Halloween II | 1981
The sequel to John Carpenter's unexpected smash follows on immediately from the first Halloween, filmed once again around Los Angeles. There's a little rejigging. Maybe the crew wasn't allowed access to the rear of the Doyle house because, this time, Michael Myers / The Shape (Dick Warlock) plunges from the upstairs window into the front garden at 1530 Orange Grove Avenue in Hollywood.
Michael Myers is on the loose again, stalking suburban Pasadena, along Magnolia Lane, the narrow road running between Magnolia and Hope Streets behind Meridian Avenue. The house of the unlucky Elrods, where Mr Elrod is engrossed in the Halloween Midnight Marathon watching George A Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, is 716 Meridian Avenue.
'Haddonfield' town square is Kersting Court, Sierra Madre Boulevard at Baldwin Avenue, Sierra Madre, to the east of Pasadena. You might recognise the locale as 'Santa Mira' from Don Siegel’s original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Sierra Madre's Pioneer Cemetery was seen in the first Halloween.
The exterior of 'Haddonfield Memorial Hospital', to which the traumatised Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken, is is the US Veterans Hospital, 16111 Plummer Street, North Hills West, in the San Fernando Valley, north of LA. The same facility became 'Smith's Grove Sanitarium' for Rob Zombie's 2007 revamp of Halloween.
The interior of the oddly underpopulated hospital, where Michael disposes of most of the staff, is mainly Morningside Hospital, which stood at 8711 South Harvard Boulevard in Inglewood, until being demolished in 2003, plus a little of Pasadena Community Hospital, 1845 North Fair Oaks Avenue, Pasadena.
Trivia fans might recognise Mrs Elrod as Lucille Benson, the 'Snake Lady' in Steven Spielberg's first feature Duel and who returned for a cameo in the same director's 1941, but probably not a briefly-glimpsed Dana Carvey (Garth of Wayne's World) as the TV anchor's assistant, or one of the Trick or Treating kids as Billy Warlock (son of stuntman Dick Warlock who plays The Shape) who went on to play the lead in Brian Yuzna's 1989 yuckfest Society.
• Many thanks to Peter Paulsen for help with this section.
