Tag Line : They're back
Picking up
over a year after the events of part 1, Steve and Dianne
Freeling, along with their two youngest children, (Craig Nelson,
Jobeth Williams, Oliver Platt and Heather O'Rourke reprising
their original roles) have been staying with Dianne's mother
(Geraldine Fitzgerald), who the kids refer to as Grandma Jess.
Steve is now working as a vacuum cleaner salesman, they're broke, as the insurance company don't beleive that their house got sucked into another dimension, and therefore are unable to afford a place of their own and what is worse, Steve won't let them buy a TV set (not surprisingly).
So far they have been free from any more unwanted spiritual visitors, but after Dianne's mother dies the problems begin. Carol-Anne starts receiving calls on her toy telephone from strange ghostly voices, strange vortex's materialise in the kids bedroom, then they get plagued by some ghostly old priest (played by Julian Beck) who, for some strange reason, has a bizzare fascination with their youngest daughter (ooooooeeeeeerrrrrrrrr!).
Fortunatetly, help is at hand. An old Indian named Taylor (Will Samson) shows up, who specialises in fighting these kinds of evil spirits, along with Tangina Barrons from part 1 (Zelda Rubenstein again), who believes that the appearance of the ghostly priest has something to do with the discovery of an old tomb underneath the old cemetery that their old house was built on (and you thought that the Jehova's Witnesses where a pain in the arse).
Mayhem soon erupts, as the evil spirits try to take Carol Anne again and the whole family ends up trying to battle the evil forces on their own turf. As far as sequels go this is ok, but there's nothing really to recommend it unless of course you really enjoyed the first film and wanted to collect the entire set of videos.
Be warned, The scene with the tequilla worm that comes to life and grows into a giant monster-worm, is so ridiculous it makes you want to cringe and the part where Bobby's braces sprout extra wires and encompass the whole family is not much better.
Overall Marks : 4/10.
Other Information. Virtually the whole original cast returned for this sequel, except of course for actress Dominique Dunne who, as mentioned in my review of part 1, was sadly killed in 1982. Understandably, her character of the Freeling's teenage daughter Dana was abscent from the film, but strangely no mention was made of her characters whereabouts as if she had never appeared in part 1 at all. Julian Beck who played Kane, the ghostly preacher from the 1800's, died of stomache cancer in 1985 part-way through filming the movie. Rock band Anthrax used his character's likeness from the film, on the front cover of their 1987 "Among the Living" album. Alien designer H.R. Giger did some of the conceptual artwork for this film, most of which can be seen during the films climax. Irrespective of whether or not you liked this film, there is no disputing its popularity. To date it has grossed in excess of $41million in the USA alone. |
Buy Online.
Buy the video at Blackstar. Buy the DVD at Blackstar. |
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Pictured left is the alternate UK video box cover, used for later issues of the movie. | |
Other films in the series.
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