Most long-running horror franchises have that one installment which was legitimately supposed to, but ultimately, did not end the franchise. Some have several of them. In Hollywood, producers (and sometimes audiences) will quickly voice their disgust if you ever dare leave money on the table. Not that anyone knew that in 1981. Instead, all Moustapha Akkad, Irwin Yablans, John Carpenter and Debra Hill wanted to do was to make a little more money off of the slasher gold rush they’d inadvertently started in 1978, and then bow out. Doing so, though, meant making some controversial story decisions with rotating directors and final edits. The resulting sequel they produced is inferior to the original, but Tim Williams and guest co-host, Ron West, still return to Haddonfield, Illinois to find "the Shape", also known as Michael Myers, as we discuss “Halloween II”.
Here are some additional behind the scenes trivia we were unable to cover on this episode:
- One common criticism is that the hospital is too conveniently dead, even for a night shift, for Michael to be able to walk around unnoticed and kill the hospital staff. Rick Rosenthal said he based this off a personal experience he had with his wife where they once attended a hospital late at night and it was completely deserted, save for a few doctors and nurses and the patients. Additionally early dialogue and the script refers to it as "Haddonfield clinic" not a fully staffed hospital.
- According to the original script there was a scene depicting the blonde reporters death, her car breaks down on the side of the road with her getting assistance from a guy who hits on her, with her responding in disgust, the truck driver then leaves her, after the tire is replaced she opens the trunk to Myers who then kills her and takes the car, as a nod to what he did in the first film.
- Sources: Wikipedia, Imdb, Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo, www.weminoredinfilm.com/2017/10/26/9-things-you-might-not-know-about-halloween-ii-1981/
- Intro & Outro Music: “Total Eclipse” by Nathaniel Wyver
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