by Joey Rowland
Staff Reporter

            Halloween II is a painful film to watch at times . It's excessively brutal and I'm not talking about violence. It's like spending a night with a screaming annoying child .

            Michael Myers isn't dead. It seems that bullets only tick him off. Fair enough, chopping him into confetti probably wouldn't kill him.
            The achilles heal of this character is not in his death but what made up his life.  Every new director and writer coming into this series has tried to get inside Michael's head and give him new reasons as to why he is what he is . One only needs to look back at the original John Carpenter Halloween to know that isn't what made Michael frightening or interesting. All we knew about Michael then was that he was "purely and simply evil". Carpenter left it vague and the audience had to believe Loomis in his eccentricities because the fact is a schmuck in a mask is only as interesting as the presence around him. You kill Michael if you make him too complicated a character. Unfortuneatly for this franchise Rob Zombie has given Michael his most elaborate back story ever which I still don't think is given a satisfactory explanation.

            The White Horse as Zombie calls it appears to Michael in dreams. It certainly looks as if that is what. It seems that his dear old departed mother Deborah Myers doesn't want to leave Michael. If I had to name the star of the film or who the picture was built around it would be Sheri Moon Zombie's bizarre ghost version of Deborah Myers. It isn't interesting, it isn't scary, and it doesn't work. Well, the picture doesn't have much chance of working.

            Zombie's Laurie Strode isn't interesting either, in fact she is annoying. The problem here is that she can't go where Zombie wants to take this character. I don't think Zombie himself knows what to do with this character other than bring her to the visual in the film's final shot. Laurie goes from whining incessantly about Michael to opting to go out drinking at a party. Now that's what I call character development.Frankly I just didn't care about Scott's Laurie. It wouldn't cause me any grief as an audience member to simply have her shut up and get knifed. In fact I was rooting for Michael to do so for some of the film.

            There are some interesting characters in the film. Sheriff Leigh Brackett is the most compelling and best performed character in the picture. Michael's arch nemesis Samuel Loomis played again by Malcolm McDowell is reduced to the comic relief. I yearned for a Loomis similar to Donald Pleaseance, the Van Helsing to the Dracula. That is a character McDowell could sink his teeth into.

            The picture isn't completely to be damned. Zombie is a credible director and has a very good eye.