Why Hospitals Are Bad
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Michael realizes he's been hit with the deadly "Stinkpalm".
Sure, it begins right after Halloween ends, but did Halloween 2 have to take place almost entirely in a hospital? Sure, why not? There’s plenty of people to kill in a hospital, right…especially if one of them was your intended target in the first movie!
Laurie Strode is in the hospital and out of danger, right? WRONG! When someone wearing the same costume as Michael turns up dead (Actually, it’s old Ben Tramer, who Laurie admitted to having a crush on in the first movie. Damn! It’s dangerous even being an acquaintance of Laurie Strode!) Everyone thinks they’re in the clear, except crazy old Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance again). It seems to me that if they just listened to the old bastard, everyone would be a lot happier.
Laurie’s off in the hospital making time with ambulance driver and future Last Starfighter Lance Guest, here playing the affable Jimmy, who, no shit, later in the movie slips in a pool of blood and busts his domepiece, continuing Carpenter’s legacy of ineffectual male characters in his movies. Don’t worry, he makes up for it later with The Thing…not a vagina to be found in that sausage fest! I should point out that Carpenter wrote this one, but didn’t direct it.
Michael finds out where Laurie’s recovering from the shallow cut he put on her arm and heads that way, stopping at a school house to write “Samhain”. Loomis, probably having been alive when Druids celebrated the feast of Samhain suddenly knows why Michael’s so hard to kill, but is intercepted by a nurse with a message from the governor of Illinois…I’m not making this shit up! She tells him…well, I don’t want to ruin the surprise for the three people who haven’t seen the movie, but it’s one of the most improbable plot reveals of all time!
The final throwdown in the hospital is kinda cool, and hey, there’s a nurse played by Pamela Shoop (Again, I’m not making this up…that’s her real name) who really just wants to get it on in the hot tub, but, you know, Michael’s got other plans for her. The least he coulda done is let these guys finish the sex before whacking them…but NOOOOO! It must suck to get killed while sporting a set of blueballs. Honestly…that’s just not cricket.
Anyways, all horror sequel protocols are followed. Bigger body count, more elaborate death scenes, and much more violence. But, to me, that removes most of what made the first film so scary, and why Rob Zombie’s remake didn’t work for me. It’s scarier when you don’t know why Michael kills people. No motive means he’s just a killing machine who might go off on anyone. I don’t need to know why he’s doing it.
Oh…Shit! Is that Dana Carvey? I’ll be damned! (Seriously…he’s in there).
I’m going to bed…I’m not going to tell you why. It’s much scarier that way.
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