Halloween 2, Written/Directed By Rob Zombie

Published on September 29th, 2009 in: Halloween, Horror, Issues, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews |

By Danny R. Phillips

I am a fan of the horror genre, everything from Lon Chaney’s silent classic Phantom of The Opera to slasher gems like the first A Nightmare on Elm Street. Of all the on-screen killing machines director John Carpenter has created, the wordless, soulless Michael Myers is my all-time favorite. The first Halloween movie from 1978 is without question a classic of style, suspense, violence, and good writing. It stands in a class with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, House of Wax (the Vincent Price original, not the Paris Hilton piece of shit), Evil Dead, and Bride of Frankenstein.

halloween2
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Michael Myers.

So, when news came around that Rob Zombie was “re-imaging” the first two Halloween films I was more then a bit skeptical. Upon watching his first stab (sorry about that) at Halloween, I was pleasantly surprised and sickened; he had managed to stay true to Carpenter’s style without aping it and was actually able to make it slightly better by adding a bit of Michael’s back-story without including the convoluted, supernatural, Cult of the Thorn subplot crap.

Logic dictates that I liked the first one so why not the second? The second film in a horror series is often better then the first, right? Bride of Frankenstein stands as the perfect example of that theory. So, I went to Zombie’s Halloween 2 on opening night (late showing, of course).

From the opening scene, I knew Mr. Zombie was all about cranking up the gore. After a description of the symbolism of the white horse from Sigmund Freud’s works on dream analysis, the audience sees a blood soaked, screaming Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) in the back of an ambulance. Michael is presumed dead and is on his way to the morgue. Along a foggy, lonely country road, the ambulance driver and paramedic have a conversation about the promise and joy of necrophilia and promptly slam into a cow. Michael “awakens,” walks to the front of the ambulance, and casually saws off the head of the only living paramedic in the crash with a large piece of windshield glass. Can you see where this is headed?

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One Response to “Halloween 2, Written/Directed By Rob Zombie”


  1. Melissa:
    September 30th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Or maybe it is because the next logical step is to “re-imagine” Halloween 3: Season of The Witch, the worst and least cohesive film in the original series.

    Wrong!

    There weren’t supposed to be any Michael Meyers movies after Halloween 2. Carpenter wanted to move forward with a different Halloween-themed movie every year, but people who wanted to see the same old thing over and over again screamed bloody murder and thus we are left with one of the most boring series in horror history, with Halloween 3 as the standout.







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