Hard-boiled legs.
Since I made these screenshots nigh on half a year ago, I can't entirely remember why I chose this one, other than the opening credits are deceptively similar to the original movie's until the jack-o-lantern falls away to reveal A REALLY SCARY SKULL.
I rather enjoy this sequel, not only because it has a lot of the atmosphere and direction of the first film, but also because it takes place literally where Halloween left off. Laurie, the sole survivor of Michael's massacre, is taken to a hospital on what is still Halloween night. Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett are driving all over town looking for Michael, unaware that he's heard the news bulletins as to Laurie's whereabouts (why they would broadcast this all over the news I have no idea) and headed to the hospital. Here he is watching the news with some friendly neighbors.
There are a few bizarre scenes mixed in during the hospital arrival dealing with a mother and her boy who's bitten on a razor hidden in some candy. I say bizarre because they have zero bearing on the rest of the story, yet their shots are prominent and often drawn out.
Loomis and Brackett think they spot Michael, but as they attempt to get his attention he steps in front of a police car and goes smoosh on the end of an ambulance. It's mentioned later that the corpse is actually that of Ben Tramer, the boy Laurie had a crush on and was going to ask to the high school dance. Once again, no point for this footnoted information except to make things a little more tragic.
Of course, once he gets to the hospital, Michael can't just go after Laurie and finish it. He makes a point of killing everyone on the night shift, and as a horny orderly and nurse find out, sex is the best way to assure you die in a horror movie. The nurse he picks off is especially comely, although she turned into a serious butterface after a few dunks in that overheated spa.
Even the doctor on duty is caught unawares, but with our plucky heroine strapped into a bed, it's the naive orderly with a crush on her who's stumbling through the hospital finding Michael's murders. I've always found it interesting how Michael is never shown artfully arranging his subjects, which he seems fond of doing. I get that this movie really isn't that deep but it seems to me that an investigation of that kind of depravity in a serial killer would be more interesting than all the tit shots in the world. I guess that's why I don't make movies.
Our would-be hero's journey comes to a quick end when he finds the final missing nurse. I found this murder particularly inventive. You never see her ambushed by Michael; she simply disappears from the storyline for a long while. The only other murder up to this point that you haven't witnessed is when Michael killed the truck driver in the original film, so it's an interesting departure. Throughout the film there are bizarre random shots of an arm dangling with an IV in it and a steady drip-drip-drip, out of context and with no connection to surrounding scenes. When you get to see it from further away, pieces come together nicely.
As the only one left in the hospital, Laurie's luck has just about run out, until Dr. Loomis shows up to save the day (again, for the second time in one night). He shoots Michael in the back of the head but please don't tell me you expected that to kill him. Rather, it just gives him a really nice emo blood tears effect.
The movie ends with Michael in a fire and of course he doesn't die, don't be ridiculous. We've barely begun this deliquent's horror movie adventures (though he does get to take a break in the third movie of the series, Season of the Witch, which has, like some of the shots in this film, absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story).
I debated putting this one on the list. I debated it because it seems like such an undebatable option. You can't discuss horror movies without discussing this one, but with that being said it seems obvious by this point that it's one of the greatest horror movies of all time and needs no further discussion. I am of the can't-have-too-much-of-a-good-thing school of thought and plus I just have a hard-on for Kubrick. The score in this film is arguably one of its bedrocks of scariness. The memorable opening track, with ominous organs and weird, warped voices is actually adapted from the first piece of written music ever. It was an old monastic hymn, the first recorded evidence of people composing and writing music. Kubrick has been stated as saying that he chose the music because it communicated something dark and evil, and it was proof that inherent darkness had been in man's nature since our earliest steps towards modern civility. Not to mention, all of the shots in this scene feel slightly stretched, off-kilter, and even though nothing happens in the opening credits and the following scene is a little drawn out, the creep sticks with you and doesn't go away from the get go.
As some of you know, I have a habit of sleeping with a movie on. I've been doing this since sophomore year, and I usually stick with an arsenal of "bedtime movies" so I'm not tempted to stay awake and actually watch. These are movies I know so well that their rhythm lulls me to sleep. This movie was one of them. The reason why I eventually moved it out of rotation was because without fail, at least once during the night when it was on, I would wake up to the one scene that had terrified me as a child. This scene occurs in flashes between other scenes, so how I managed to always catch it as I awoke is beyond me. Plus the movie would run on a loop, so sometimes it happened more than once in a night. Try coming out of a sleep coma to this ...
This is the opening of a very intriguing scene, both content- and aesthetic-wise. This bathroom was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and prominently features the color red, which plays such a huge part in this movie it should get its name in the credits.
Mama Wendy begins to suspect something is amiss and peeks at her husband's manuscript. This is something non-writers will never understand. You don't look at an unfinished work; you can't get an appreciation for the work as an organic whole. Wait until you see what he's got in store.
He's not gonna hurt you, Wendy. He's just gonna bash your brains right the fuck in!
This is the one scene in the movie where no matter how many times I see it, I want it to happen differently. I'm always caught staring at that last pole as Halloran approaches it and going, "No, Scatman Crothers!"
The actor who played Danny was spot on with his cute/creepy factor. I think the only other child to achieve it so well was Harvey Stephens from the original The Omen. The best part is, especially at such a young age, it was probably unintentional. Are these children vessels of Satan? Who's to say. This silent scream certainly isn't doing him any favors.
So when I was a kid, I knew logically what was going on this scene but couldn't wrap my head around getting a blow job from a puppy bear. This hallucination of Wendy's is especially weird because it seems to have no real connection to the rest of the spectres in the Overlook. I suppose when taken in context with the story, there are more than just the ghosts of the slaughtered family living there, but other than that it has few other similarities with the original story.
This is a cult classic horror film that I feel like I should have watched before now, but I've since made up for it by watching this movie dozens of times and even adding it to the sleepytime rotation. I don't really know how to describe this movie except for to say WATCH IT. It's not quite horror, but requires more suspension of disbelief than the average psychological thriller. The disturbing part is that by the end you are not sure that this kind of thing couldn't have happened. It is a little misguided in its depiction of pagans but this was the '70s, society wasn't as enlightened or open-minded. A righteous Christian British police officer arrives the island of Summerisle, pursuing a lead on a missing girl. However, upon he arriving he finds that no one on the small, intimate island recalls this girl, in spite of the anonymous letter that suggested an islander tipped the police chief off. The officer refuses to be shaken and begins his investigation. The islanders attempt to lure him off track with their pagan celebrations and naked young innkeepers' daughters.
You can also clearly see in that shot that the actress is not Brit Englund, who plays the girl in the rest of the scenes, but a body double. The magic of Hollywood! The officer resists her seduction and finds his way to the girl's school to ask her classmates if they know of her. He begins to realize the extent of the oddness of this island when he interrupts a lesson on the importance of the pagan holiday May Day. He confronts the teacher and finds hidden information on the girl, then discovers her classmates gleefully torturing insects instead of voicing any concern for their missing friend.
In the cemetery, built upon a former churchyard, he finds tombstones and pagan fetishes he finds sacrilegious. He fashions a cross out of an old applebox, left empty since the island's annual harvest was dangerously unfruitful (oh God that pun hurt). He realizes he is among a community of fornicators, idolators, and heathens and feels that the girl's disappearance may have a part in their rituals for a bountiful harvest.
He encounters couples madly making love on lawns at night, young girls leaping naked over fires of fertility, children wrapping ribbons around a phallic tree, and a young mother freely nursing her child with a pagan symbol of rebirth in her hand. By this point, the officer has confronted Lord Summerisle, the appointed leader of the island and its people, and found that he encourages the paganism because it builds the community and provides the crops that the island depends on, both for business and self-sustenance. It's unclear whether he truly believes the religion handed to him by his grandfather and founder of the island colony, or if he simply follows them as a means of controlling his people. Either way, I'm sure he's none too bothered to wander around the island at any given time and see this:
When the officer unearths pictures of the girl at last year's harvest festival, the islanders change their story to say that she had died the year before. This is no comfort to the officer, who knows that her burial ceremony and resting place were likely corrupted by their pagan influences. When he sees her particular pagan grave marker, he fears the worst.
He demands from Lord Summerisle the right to exhume her body to discover what manner of atrocity they subjected her to, and the lord seems strangely compliant with the officer's wishes. He acts as though he truly has nothing to hide, probably because he knows what awaits him in the girl's grave ...
The islanders then tell him it is their belief that people do not die but become part of the world around them, and that the hare is symbolic of her passage into the next life. Outnumbered and surrounded by the enemy, the officer is coerced into participating in the May Day festivities. When they reach the area where he believes the girl is to be sacrificed to ensure a better harvest, he breaks free and attempts to save her. It is then she is revealed to merely be bait for the trap, to lure the virgin non-believer into being a much more potent sacrifice. He is locked into a giant wicker statue with a multitude of sacrificial animals, and the villagers descend with torches, singing and merrymaking.
There is a bright side to all this death and deceit, though: Christopher Lee in drag.
