For our final feature of the month, we asked our contributors and some friends of the site (in alphabetical order)…
What’s your favorite ‘HALLOWEEN’ (besides the original)?
The options…
HALLOWEEN (1978)
HALLOWEEN II (1981)
HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)
HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS (1988)
HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1989)
HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1995)
HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER (1998)
HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002)
HALLOWEEN (2007)
HALLOWEEN II (2009)
HALLOWEEN (2018)
HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021)
HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022)
And now, our answers!
JON ABRAMS
Ready for some real sacrilege? HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982) is, I believe, the first HALLOWEEN movie I ever saw. In fact, I’m so screwy that, while he goes as “The Horror Master” on social media, I didn’t think of John Carpenter as the peerless horror director he so obviously is for a good long while, because my points of entry were as follows: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, STARMAN, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, and finally, THEY LIVE, long before I ever got into HALLOWEEN or THE THING, let alone THE FOG or PRINCE OF DARKNESS. While John Carpenter has been my favorite movie director as long as I’ve known there were movie directors, those first few introductions to him were maybe not, I don’t think, the purest examples of the horror genre I could possibly name. I kind of like the way I was introduced to HALLOWEEN. Michael Myers, like Jason Voorhees, first came at me as a living, breathing entity. I first saw that mask at a haunted house. I was scared of Michael Myers long before I ever saw him in a movie. I saw HALLOWEEN III at a friend’s house, possibly on cable but very much more likely on New York’s WPIX. I can still remember seeing that movie for the first time very clearly. And as anyone reading this already knows, HALLOWEEN III is the one HALLOWEEN movie Michael Myers isn’t in.* That’s fine by me, even in retrospect. I wasn’t ready to face Michael Myers just yet.
HALLOWEEN III was something I could handle at eight or nine. With true respect to Tommy Lee Wallace, actual director of HALLOWEEN III, it’s obviously not a movie that John Carpenter made, but it feels like one he could have made, for fairly obvious reasons. For the first thing, it was produced by Debra Hill and Carpenter, who did two HALLOWEENs and then decided to turn the nascent franchise into an anthology. They were already finished with Michael Myers! For better or for worse, the rest of the world wasn’t.
Looking back now, I can see why people at the time got so mad. That first trailer, a long push-in on a spooky mask and the line “The night no one comes home,” traced directly on a straight line back to HALLOWEEN 1978’s tagline “The night he came home!” — all this would be priming audiences to expect that Michael Myers would be back. When he wasn’t, they felt deprived. I’m of the opinion that turning the franchise into a horror anthology was a much cooler idea than an endless series of returns for both Michael Myers and poor Laurie Strode, and while I happen to like most of what followed more than many do, I still can’t say I don’t kinda sorta wish that’s what had happened instead.
Horror is best when it delves deep into relatable fears. Now remember I’m eight or nine when I’m first seeing HALLOWEEN III. What could be scarier to a kid who loves trick-or-treating as much as I did than your Halloween mask itself turning on you? We’ve all been to Spirit or whichever store where you buy your costumes and gone to try on a latex mask and hoped against hope it didn’t smell like doo-doo breath or worse from a hundred other kids trying the same mask on earlier in that day alone. Take that and imagine snakes and spiders and all kinds of critters scuttling out, and you’ve got elementary-school-era nightmares for days. Of course, to me all the Celtic mythology went over my head and I only knew Samhain as a character from The Real Ghostbusters, but a movie works for you or it doesn’t, and HALLOWEEN III worked for me then and still does now, albeit for several new reasons.
As far as sequels or re-imaginings go, HALLOWEEN III is as close to HALLOWEEN as you can probably get while being so different. Director Tommy Lee Wallace was editor and production designer on the original HALLOWEEN (and he stepped in as Michael Myers in one of that movie’s scariest scenes). Master cinematographer Dean Cundey was DP on both HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II, so the look and lighting at least is consistent. And of course, the score was done by John Carpenter, with his collaborator from HALLOWEEN II, Alan Howarth. It sounds like a HALLOWEEN movie, although III‘s score builds and diverges in exciting ways. It’s one of the top scores of any John Carpenter project, although there are a ton of highlights there. Veteran Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy is brilliantly creepy as Conal Cochrane. Stacey Nelkin is like cotton candy in the love interest role (in a great way!), and cinema’s manliest man Tom Atkins is just perfect as the beleaguered, bewildered hero. I didn’t get it when I was a kid, Dr. Dan Challis, but I get it now.
There’s just a lot to love here. I get it. It’s not the original HALLOWEEN. If the original HALLOWEEN is like a Snickers bar, and HALLOWEEN II is maybe a Milky Way (still pretty good but something feels like it’s missing), then HALLOWEEN III is something else entirely — depending on your sweet tooth, let’s say it’s Junior Mints, or Raisinets, or Nestlé Crunch, or (dare I even evoke its name?) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The chocolate is constant, and that reminds me I’m in the neighborhood, but there’s something totally new and funky and kinda fun going on here. I like it!
I guess I have some sentiment around H20 because it’s the first one I saw with a date, but I don’t really like it so much, and honestly, I’m not a great date when I don’t dig a movie. You should’ve seen me and my date at PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. Oof. So yeah, HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. Take a date. Take the kids. Take it off the air now! Please!
*Yes, I know.
RIKI ADAMS
My legit fave HALLOWEEN, besides the original, is Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN 2.
BEE DELORES
HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022) is good actually.
With lucky #13, David Gordon Green dares to do something different. It’s so wildly different, in fact, that it often doesn’t feel like a HALLOWEEN film at all. And that’s to its benefit. You see, HALLOWEEN has become such a stale franchise, with far more misses than hits. It was about damn time for a good old-fashioned shakeup. HALLOWEEN ENDS plays as a bad-boy melodrama wrapped tightly in a slasher – while managing to hypnotize with its crisp autumn feel and the insatiable bloodlust of Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). At its very essence, the film depicts what the original has always been about: pure evil. The face of evil might look a little different, but it’s still evil. Laurie Strode so smartly surmises in the film’s ending that “Evil doesn’t die, it changes shape.”
Michael Myers takes a backseat to give way to a greater evil, one that insidiously leaks into your everyday life – the kind that frightens you down to the bone. It leaves you cold and dead. Evil is everywhere. It’s lurking around every corner, crouching in every closet, and hiding under every bed. In evil’s current form, Corey is “The Shape,” a self-made boogeyman who gives into the pain inflicted upon him by Haddonfield’s townspeople. He’s a monster born out of agony. There’s something real about a guy with a knife who stalks and kills his victims. Where Michael Myers is the man, the myth, and the legend, Corey is just the guy next door. He could be anyone. That’s far more terrifying.
Give it 10, 20, or even 30 years, and assessments will be much kinder to HALLOWEEN ENDS than they are at the present. As my favorite sequel, it’s the boldest entry in the franchise. It takes what works so well (the atmosphere, the characters, the kills) and repackages these elements as a tragic story about the transference of evil. It’s as much a HALLOWEEN film in that, allowing David Gordon Green to experiment and try something fresh and exciting. He should be commended, not crucified the way he has. HALLOWEEN ENDS emerges as the glorious high point of the franchise’s sequels. It’s better than Rob Zombie’s attempts, better than HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, and most certainly better than HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH – and all the rest. One day, it’ll get the credit it so rightly deserves.
BRETT GALLMAN
My answer to this question has changed a lot over the years. Believe it or not, once upon a time, the original HALLOWEEN would have been my answer, because I actually considered HALLOWEEN II (1981) to be the best film in the franchise. I’ve since come to my senses (allegedly) and recognize Carpenter’s film as a truly transcendent masterpiece that none of the sequels had a chance of matching, which is perhaps why he and Debra Hill intended to turn the franchise into an anthology. That film, HALLOWEEN III, probably would have been the answer to this question about a decade ago, but I’ve since come back around to HALLOWEEN II. I love how it plays as a sinister B-side to Carpenter’s film as the story moves deeper into the night HE came home. Creeping closer to the witching hour, HALLOWEEN II grows more bleak and despairing with every act of violence, all of it punctuated here by the explicit gore that the original film merely suggested. Many have lamented Carpenter’s insistence on indulging in splatter movie theatrics in an attempt to keep up with contemporary slashers, but I think it works perfectly here. HALLOWEEN II is a meaner, bleaker outing that dives into the holiday’s violent, pagan roots: the original HALLOWEEN is a ’70s Americana vision of the holiday, while HALLOWEEN II refracts it through the prism of Samhain.
JOHN HORGAN
HALLOWEEN II (the first HALLOWEEN II). Hospitals always up the creep factor for me.
Taking place on the same night as the original, HALLOWEEN II finds Laurie alone and weakened, with nothing but a few careless hospital workers around, while Michael is offing everyone in some really ingenious ways. Hospitals always creepy to me, especially when they are full of empty hallways. Drugged-out and weakened, Laurie has to use every ounce of her wit. Director Rick Rosenthal and the crew really do a good job of putting you in her shoes. There is no “Well, why didn’t she just do this?” in this one. Laurie is barely mobile and coherent. Imagine it’s real life and you go into the hospital in this terrible condition, drugged-up from what they’re giving you, and you barely know what’s going on. Death is coming for you: It’s right down the hall. The only hope to survive is through some impossible trio of fight, luck, and pure will to keep moving forward. It is here, where Laurie at her weakest, most frightened, and most vulnerable, that she shows what true bravery is. Keep moving, keep fighting, keep living to another day.
MATT KONOPKA
David Gordon Green’s HALLOWEEN trilogy may have dismissed it. John Carpenter himself may hate it. And most fans may not have it ranked in the top three of the franchise. But, naysayers be damned — trick-or treated to death? — I love HALLOWEEN II. This film was my introduction to the shape, stalking the empty halls of Haddonfield Hospital as he searched for a barely conscious Laurie Strode. Sure, director Rick Rosenthal is no Carpenter (we’ve all seen HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION). Yes, Laurie discovering she’s Michael’s sister through some sort of sibling dream bond is an element that has bogged down this franchise for decades. Yet, those are just two nicks on what is otherwise one handsome Jack-o-lantern of a slasher film.
The first HALLOWEEN established what became the trend in the stalk and slash run of the early ’80s, while HALLOWEEN II was forced to match the likes of FRIDAY THE 13th and others. The sequel had to be bigger. Bloodier. Sexier. Like the syringe that Michael sticks in that poor nurse’s eye, Rosenthal injects a nastiness into the franchise that wasn’t quite present in HALLOWEEN. HALLOWEEN II is dirtier. More dangerous. Not as scary as the original, but more shocking, with gruesome kills and a dread-inducing setting (petition for Michael to visit more places other than Haddonfield homes, please). If I had to pick a favorite opening credits in the series, it would be HALLOWEEN II and that pumpkin splitting open to reveal a sinister skull, assuring the audience they’re about to see something darker than the last time around. I get chills thinking of that explosive ending with Michael’s bleeding eyes and his fire walk demonstrating his terrifying relentlessness. Let’s also not forget who I think is the secret sauce that elevates the first three films to another level, Dean Cundey and his rich cinematography. That man knows how to light a night scene. Modern horror could learn a lot from him.
For me, there’s no better one-two punch in the slasher realm than HALLOWEEN & HALLOWEEN II, the long night he came home.
ANDY MARSHALL-ROBERTS
I’d say my favourite HALLOWEEN film outside of the original is definitely HALLOWEEN II. As a kid, we had HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II on the same VHS tape so as soon as the first one had finished, I sat through the credits and waited for the second one to carry on. I was so convinced as a child that the first film was always intended to be a two-parter, especially as the style, cinematography, and characters were so tonally consistent with that original. It’s got some brilliant death sequences (that needle in the eye scene and the high-pitched music still makes me wince today), I feel that the ‘sister’ angle actually works pretty well, and it perfectly typifies an ’80s slasher. The original, the sequel, and the H20 legacy sequel are likely to be the best ‘timeline’ we’re ever likely to get from the franchise.
P.S. I’ve attached the exact VHS version I had as a kid…
KATELYN NELSON
There is nothing like the original HALLOWEEN. A masterclass in tension with one of the best scores on the planet, it is untouchable as a horror classic in much the same way our beloved Universal Monsters are. I have, admittedly, not seen every choose-your-own-adventure story that is the HALLOWEEN filmography, but I have seen enough to know where I stand in how the sequels work best. For me, the best sequels in the franchise are those that do not necessarily try to escape from the shadow of John Carpenter’s Shape. If the series has taught us anything it’s that there is no escaping. Rather, the ones that work best for me either embrace the raw terror of the original, or sidestep it completely to show us that no one—not even our children—are safe from the horrors wrought on our world. In thinking about this for most of the week, I have come around to a two-way tie for favorite: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, and HALLOWEEN (2018). SEASON OF THE WITCH is just downright gruesome fun, with something so sticky and sinister at its core that the horror of it doesn’t strike you so firmly until later. Who needs Michael’s slow, creative hack-and-slash when there is a man out there looking to make the most fun children could have on a holiday and turning it into a weapon of large-scale proportions? Lure them in with that earworm of a commercial song, and literally melt their brains in front of their parents’ very own eyes. It’s everything our parents used to warn us about television consumption made flesh.
On the other hand, HALLOWEEN (2018), while it has its issues, begins a trilogy that does a perhaps surprisingly great job at exploring Laurie’s healing journey. It tosses out, as various franchise entries are wont to do, much if not all of the entries after the original in favor of exploring how crippling PTSD and traumatic experiences can be. There is a comfort for me in modern-trilogy Laurie as I reflect on my own life. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t always mean you’re wrong, and staying ready is better than being caught unawares. But what really puts this particular entry tied for my personal sequel top spot actually comes at the hands of Judy Greer’s character. The moment toward the end of the film, when Karen and Laurie are luring Michael to the trap basement and she whimpers her way through getting him closer only to go stone cold and shoot him in the face is one of my favorite illustrations of “Never underestimate a woman in a crisis”/”Don’t fuck with final girls” in any film. I can’t quite put my finger on why it hits as hard for me as it does, and why it stuck with me almost more than anything else in the trilogy, but it makes me cheer every time.
VITO NUSRET
VINCENT TURTURRO
Hmmm… I mean… probably HALLOWEEN II. HALLOWEEN is definitely not as elastic and reflexive a franchise as NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is. I legitimately really, really like, beyond the first one, at least DREAM WARRIORS and NEW NIGHTMARE. I can’t say the same for the HALLOWEEN sequels. Adore the original, and I guess I like II and III, but they just get progressively worse. I liked THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS when I was younger, but last time I saw it, it didn’t hold up so well. Paul Rudd is a nice lil’ treat, though. At least in HALLOWEEN II you get to see hapless Ben Tramer beef it, and Loomis is nutball numero uno: “The evil is GOHN! It’s GOHN from heah!” It’s pretty damn suspenseful, too. I’d say HALLOWEEN II ranks among the likes of FLY II, JAWS II, and GHOSTBUSTERS II.
KEVIN UHRICH
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