Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge

**Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge**is a 2001 Disney Channel Original Movie released for the holiday of Halloween. It is the second installment in the Halloweentown series.

## Plot

15-year-old Marnie has just spent 2 years with her grandmother Aggie. While hosting a mortal neighbourhood Halloween party at their house, Marnie tries to impres a cute new boy, Kal, by showing him Aggie's magically-hidden room. Soon Aggie notices unwelcome magical symptoms. She and Marnie travel to Halloweentown to investigate and to fix the problem before the portal between Halloweentown and the mortal world, open only on Halloween, closes at midnight.

They discover that the whole town has been turned into a made-to-match black and white world, and that the inhabitants have been turned into dreary, discoloured, monotonous humans. The victims include Marnie's goblin friend Luke. Aggie discovers this as the "Grey Spell". Aggie contacts her grandson Dylan back home for a spell from her spell book. Dylan and Sophie discover the book is missing. Marnie and Aggie learn that Kal is actually a warlock and the son of their enemy Kalabar (from the previous film). They learn that Kal stole Aggie's spell book to limit her ability to hinder his attempt to complete his father's revenge on both Halloweentown and the mortal world. Aggie seacrhes for a spare copy of her spell book at her house in Halloweentown, but it is missing and she despairs. During a coversation with Aggie, Marnie inadvertently reverts Luke back to his goblin form. Unable to explain the spell's reversal, the group soon believes that it is temporary.

The trio travel to the fair of the well-known junk magnet of the universe, Gort, who acquires lost items from both realms. He had been discoloured by the Grey Spell and sold most of his junk. The group is trapped in Gort's house. Aggie loses her colour as well and sorts through socks with Gort. Marnie uses time travel to go back to Gort's house before the Grey Spell happened. When Marnie and Luke arrive, they learn that Gort had sold the spare spell book to Kalabar about 50 years prior. By remembering what things Marnie had been hastefully saying back when Luke returned to his normal goblin form, they realise that the Grey Spell can be reverted by saying "Trapa", which is "Apart" spelled backwards.

Kal, having enspelled Halloweentown into a monochrome caricature of the mortal world, is now at work enspelling the mortal world into a monster movie caricature of Halloweentown. Sophie and Dylan realise that Alex, believed to be Kal's father, is actually a golem intended to distract their mother Gwen at a high school Halloween party. Kal puts his spell into effect, turning the party guests into the monsters they are dressed as, resulting in chaos. Dylan and Sophie hide from the monster humans including their mother.

Marnie frees Aggie, but they are too late as the portal to the mortal world closes, trapping them in Halloweentown. Marnie refuses to accept they are locked in. She contacts her siblings and they create a new spell that forces the portal between Halloweentown and the mortal world to re-open permanently. Kal angrily confronts Marnie, who mocks him and demands the spell book. Kal produces slimy living serpent vines of dark magic and uses them to take both spell books in an attempt to prove his own superiority, which fails when Marnie takes them from him. Kal is sent away by the vines and the family breaks his spells in the mortal world and in Halloweentown.

## Cast

* Kimberly J. Brown as Marnie Piper
* Debbie Reynolds as Agatha "Aggie" Cromwell
* Judith Hoag as Gwen Piper
* Joey Zimmerman as Dylan Piper
* Emily Roeske as Sophie Piper
* Phillip Van Dyke as Luke
* Daniel Kountz as Kal
* Xantha Radley as Astrid
* Peter Wingfield as Alex
* Blu Mankuma as Gort
* Richard Side as Benny
* Jessica Lucas as Cindy

## Production

* This film is much darker and more serious in tone that its predecessor and its following sequels. Despite this film's success, its sequels have been more comedy driven.
* The film references academic thought such as Arthurian legend and even the advanced physics of Stephen Hawking.
* It was known by two other names during production, Halloweentown II and Return to Halloweentown. The latter was used later for the 4th film in the series.
* It should also be noted that in the first movie, the closed-captioning spells Kalabar's name as "Calabar". However, the name is spelled "Kalabar" in the title of the movie even though the ending credits spell the character's name out as "Calabar" as well. It should also be mentioned that Kal's name is spelled "Cal" in the end credits of Halloweentown II.