS art promoting Carvey, though the hosts imagine the marketing trick.
Ben Tramer wins for roughly 45 seconds culminating in the movie’s funniest death.
In the discussion (1)
- Ben Tramer wins for roughly 45 seconds culminating in the movie’s funniest death.
Tom Hanks for Jimmy, Heather Thomas for the blonde nurse, and Catherine Bach for Karen are proposed without a final vote.
In the discussion (1)
- Young Hanks is supported partly because he resembles Lance Guest in the period.
The final paramedic making an injured Laurie take a “big step” into the ambulance wins Craig’s explicit flex.
Flex pick · Craig Horlbeck
In the discussion (2)
- Laurie has been unable to walk, yet receives no stretcher and must put weight on the injured ankle.
- Jimmy’s extreme injured acting is an additional low-key overacting joke; an alternate TV ending puts him beside Laurie in the ambulance.
Research covers an abandoned high-rise sequel, Carpenter’s sibling explanation, the demolished hospital, Shoop’s ear infection and cold set, Carpenter’s reshoots, Warlock’s dual role, and the TV ending.
In the discussion (6)
- An early sequel concept moved Laurie to a high-rise years later, a setup the panel strongly prefers.
- Carpenter said the sibling twist came from needing any remaining story.
- Morningside Hospital was demolished and replaced by senior apartments.
- Shoop said the cold, dirty hot-tub water gave her an ear infection while the actors had to portray boiling heat.
- Carpenter judged Rosenthal’s cut insufficiently scary and added material including boombox boy to explain how Michael locates the hospital.
- Warlock both played Michael and drove the police car that killed Ben Tramer.
No person peaks here; mistaken-identity car crashes, same-night sequels, the early slasher era, and hospital horror are considered and rejected or left unresolved.
In the discussion (1)
- No person peaks here; mistaken-identity car crashes, same-night sequels, the early slasher era, and hospital horror are considered and rejected or left unresolved.
Hanks works for Jimmy; Cruise is test-driven and rejected.
In the discussion (1)
- Hanks works for Jimmy; Cruise is test-driven and rejected.
No choice is made because Rosenthal is already imitating Carpenter.
In the discussion (1)
- No choice is made because Rosenthal is already imitating Carpenter.
Philip Seymour Hoffman would play Bud, with a Talented Mr. Ripley–style creepiness.
In the discussion (1)
- Philip Seymour Hoffman would play Bud, with a Talented Mr. Ripley–style creepiness.
The elastic timeline, Michael’s bodily needs and unexplained skills, unguarded Laurie, odorless burned body, Karen’s attraction to Bud, workplace rules, scalpel physics, scalding water, and survivable headshots generate the nits.
In the discussion (7)
- Halloween’s first night seems to end around ten or eleven, yet downtown remains busy and the hospital action stretches plausibly or implausibly until dawn.
- Michael’s eating, digestion, driving, Samhain knowledge, needle use, and ability to continue after gunshots are explained only by Loomis’s insistence that he is not human.
- No police guard Laurie even though the town knows an active killer attacked her.
- Investigators casually inspect a newly incinerated body without reacting to heat or odor.
- Karen’s attraction to Bud is doubted; his own ban on patient relationships does not stop him from having sex with a coworker on shift.
- A scalpel cannot plausibly lift a full adult into the air, and scalding water should burn Michael’s hands.
- Two close-range shots from Laurie’s Colt should do more than neatly blind Michael.
The franchise has exhausted sequel and remake forms; Halloween: Resurrection is rejected as an adequate mostly Black version.
In the discussion (1)
- The franchise has exhausted sequel and remake forms; Halloween: Resurrection is rejected as an adequate mostly Black version.
Samuel L. Jackson as the marshal or Loomis, Cris Collinsworth as security guard Garrett, and Byron Mayo as Bud are the strongest additions.
In the discussion (2)
- Jackson’s Loomis turns the inhumanity warning into a profane comic monologue.
- Collinsworth calling Laurie and Michael’s reunion and Mayo reassuring Karen about the hot tub are distinct commentary pitches.
The score is the only proposed recipient, but the panel remains unsure.
In the discussion (1)
- The score is the only proposed recipient, but the panel remains unsure.
Questions cover Brackett’s marriage, police consequences and Ben Tramer litigation, Laurie confronting her parents, unused Dana Carvey comedy, hospital youth, and Michael’s impossible knowledge.
In the discussion (5)
- Brackett may be blamed and divorced after failing to warn or protect Annie.
- The officer who killed Ben may be suspended or retained during the shortage, while Ben’s parents have a powerful claim against Haddonfield.
- Laurie must ask her parents why they hid her adoption and sibling and remained absent through two attacks.
- Carvey could have contributed a Church Lady broadcast or impressions instead of silent background work.
- The hospital improbably concentrates many young, attractive employees in a tiny town.
The original nicotine-stained Michael Myers mask is the overwhelming choice and is speculated to be worth millions.
In the discussion (2)
- Its fragility and value require a safe rather than allowing visitors to wear it.
- A cited 2012 asking price of one million dollars is treated cautiously because the page’s authenticity is unclear.
When a homicidal maniac is loose, find your children, check in, and organize a phone chain.
In the discussion (1)
- When a homicidal maniac is loose, find your children, check in, and organize a phone chain.
Halloween is the clear double-feature choice.
In the discussion (1)
- Halloween is the clear double-feature choice.
Michael Myers wins two ballots; Donald Pleasence receives one for Loomis’s dominant comic commitment and character arc.
In the discussion (2)
- Two choices go to “Big Mikey” for relentless presence and survival.
- The dissent chooses Pleasence because Loomis dominates the movie, commits to every warning, and survives an arc nearly as indestructible as Michael’s.
Podcast choices
- Speaker not identified
- Michael Myers
- Speaker not identified
- Michael Myers
- Speaker not identified
- Donald Pleasence / Dr. Loomis
Roger Ebert's review
