Halloween II (Television Cut)

This article is about the Television Cut of the second film. For other meanings, see Halloween II.

Halloween II
Directed by	Rick Rosenthal John Carpenter(Additional scenes)
Produced by	John Carpenter
Written by	John Carpenter Debra Hill
Starring	Jamie Lee Curtis Donald Pleasence Charles Cyphers Lance Guest Pamela Susan Shoop Hunter von Leer Tawny Moyer Ana Alicia Nancy Stephens Gloria Gifford Leo Rossi Ford Rainey
Music by	Alan Howarth
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	Mark Goldblatt Skip Schoolnik
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release	1980s
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	2,500,000
Preceded by	Halloween (1978)
Followed by	Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Halloween II is a 1981 horror film and the second installment in the Halloween series. Directed by Rick Rosenthal and written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, it is a direct sequel to the first film; set on the same night of October 31, 1978, in the fictional American Midwest town of Haddonfield, the seemingly indestructible Michael Myers follows his intended victim Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to a nearby hospital while Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is still in pursuit of his patient.

An alternate version of Halloween II has been airing on the AMC network television beginning in the early 1980s, and was released on DVD packaged with the Scream Factory collector's edition in 2012 after fans of the franchise had long petitioned for an official release of this cut, with most of the graphic violence and gore edited out and several minor additional scenes added.

Plot

"You don't know what death is."

―Samuel Loomis

Laurie Strode instructs Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace to seek shelter with Joe Mackenzie. After they leave, Michael Myers rises and moves towards Laurie. Doctor Samuel Loomis, as he watches Tommy and Lindsay screaming and running out of the house, bursts into the house and shoots Michael in the chest six times. Myers falls back towards the outside and balcony and tumbles to the ground. Loomis goes to inspect the body, but Michael has disappeared. A neighbor comes out to see what all the noise is about. Loomis tells him to call the police.

Back at the Doyle house, police and medics converge on the scene. Two EMTs strap Laurie Strode to a stretcher and bring her out to the ambulance. She keeps mumbling that she doesn't want to be put to sleep. They bring her to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. The nurses call in Doctor Frederick Mixter (whom they suspect has been drinking at the country club) and he administers a shot to Laurie. She continues to protest, but they go unheard. Jimmy and his colleague Budd watch on.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Leigh Brackett and Doctor Loomis drive across town, searching for Michael Myers. Loomis repeatedly mentions how he had shot him six times. While Loomis reloads his gun, Brackett scans the streets. He blames Sam for letting Michael out to begin with. Suddenly, they hear screams coming from some trick or treaters. They pull over and Loomis sees someone who looks like Michael Myers approaching some children. He runs out of

Michael Myers in Halloween II

the car and begins pointing his gun at him. Brackett restrains him and Myers walks across the street. From out of nowhere, a police cruiser slams into Myers, ramming him into another vehicle which promptly explodes. Brackett asks Loomis if this was Myers, but Loomis isn't sure. Just then, another police cruiser pulls up. Deputy Gary Hunt exits the vehicle and tells Brackett about the bodies they recovered from the Wallace house. One of them is the sheriff's daughter, Annie.

Michael meanwhile, continues to stalk the neighborhood. He walks into the home of Mister and Mrs. Elrod and startles Mrs. Elrod and takes a butcher knife from the kitchen counter. Their neighbor, Alice, hears the screams and calls out, but nobody responds. Alice goes back into her house to resume a telephone conversation she is having with a friend named Sally.

Cast

• Donald Pleasence as Samuel Loomis
• Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode
• Charles Cyphers as Leigh Brackett
• Lance Guest as Jimmy
• Pamela Susan Shoop as Karen Bailey
• Hunter von Leer as Gary Hunt
• Tawny Moyer as Jill Franco
• Ana Alicia as Janet Marshall
• Nancy Stephens as Marion Whittington
• Gloria Gifford as Virginia Alves
• Leo Rossi as Budd
• Ford Rainey as Frederick Mixter

Differences

• Many of the scenes are time-compressed and run faster than usual, and many scenes that were previously without music now have bits of soundtrack music added. The explicit violence is removed in all death scenes and all profanity has been re-dubbed or removed.

• The movie begins with the opening credit sequence, followed by "Mr. Sandman" and the recap of the first movie's ending, instead of the other way around. After Loomis runs off, the scene cuts to the ambulance arriving at the Doyle house.

• The flashback to the first film contains additional sound effects, including a voice-over scream (supposedly from Laurie) when Loomis shoots Michael Myers.

• A different shot is used of Loomis emerging from the house to find Myers's missing body.

• The lines "I've been trick-or-treated to death tonight" and "You don't know what death is!" have been eliminated and replaced with an awkward voice-over from the neighbor saying, "Was that a Halloween joke?", with no response from Loomis.

• The scene with Mrs. Elrod occurs immediately after Ben Tramer's death, and is re-edited to suggest that Myers kills Mrs. Elrod instead of Alice Martin, who apparently survives since the scene now ends when she gets back on the phone. However, the addition of a few extra screams from Mrs. Elrod as Michael walks away from her house implies that she was simply frightened by him.

• The voice-over announcements of the male TV reporter run slightly differently, depending on when they appear over the extra scenes.

• An additional close-up shot of Laurie is inserted before Jimmy and Bud bring her out of the house on the stretcher, although the shot is obviously of Laurie in the ambulance.

• A few extra lines of dialogue with the female reporter near the beginning of the film were changed.

• After Ben Tramer is killed by the policeman's car in the explosion, the scene uses an alternate take of Loomis and Brackett's reactions, and also when Hunt pulls up to tell Brackett that Annie's body was discovered.

• The first view of Annie's corpse when Brackett identifies her is deleted.

• A different take of the dialogue is used when Laurie arrives at the hospital. All shots of her being stuck with needles are removed, and the scene is extended to include shots of Mrs. Alves, Dr. Mixter, and Jill leaning over her as her vision blurs. Then they begin to undress her as Mrs. Alves tells Jimmy and Bud to leave.

• The scenes that show Gary, the boy with the razor blade in his mouth, arriving at and leaving the hospital are removed, with only the section where he and his mother talk to Jill in the waiting room remaining.

• An extra scene is added where Janet talks to Jimmy about Laurie's injuries and tells him that Dr. Mixter gave her a double-bullet sedative.

• A voice-over reporter speaking over the clip of "Night of the Living Dead" to inform viewers that Michael Myers is believed to have burned to death was added.

• Extra dialogue is added between Mr. Garrett and Karen as he buzzes her in. He tells Karen the murders were committed because of drugs.

• Mrs. Alves tries to call Laurie's parents while she scolds Janet for not calling them immediately. Meanwhile, Jimmy sneaks in to see Laurie, and Mrs. Alves allows him two minutes, which explains why she later says, "Time's up, Jimmy. Let's go."

• Karen and Jimmy discuss whether Michael Myers really burned to death in the accident, while Michael lurks in the shadows behind them.

• An extended scene is added that depicts Jimmy bringing Laurie the Coke he promised her before he tells her it was Michael Myers stalking her.

• As Mr. Garrett looks in the storage lockers directly before his death scene, extra shots of Michael Myers are inserted, mostly from the later chase scene with Laurie, to make it appear as if he is slowly approaching, attracted by the noise Garrett makes when he knocks the boxes over.

• A scene where Jill is on the phone (erroneously, since the phones are supposedly taken out) is added, and Jimmy sneaks by her to go into Laurie's room to tell her that Michael Myers is dead. Instead of being relieved, Laurie panics and says that she has to get out of there, and Mrs. Alves, Jill, and Janet all come in to help sedate her. While they are working on Laurie, the lights in the hospital go out, and the emergency generator kicks on, which explains why the hospital is so dim for the rest of the film. This scene also explains Laurie's unusual behavior later in the film.

• A different take is used of the scene where Loomis examines the charred remains of the man they think may have been Michael Myers. The scene also extends to include a scene of Loomis and Hunt walking outside the morgue to get in an elevator, where Loomis explains that he believes the wounded Myers might try and go home to nurse his injuries.

• An extra voice-over is added in the scene where neighborhood kids throw rocks at the Myers house. A police officer is heard telling the mob, "Michael Myers isn't here; we've checked the entire house!"

• A scene is added where Janet talks to Karen and tells her how creepy it is that the lights went out and how Laurie was screaming about Michael Myers coming to get her.

• The dialogue between Bud and Karen cuts immediately to a deleted scene of Karen entering the therapy room, where Bud is waiting in the hot tub. The scene includes extra shots of the temperature gauge slowly rising as Michael turns the knob. There is an alternate take of Karen talking to Michael, thinking he is Bud, which does not include her nibbling on his hand. The scene concludes with just one shot of her being shoved into the scalding water.

• Rather than showing the word "Samhain" on the elementary school chalkboard when Loomis says it out loud, there is a shot of Hunt instead.

• The scenes where Marion arrives are directly connected to when she leaves with Dr. Loomis in the Marshall's car.

• When Jimmy discovers Laurie lying there in shock, there is extra dialogue as Jimmy and Jill wait for Dr. Mixter to respond to their call. In the theatrical version, this is where Janet runs to get Mixter and discovers his body, and is killed. That entire sequence was removed and Jimmy finally gets restless and says he's going to find Mrs. Alves.

• Laurie's dream is placed differently and features a new voice-over of a little-girl voice saying, "Please, don't hurt me, Michael! I'm your sister!"

• When Laurie crawls into the empty hospital room and grabs the phone, she tries to speak and cries into the phone, "Mama, he won't die! He won't go away!"

• Extra dialogue is added between Jimmy and Jill where they wonder why the hospital is now empty, and Jill asks if someone could be in there with them.

• Jill's death scene is softened. The shot of Michael stabbing her in the back with the scalpel was removed, and now it appears as if he simply grabs Jill and drops her. Additional sound effects of Jill groaning as she is dropped suggest that she survives.

• All evidence of Jimmy being in the parked car with Laurie is cut out because he's supposed to be looking for others during the entire climax of the film.

• The Marshall's death scene is less gruesome, with Michael jumping up and pulling the Marshall with him, apparently stabbing him from behind.

• The television editing makes it appear as if Jimmy's fall is caused by the explosion.

• In the final scene in the ambulance, Laurie finds Jimmy alive with his head bandaged. They hold hands and Laurie tearfully exclaims, "We made it!", as "Mr. Sandman" begins to play over an exterior scene of the ambulance pulling out of the hospital's parking lot.