Dino De Laurentis loved Halloween and was an admirer of John. Dino made an offer for Halloween II with an option for a possible number three. Compass stood to make millions of dollars with a stroke of a pen. I took the offer back to my partners and we agreed to accept the offer. I made some BIG mistakes in my life, but that was a whooper! We lost control of a franchise that could have propelled Compass in to unimaginable growth.
While all of the Compass tasks taking place , Moustapha Akkad’s interference was becoming more difficult to accept. With each success, he became more suspicious. He was the quintessential sore winner. When we were struggling, he never once inquired about the way things ran. Now, with millions in the bank, he seemed to want more and more control and more of the profits to himself.
Finally, we met for a showdown; it was a rancorous meeting with disastrous results. I explained to Akkad that we were supposed to be partners and that he was acting as if I were an employee. The argument escalated until I had enough. I threw Akkad an ultimatum about how I wanted the company to run, and he took issue with my perspective. Finally, I threw down the gauntlet! “Let’s break up and dissolve the partnership!” Not one to back down, he replied “Fine! Let’s do it!” We dissolved our partnership and divided the assets, which were considerable.
-Irwin Yablans
By the Time Halloween II was made, Friday the 13th and various other horror films had veered away from suspense and in the slasher genre. This trend, I believe, shaped Dino De Laurentiis’ expectations, he was involved with the financing of Halloween II and he viewed an early cut of the film with impatience. I felt his opinion weighted heavily on Debra and John. The final version of Halloween II had a couple of killings in it that I don’t believe were necessary, but as a first time director, my opinion didn’t carry the day. There were several teenager preview stages of Halloween II but for one Debra and I took the rough cut of Halloween II to UCLA in October of 1981 and what they said they wanted was just more blood and guts and they were especially disappointed that there weren’t any teenagers getting killed in the film. I think Universal felt the same way, so a scene was included early in the film where a teenage girl is killed by Michael Myers. The scenes that I filmed to establish suspense and tension were all shortened or cut out completely if there wasn’t any gore involved. It was kind of like I was a rookie quarterback who was taking place of a legend. I was in the huddle with all of these veterans and because they didn’t know me they didn’t trust me until I proved I could do the job. Then it was ok.
-Rick Rosenthal
Halloween II was a chance for me and Debra to make a lot of money and still to be able to make a film with complete control. Making the film was more of a business decision than a creative decision because Debra and I didn’t feel that Halloween needed a sequel. It was inevitable and we decided that we owed it to the audience to oversee the making of the film, and we didn’t want to get sued by the production company from blocking the making of a sequel and preventing the financiers from making money. That’s why we did it.
When I sat down to write Halloween II, I drew a blank…that was the first time I ever did. I didn’t know where to go with the story after Halloween, what to do next, and that’s when I really realized that there was no sequel after Halloween and that Halloween was meant to be the end of the story. The Chicago high-rise story; there was nothing I could think of to do with Laurie and The Shape that seemed at all believable, where has the shape been since the last film? How could he and Laurie get back together? It was a real grind to write this script, a real struggle to come up with any interesting ideas. The brother and sister connection I came up with on the spot, as I was writing the script. I was desperate for ideas and the brother-sister connection seemed like the only logical explanation for their relationship. I wanted Halloween II initially to be a fast paced action movie, and to start the action very quickly with The Shape terrorizing Laurie again very early in the film. The rest of the film would’ve been like extended series of chase sequences between Laurie and The Shape, just non-stop action and terror. Debra and I soon realized that all of the ideas would’ve been too expensive and too-consuming and that’s when we decided to movie the story to a single location which turned out to be a hospital.
After it was decided that Rick would direct Halloween II I told him that this was his movie, but you have to do one thing, only one, and you’ll never hear from me again if you do this one thing: It has to be scary and you must make it scary because that’s what the public wants to see! Rick used my original crew: Dean Cundey, was the cameraman, the actors were basically the same. There was a lot of grumblings on the set because of conflicts of personalities. I never watched dailies except once then Rick went into the editing room; then I saw a rough cut of Halloween II. It wasn’t scary, it was pedestrian. It was predictable. I sat down with him, looked at him and said “Please, go in the editing room and recut your movie. Here are the problem areas: the movie has got to move faster, it lingers for no purpose, some of the dialogue scenes don’t go anywhere, and there aren’t enough scares.” He went back in, he had a very good editor, Mark Goldblatt and nothing changed. Since nobody liked his cut, including Universal, and I was the producer of the movie, I therefore had the responsibility to the people who put up the money, I went in the editing room and spent two weeks cutting the movie shorter to make it move faster; all of this being done while I was working on The Thing! Finally we needed an opening scare, a connecting shot, and another scare, so I went out for one or two nights and shot additional material. And the movie was a hit, even though it was not very good. I didn’t make it better, but I made it scarier, faster. If you’d seen the two versions, mine is more heightened. It was not fun to do. It is not my proudest moment. I did something I don’t believe in. I did something that I would hate for anybody to do with me. It was an evil thing to do and I didn’t enjoy any of it.
-John Carpenter
We wouldn’t have been involved with the production if we didn’t have complete control over the film. That meant we had final say over everything to do with the production, along with a bigger budget. John and I looked at Halloween II as a challenge, to see if we could actually do it successfully. The problem was the story, if we set the story years later we would’ve had to deal with all kinds of silly questions about Michael Myers and where’s he been, how he’s survived, all kinds of things that would have made it hard to explain.
John and I thought felt maybe there was nothing more to do with Laurie and Loomis in the sequel, and we actually thought about doing a sequel with new characters. We had one idea where Laurie is dead at the start of Halloween II and we meet a whole new group of characters. Part of the reason we thought of this was because of Jamie and how much she’d grown and matured, both as an actress and as a woman since we’d made Halloween in 1978. We didn’t think anyone wold believe Jamie as a high school kid anymore. But we decided to set the film right at the ending of Halloween and it seemed as the most interesting idea to us because it was a real challenge. We’d have to match the look of the movie, Jamie’s look, match everything to the first film, and I thought that would be an interesting challenge. It seemed to me like the best of the sequel options we had at that point.
It was a bit nerve-wracking for us-all of us who’d started together on Halloween-when we started shooting Halloween II because it was the first time John hadn’t been there with us. The night we started filming, back in South Pasadena where we’d shot most of Halloween, John was about to go to Alaska for pre-production on The Thing. I think for all of us it was a big adjustment not having John around.
-Debra Hill
I was applying for the job of stunt coordinator on Halloween II. One day I was taking a meeting with the director Rick Rosenthal and I spotted the Michael Myers mask sitting on a table in the room. Just for a laugh I put the mask on, walked down the hall, growled a little and just about scared a secretary to death. Then I thought “Hey, if I’m this good, maybe ought to to try out for the part.” So I tried out and got it. One minute I’m menacing everybody, and the next I was thinking like a stunt coordinator, trying to be careful of the people I was working with. The final death scene, where Michael and Loomis burn, was a tricky one. There was a lot of preparation for that scene, and then the fire did not turn out like the director wanted, so we had to shoot it again. mentally, I wasn’t playing the character Myers at that point.
There was definitely a personality conflict between Rick and John, some of the crew had complained privately that Rick had made some mistakes and that John was only attempting to save the film. If there was a controversy, I would say it was relatively a minor one. What did happen is that John came in at one point and shot three days of second unit work. I felt if you had seen a bit less of The Shape, the film would have worked a lot better. I fell in love with Jamie the first time I met her, and I had a mad crush on her throughout filming, and I think she had a bit of a crush on me, although I was married at the time and probably too old for her anyway. Jamie just had a great sense of humor and was very smart and incredibly beautiful.
-Dick Warlock
We were frustrated that we weren’t maintaining the style of Halloween. Jamie wanted more dialogue, more character, and she talked to Rick about that. Jamie and the rest of us-the crew from Halloween-wanted to continue the Halloween style and Rick wanted to make the film his way. there were two different views of how to make the film. I thought (Halloween II) it got away from what the original was about, and lacked the realism with the babysitters. It wasn’t as accessible to audiences as the first film was. Where were the other doctors and patients? Horror films should always be about average people in extraordinary circumstances. It was less about being dynamic and more about making money.
-Dean Cundey
One of the reasons I passed on Halloween II was my dismay at the script when John and Debra turned it in. I hated all of the gore and gratuitous violence. It seemed the antithesis of the original. I had suggested that we pick up the story a year or two later, after Laurie has had a lot of therapy and gotten a little bit on top of her incredible dreams. Now she’s having a go a college, and there’s this campus , and lots of security, and-you can figure out the rest. I would have enjoyed that, and directed it with real enthusiasm.
Let me be frank here: John and Debra could’ve kept their repertory company going indefinitely, and that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, if they’d valued any of us enough to cut us in on the profits, or a least pay us what we were worth commensurate to their own financial success. Had Jamie been a male, who knows? Look at what happened when John ran into Kurt Russell.
-Tommy Lee Wallace
I didn’t necessarily want to make the movie. Not necessarily because it was Halloween II, but because I didn’t want to make another horror movie. I had said after Road Games that it was the beginning of my non-horror future.
But then I realized that I have a terrible loyalty to John and Debra-who am I to say no to them when they gave me a career? And also to the audience; most of all to the audience. Since it takes up directly from where the first ends, the audience has the right to see the same person in the same role. If a new girl played Laurie, you’d feel funny, and that was a biggest bond-to the audience. And I am happy I did it: don’t get me wrong. I was a little disappointed in my lack of participation, after agreeing to do it. I have about 10 lines in the entire film. I really wish I could have been in it more.
-Jamie Lee Curtis
For Halloween II, Don Post asked me to come by the studio on a Saturday and make the masks for the movie. I made 3 Myers masks and 2 of the Ben Tramer masks, the guy who gets hit by the police car. Those “Tramer” masks were painted light blue with white hair.
-Rob Tharp
Interview quotes taken from:
Jamie Lee Curtis: Scream Queen by David Grove
John Carpenter: the Prince of Darkness by Gilles Boulenger
The Man who created Halloween by Irwin Yablans
Fangoria #15, #88 and 288
Thanks Billy for a great read. Mike 
