What began with a boy killing his sister on Halloween night 1963, soon escalated to a bloodbath on a cold Halloween night 1978. A Bloodbath that seemed to have concluded when Michael Myers was shot six times by his own Psychiatrist--Dr. Sam Loomis. Michael fell from the second story window of the Doyle household and... vanished.

But Michael Myers wasn't gone for good, he had just gone elsewhere so that he could complete his ungodly mission.

The young baby-sitter, Laurie Strode, was taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to be treated for wounds inflicted by the serial killer as he had stalked her. And Dr. Loomis called the police and told them the remarkable story of how he had shot someone six times, and the evil had somehow survived.

Michael learned that Laurie was in the hospital and followed her... He began systematically killing the hospital staff as he tries to kill his remaining victim from earlier in the evening.

Dr. Loomis, working in concert with the Haddonfield police department, continues searching for Myers and winds up in a school. A school where Michael Myers had written on the wall in blood, the word: Samhain. Shortly thereafter Dr. Loomis is reunited with Nurse Marion Chambers who tells him he must return to Smiths Grove Sanitarium. And to make sure that he returns, there is a Federal Marshall assigned to bring him back to Smiths Grove. With or without the use of force.

Laurie awakens and realizes Michael is still after her, so she begins to run through the halls of the Hospital, trying to hide from her masked tormentor.

Marion informs Dr. Loomis that there is a file on Michael Myers that Loomis had never been allowed to view, it had been sealed when Myers was admitted to Smiths Grove. This mysteriously lost file said that Laurie Strode, was Michael Myers sister.

Loomis commandeers the Marshall and his car, at gunpoint, and orders the Marshall to drive to the Hospital where he knows the young Strode girl is.

There is a confrontation with Loomis, Myers, and Strode... A confrontation which leaves young Laurie emotionally damaged, the hospital a fiery inferno, and Loomis and Michael supposedly dead.

After the release of John Carpenter's classic Halloween a sequel seemed inevitable. Even though Carpenter and Hill at first did not care to make a sequel, they were easily motivated by the large paycheck that Halloween II would bring. But Carpenter chose not to direct the sequel to his 1978 Slasher classic. Instead, duties fell to Rick Rosenthal.

Though Halloween II is arguably the best sequel to the original, with the exception of 1998's Halloween: H20, it hardly lives up to the high standards of the original. It was of course the last of the series that would be written by the dynamic team of Carpenter and Hill, and it would be the last until H20 that would feature the winsome Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.

The film suffers not from a bad plot, but from a bad release date. Had Halloween II come out in '79 it would have been a good film. But the Producers --Carpenter, Hill, Irwin Yablans, Dino DeLaurientes, and Moustappha Akkad-- decided for some reason to compete with the gorefest Halloween rip-off: Friday the 13th. The decision was to saturate this second Halloween with gory deaths and mindless violence. A feature that was lacking in the infinitely better original Halloween.

Rosenthal's direction has some good moments, but it seems as if he is trying--rather unsuccessfully I might add-- to recreate the magic Carpenter wove in the original. The film also suffers from a Michael Myers who was trying too hard to copy Nick Castle (Halloween's Michael) and failing miserably.

The ending was a fitting end to the series, showing that Loomis would sacrifice himself to save humanity from the menace of Myers.

The series should have ended on this high note, but no such luck.