‘Halloween II’

Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, terror, disturbing graphic images, language, and some crude sexual content and nudity.



I didn’t have much of a choice. It was either “Final Destination” in 3D or “Halloween II,” Rob Zombie’s sequel to his re-do of the classic 1979 horror film about the ubiquitous Michael Myers, the stalker of teenagers, including a young Jamie Lee Curtis. Halloween II was primarily filmed in Georgia including one or two places in Madison, so I decided to be loyal to the home team.

It was probably the crummiest film I have seen in decades and one of my biggest mistakes in the two decades of seeing movies and writing about them.

Slash and gash movies seldom appear on anybody’s must-see list, but they can be entertaining. They are like a roller-coaster ride: intense thrills and chills and then the relief that everything is over with a compulsion to do it again even while kissing the solid ground. Frequently, in these movies, there is plenty of dark humor…like reckless teenagers acting really stupid — usually while naked — and then they get punished for their recklessness by being eviscerated in a cleverly creative way. What is there not to like?

“Halloween II,” however, is witless, stupid, vulgar, crude, clumsy, uninspired, silly, dirty, nasty, vile, senseless, moronic, inane, ugly, boring, foul, dull, violent, sickening and without one scintilla of originality. I hated every single character; each and every one of them needed a power-wash and a haircut. The dialogue was so badly written that I feel fairly sure that a drunk, immature, 13-year old with a second grade education from a fourth-rate school could do a rewrite and improve the script ten-fold. The sets looked cheap and unsuitable for human visitation. Nothing — and I do mean nothing — is worth saving. Don’t even waste your time on renting it on DVD. Do not watch it on cable or satellite. If it appears anywhere — run away. Run far away. Don’t even look at the poster. Don’t watch the trailer. Don’t even utter the title aloud.

“Halloween II” is one torture scene after another, but no act on the screen is more brutal than the act committed on the audience. That is beyond cruel.

I enjoy horror films. I love guts’n’gore movies but “Halloween II” does not deserve to be placed in this genre. This is like cheap and sleazy pornography but with fewer naked people and no sex.

There are some actors in this movie that should consider suing director and writer Rob Zombie. Brad Dourif, Howard Hesseman, Dayton Callie and Margot Kidder should charge Zombie with Talentslaughter in the first degree. Malcolm McDowell, on the other hand, has only himself to blame. If I were him, I would not, in the future, return Zombie’s phone calls. I would insist on calling all Robs that I knew, “Robert” and I would never see a zombie film just on principle.

The cinematography is grainy and cheesy. I think this was on purpose. I hated even that aspect of the movie. And the dumb use of a white horse with the ghostly image of Myers’ mommy (played like a corpse by Sherri Moon Zombie in an attempt, I suppose of collecting even a few more bucks) is unbelievably embarrassing. Why not make it a unicorn? Why not throw in a Smurf with a sinister leer and a jagged scar on his purple cheek?

I am furious that I wasted 101 minutes of my life on this drek. Please don’t you do it.

“Halloween II” earns not a single bow tie. Not even a collar. Not even one of those dirty, torn, wife-beater T-shirts.