Halloween II (1981)

The Halloween season is upon us yet again, and we simply couldn't let it pass without checking in on the long-running horror franchise that John Carpenter launched over 40 years ago. This week, it's back to good old Haddonfield as Chris and Nick revisit 1981's Halloween II, the first sequel to Carpenter's genre-defining classic. While directorial duties were handed over to first-timer Rick Rosenthal, Carpenter and Debra Hill returned (somewhat reluctantly) as screenwriters and producers; the film also features returning cast members Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, and Charles Cyphers, another classic Carpenter score (this time, with the assistance of frequent collaborator Alan Howarth), and the incredible cinematography of future Oscar-winner Dean Cundey. The movie picks up right where Carpenter's original leaves off, but as much as we love Michael Myers, we have to ask: did we really need to see MORE of the night he came home? We've got a lot of thoughts about this slasher sequel, as well as some other favorite horror franchises, in a special episode that we hope brings a little bit of normalcy to what will definitely go down as one of the scariest Halloween seasons in memory.