Halloween 2: The Nightmare Isn’t Over!

HOSPITAL MASSACRE ON HALLOWEEN!

But what do you expect when Michael Myers, aka The Shape, pays a visit to the emergency room? He's looking for Jamie Lee Curtis who he almost killed in Halloween and now he's gonna finish the job....if all these nurses and doctors and cops don't keep getting in his way. We're talking about Halloween II, featured on Joe Bob's Last Call this past Saturday on TNT, and here to give you some real intellectual insights into this cinematic masterpiece is Joe Bob hisself.

Intro Halloween II

"Good grief, the credits are longer than the movie! Eight minutes of credits at the end of that baby. You know, that movie cost $11 million to make, and I would estimate they spent 10 million just on that last sequence, in the infernal furnace of Freddy! Did you notice in the credits that they had an "eel wrangler" and an "eel double," both credited. Anyway, that was supposed to be the very end of Freddy--but then New Line Cinema started talking about making a "Freddy vs. Jason" movie, because they own the rights to both "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Friday the 13th" sequels. I personally think that Freddy is a much better character than Jason, but I guess that's the whole point. Everybody would have an opinion about it. It would be like Tyson-Holyfield. "Freddy can beat Jason's butt." "Uh-uh!" I personally don't see how you can even DO a movie with two bad guys, since they would both have to die at the end. You couldn't let one live. They would have to be COOPERATING in evil, and both of those guys are--let's face it--loners. Anyway, the inventor of the "Friday the 13th" series is Sean Cunningham, and that's the SAME Sean Cunningham who gave Wes Craven his first job in the business--when he hired him to direct "Last House on the Left" in 1972. So the good thing about it would be the re-teaming of Sean and Wes after all these years.

Okey dokey, we're gonna watch "Halloween II" in just a second, but I wanna remind you that next week on "Monster Vision," we have an Arnold the Barbarian double feature. We have Conan the Destroyer, the one with Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain, pretty decent Conan flick. And we're gonna follow that up with Arnold's very first movie after he came to America in 1968. "Hercules in New York," also called "Hercules Goes Bananas." In which Arnold co-stars with a really lame night-club comic and plays Hercules, visiting New York against Zeus's wishes. Arnold's English was so bad at the time they had to dub his voice. Anyway, it'll be fun.

Right now, though, we're gonna watch "Halloween II," which is a pretty good sequel to the film that started it all, John Carpenter's "Halloween." The interesting thing about this film is that it takes place the SAME day as the original "Halloween." The original film ends a little before dawn, and this one starts with the paramedics coming to take Jamie Lee Curtis to the hospital and pick up Michael Myers' body. Or they THINK they're gonna pick up Michael Myers' body. This is also one of the best musical scores that John Carpenter ever wrote. That "Halloween" them is one of the scariest things. John Carpenter wrote, produced and did the music for this one, but he didn't actually direct it. I don't wanna give it away, so I'll just reel off those drive-in totals and we'll get to it. We have:

Thirteen dead bodies.
One nekkid breast. (I swear. Watch for it.)
Throat-slitting.
Throat- stabbing.
One motor vehicle crash, with explosion.
Claw hammer to the head.
One strangulation.
Scalding water to the face.
Knife to the forehead.
Needle to the ear.
Exploding stuntman.

Four stars. Check it out. We'll be here, continuing to diddle around like we know what we're talking about. Go.

[fading] They should have Jason and Freddy and Michael Myers all in the same movie. Like a tag team match. "Halloween the 13th on Elm Street Meets Abbott and Costello." Also starring Richard Roundtree as the police commissioner."

"Halloween II" Commercial Break #1

"Burned to a crisp. I should thank the TNT censors for leaving in the burned-to-a-crisp car-crash explosion scene, and I guess you probably figured out that was NOT Michael Myers. Because, if it was, we have no movie! Anyway, this movie got savaged by the critics--every critic EXCEPT Janet Maslin of the New York Times. She kinda liked it, which is weird because she used to hate horror films. Anyway, they said it was too much like the first movie. But I thought the interesting thing about it is that it starts FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE FIRST MOVIE ENDS. Normally, with a sequel, they put up some lame subtitle that says "Five years later . . ." And then we see some story about the sister of the heroine. But here we have Donald Pleasence roaming around screaming "But I shot him six times! I shot him six times!" It's Donald who makes these movies work. I think he'll always be best remembered for this role, even though he did everything in his career. He was the Nazi S.S. chief in "The Eagle Has Landed." He was the president in Escape From New York. He was the villain in the great James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice." He was in a lot of great B movies like "The Fiendish Ghouls" and "The Hands of Orlac" and "Circus of Horrors" and "Raw Meat." He was in Steven Spielberg's very first film, "The Great Escape." But Donald's main thing was the British stage, especially the plays of Harold Pinter. He did that play "The Caretaker" his whole life. Donald was shot down over Germany in World War II and spent most of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp, so he was one of those guys who, went he got back home to England, he wanted to work like hell, he was just so happy to be alive. And so, his whole career, he took every dang job that came his way--he was probably in a hundred films . And then, two years ago, he died, shortly after completing his final film, in "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers." He might have starred in "Look Back in Anger" and "The Great Escape," but we'll always remember him as Dr. Loomis. Okay, roll it.

[fading] Coming up, the moment we all wait for--when Dr. Loomis makes his "pure eeeeeevil" speech. I love that."

"Halloween II" Commercial Break #2

"Did you notice how they edited that cussing scene? Jimmy says "Every other word you say is either hell or hell or damn!" Why do I think there's an extra "hell" in there? And then Brad says, "Sorry, I guess I just [ ] up all the time." Why didn't they make him say "Sorry, I guess I just hell up all the time." Or "Sorry, I guess I just damn up all the time." See, I've figured it out. The TNT censors don't like cuss words that can be used as VERBS. Which means you can never show a good Jack Nicholson or Jack Warden movie on TV, because they are the experts in the art of transitive-verb declarative sentences, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Anyway, the guy playing Brad is Leo Rossi, who would later become well known for the excellent "Relentless" series--have you guys seen those movies? I think there are four of em. And the actress playing Karen is Pamela Susan Shoop, daughter of the actress Julie Bishop. Two generations of fine B-movie filmmaking. But WHO GIVES A HELL, right? Let's get back to the movie. See, I know how to do this without [ ]ing up.

[fading] Great scene coming up later where Brad and Karen damn their brains out." "Halloween II" Commercial Break #3

"The old claw-hammer-to-the-head trick, illustrating one of the ten first principles of horror. Namely, number eight: If you're fat, you must die. It's an iron-clad rule in a horror flick. John Carpenter didn't really wanna make this movie--and he didn't direct it. The producers kinda forced him to make it, and then at the last minute he was brought in to fix it. They apparently didn't like the version that Rick Rosenthal, the director, turned in. Rick Rosenthal's an interesting guy. He's one of these arteests. In college he majored in economics and government. Then he went travelling around Italy, and he had this religous experience while watching shipbuilders in Via Reggio. And he said, "That's what I must do. I must fashion metal with my hands." So he became a metal sculptor. And he went to Harvard to SCULPT METAL and paint, and then in 1973 he turned in his thesis on videotape. He was the first guy at Harvard ever allowed to do a videotape thesis. And so he thinks, "Great--I'm a filmmaker-- that's what I'll do." So he makes documentaries for New Hampshire public TV. Only, when he was working on his biggest one, he was talking to a 70-year-old abstract expressionist painter named Maude Morgan who had known Hemingway in Paris in the twenties. And she started telling him very personal things about herself, and so Rick turned off the camera because he thought, "That's too personal. I'm invading this woman's privacy." And I guess that shoulda been a clue, but no--he continued on to the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies, and he made a short film called "Moon Face" that nobody understood. And then he made a 30-minute psycho-killer flick called "The Toyer," and John Carpenter's agent saw it and talked to him, and Rick told him how he wanted to work with light and form. He wanted to make movies in the manner of pre-Von Sternberg German Expressionism. And the agent says, "You wanna direct 'Halloween II'?" And Rick goes "Perfect!" So, while you're watching it, you'll notice there's a lot of stuff in hallways. The guy loves hallways. And windows. And shafts of light. And people runnin up and down corridors at OBLIQUE angles. And now you know WHY he did it that way. Okay, roll it.

[fading] Pre-Von Sternberg German Expressionism, in a "Halloween" movie. You know, there are some things that are MORE scary than Michael Myers."

"Halloween II" Commercial Break #4

"Well, there you have it--horror film rule number six:

Whoever has sex, must die.

And that was the stunt coordinator, Dick Warlock, playing Michael Myers in that scene. In the credits, they just call him The Shape. You know why they had to make "Halloween II"? The original one came out in 1978. It was originally called "The Babysitter Murders," but at the last minute they changed the name to "Halloween." And it only cost $300,000 to make, but it grossed 60 million at the box office. So, of course, the producers wanted a sequel. But John Carpenter and his producer, Debra Hill, didn't wanna do any sequels. They wanted to move on to other types of movies. So in 1979 and 1980 they just RE-released "Halloween" every October, and people loved it. But in the summer of 1980, Friday the 13th came out, and I think the producers got REALLY upset, cause that thing made so much money they thought, "That shoulda been us." It was a WORSE movie, but just as successful. So they talked John Carpenter into it. And every sequel they made, they said, "Okay, that's it. This is the last one." "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is the worst one. It came out in 1983, but with no Jamie Lee Curtis, no Donald Pleasence, no Michael Myers! They went totally away from the story line. And the audiences HATED it. They hated it so much that there were no more "Halloweens" until 1988, when they did "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers." They'd finally figured it out. Then the next year they made "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers." And in 1995 they made "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers." For some reason they don't call it "Halloween 6." You know why? Cause no director would take the job. "Hey, Steve, what you workin on?" [under breath] "Uh, 'Halloween 6.'" It's HUMILIATING. But if you can say, "Oh, it's a little suspense thriller called 'The Curse of Michael Myers.'" "Ahhhhhh! Interesting!" People are so weird. Okay, roll the flick.

[fading] You know what TNT took out of this movie? There was a great hypodermic to the eyeball. It was part of the German Expressionist Von Sternbergian statement the guy was making, and they TOOK IT OUT. Excised it. Josef Von Sternberg is turning over in his grave. He's saying "Vhat! Ze eyeball! Eez kaput!"

"Halloween II" Commercial Break #5

"That's the Baroness Haden-Guest, limping down the hallway, cowering in her hospital gown, whimpering as she falls asleep on the floor. Did you know that's what you have to call Jamie Lee Curtis now? The Baroness Haden-Guest. It's true. She's married to Christopher Guest, right? The great comedian and writer, from "Spinal Tap." So Christopher's dad died last year, and this summer Christopher took his seat in the House of the Lords, as the fifth Baron Haden-Guest. He has to wear a wig and everything. Anyway, "Halloween II" was made in 1981, long before Jamie Lee was a blueblood, and it was her sixth horror film in a row. Her very first job was in the TV series "Operation Petticoat," when she was 19 years old. Which was ironic, because her father, Tony Curtis, had starred in the MOVIE "Operation Petticoat." And then her second job was as the screaming heroine in "Halloween," which was ironic because her mom, Janet Leigh, was famous as the screaming heroine in Psycho. Anyway, then she made The Fog, and "Prom Night," and "Terror Train," and "Road Games," and about this same time she starred in the TV movie "Death of a Centerfold," as the murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. Jamie and Linda Blair were the two queens of horror for quite a few years there. And her co-star and love interest in this movie, Lance Guest, as Jimmy, also went on to starring roles--in "The Last Starfighter," and, of course, in the immortal "Jaws 4." Okay, back to "Halloween II," starring Donald Pleasence and The Baroness Haden-Guest.

[fading] "Jaws 4" is the one where Michael Caine goes on vacation in the Bahamas, so the shark follows his airplane from Massachusetts to the Bahamas, so he can eat him there. The shark follows the whole family, wherever they go on vacation. It's a STALKING shark."

"Halloween II" Commercial Break #6

"Dr. Loomis kicks hiney! All right, we're heading into the conclusion of "Halloween II," but I wanna mention that this movie became famous in a kinda bad way because, shortly after it came out, this looney named Richard Delmer Boyer murdered an elderly couple in Fullerton, California, and the reason he gave was that he was on drugs, and the drugs caused him to flash back to a scene he saw in "Halloween II," and so he acted out the scene. His defense was, "Yes, I killed em. I didn't mean to do it, but I did it." So the jury listened to this story--and sentenced him to death. But it became known in Fullerton as the "Halloween II Murders." And the only scene I can imagine he's talking about is that scene in the very beginning of the movie, where Michael Myers goes into the house and gets the butcher knife and scares the old lady. Anyhow--oh yeah, one more thing! At the very end of the movie, in the final scene, there are some TV reporters interviewing people. One of the reporters is a famous movie star today. See if you can find him. You gotta be REALLY QUICK. He's in the movie for about TWO SECONDS. Now you've GOTTA watch to the end, right? Okay, roll it. [fading] Do you know who John Carpenter was married to when they made this movie? Adrienne Barbeau. Remember her? He used her in "The Fog." Wes Craven used her in Swamp Thing. Healthy girl."

"Halloween II" Outro

I love that "Mr. Sandman" music at the end. Supposedly John Carpenter had to be brought in to film a few scenes at the end of shooting because the producers didn't like what Rick Rosenthal did with the picture, but I think it's just fine. I kinda like it. Oh--and the movie star seen in the final scene there is Dana Carvey, listed in the credits as "reporter's assistant." I would imagine it was Dana's film debut. One of his costars on Saturday Night Live was ... Mike Myers!

Okey dokey, remember, next week we have the big Schwarzenegger double feature. Conan the Destroyer, followed by Hercules in New York, the first movie he ever made. If you haven't seen it, you GOTTA watch it. It's hysterical.

And I guess that's it for me. Did you guys hear the one about the three friars who decided to leave their monastery and start a business together. They traveled around until they found a town they liked and opened up a plant-and-flower shop. So one day a woman was shopping at the friars' store, and while she was strolling down the aisle with her toddler, a large plant reached out, grabbed her child and ate it. The woman was upset, but the friars refused to believe that one of their plants could have done such a thing. But the woman told all of her friends and soon everyone in town was in an uproar. They decided to kick the Friars out of town. Every person in the town, except for a man named Hugh, gathered outside the Friars' shop, shouting, waving sticks, and demanding that they leave. But the Friars held their ground, and the townspeople gave up and went home.

A couple of weeks later, another woman was walking through the Friars' shop looking at plants with her baby, when a plant grabbed her child and ate it. She ran through the streets screaming that a plant had swallowed her baby. The townspeople were outraged and again they all gathered (except Hugh, of course) outside the Friar's shop and demanded that the Friars leave town at once. But the Friars refused and the people eventually left.

Upon hearing of these events, Hugh decided to check out the situation for himself, and he took HIS child into the floral shop. He held onto the lad tightly but it was no use. A large ficus wrestled the child from his arms and ate it. Hugh marched up to the Friars and said, quietly, "Get out of town, now!" The Friars immediately packed up all their belongings and fled that very day, never to be heard from again.

The moral of the story: Only Hugh can prevent florist Friars.

Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that the drive-in will never die. [running for cover]"

Bonus Monstervision: here’s the final segment for Carrie from an earlier January 1997 broadcast

Joe Bob Briggs still here. Great surprise ending. In case you were wondering, that was Sissy Spacek’s arm that came up out of the grave. Brian De Palma was gonna use a stuntwoman by Sissy insisted – she thought people might recognize her arm. So she got down there and thrust her hand up thru those heavy rocks and scratched herself all up and darn near broke off Amy Irving’s arm pullin’ her down. The other thing I should mention is that in that great scene where Carrie crucifies Mom with the flying kitchen knives, they do a direct steal from Psycho. Those are the violins from “Psycho,” as composed by Bernard Herrmann, the composer who worked for Hitchcock, and Herrmann had already died. Which is a good thing, cause he would have HATED that, he believed that you wrote a piece of music for a specific scene, and then you should never use that music again. But Brian De Palma thought otherwise.

OK, Theatre Of Blood with Vincent Price coming up in a minute but I wanna remind you that next Friday night we’ll be live from New Orleans, right in the center of all the Super Bowl excitement. The movies next week are The Neptune Factor and “When Time Ran Out.” And then on Super Bowl Sunday, we’ll be on again for a special all-day edition of MonsterVision: we’re showing a quadruple-feature starting at two in the afternoon. We’ll show “The Omen,” and “The Lost Boys,” and Deadly Friend, and “Midnight Offerings,” and that last movie will slop over into the Super Bowl, so those of you who might be channel surfing in and out of the game, or for you ladies who hate the Super Bowl.

Anyhow, we’re going down there to get crazy, and drink too many drinks and gamble away all our money, and occasionally record some TV segments. So check that out. And speaking of crazy people, we’re about to watch one of Vincent Price’s looniest roles. “Theatre Of Blood” is the one he made in 1973, when he’d been established for years and years as the leading man in horror flicks. And it’s famous among actors, cause it’s about this Shakespearean actor who kills off the critics of London one by one, reenacting a death scene from a famous Shakespearean play each time he commits a murder. . . amazing.
Theatre Of Blood host segments or Deadly Friend host segments

A college student drops in to the prof’s office and says, “What’s your opinion of the paper I submitted last week?”
The professor says, “It’s absolute drivel.”
Student says, “That’s OK, I’d like to hear it anyway.”

The drive-in will never die!

Three guys are on a plane. The stewardess asks them if they would like to eat anything. First guy says, “I wouldn’t mind nibbling on you, Honey, but how about some peanuts?”
Second guy says, “Gimme the dinner right now if it doesn’t taste like crap.”
Guy next to the window says, “I just lost my wife and don’t feel like eating anything, thanks.”
Stewardess comes back with the second guy’s dinner. The first guy pinches her on the behind and says, “Where’s my peanuts, Sweet Cheeks?”
The second guy says, “Hey Airhead, what am I supposed to eat this with, my hands?”
Guy by the window says, “I might try a dinner, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Stewardess comes back with their three orders. She hands the guy by the window his dinner and says, “I hope you feel better soon.” She hands the guy on the aisle a bag of peanuts and says, “Nuts to you.” Then she hands the guy in the middle an eating utensil, saying, “And fork you.”