Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Movie rating: 5/10
I give them credit for trying something different. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is best known today as the only film in the Halloween series not to revolve around Michael Myers. When the movie entered development, John Carpenter made it clear he would only be involved in Halloween III if it was not a sequel to Halloween II and didn’t focus on Michael. He and co-producer Debra Hill believed at the time that Halloween could work as an anthology series, in which each film told a self-contained story related to a different aspect of Halloween night. The screenplay of Halloween III therefore took more inspiration from anthology shows like Night Gallery and The Twilight Zone than the slasher genre.
It’s not a bad idea and could have worked. Unfortunately, Halloween III received mostly bad reviews upon its original release and was the least profitable film in the series. Studio execs retreated, and all subsequent entries in the Halloween series centred around Michael Myers again.
Halloween III has developed a bit of a cult following over the years, but it’s easy to see why early reactions were negative. The main problem is that the plot is dumb. Roger Ebert summed up much of its illogic in a scathing review:
There are a lot of problems with "Halloween III," but the most basic one is that I could never figure out what the villain wanted to accomplish if he got his way. His scheme is easy enough to figure: He wants to sell millions of Halloween masks to the nation's kiddies and then brainwash them to put them on at the same time, whereupon laser beams at the base of the neck will fry the tykes. Meanwhile, he runs a factory that turns out lifelike robots. What's his plan? Kill the kids and replace them with robots? Why?
To be fair, villain Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) does explain the reasons for his plan. Descending from the ancient Celts, he wants to bring back pagan rituals of child sacrifice originating in the Gaelic festival of Samhain (yes, this is probably the most anti-Irish mainstream U.S. movie ever made). Cochran explains his plan to our hero, divorced alcoholic Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins), in monologues worthy of a Bond villain (the Fallacy of the Talking Killer strikes again). His plan appears to mostly be to kill a lot of people, especially children. That’s a common enough motivation in 2022, an era of daily mass shootings in which apparently ordinary people seek to kill as many others as possible before their own deaths. Cochran does have an army of androids, but the fact that they can replace human beings (as happens to one character) doesn’t appear to be part of Cochran’s main plan. It’s just a nice bonus, or perhaps a way to save on labour costs.
There are plenty of such plot holes in Halloween III, but somehow I enjoyed the movie despite itself. While I can understand why the studio went back to Michael Myers, Season of the Witch is still more interesting than just another Michael Myers hack-a-thon. The plot is goofy, but it’s entertaining in a B-movie way. There are legitimate scares, such as the “misfire” and the grisly fate of the Kupfer family. Atkins and co-star Stacey Nelkin, as Ellie Grimbridge, are decent leads. I laughed at how quintessentially ’80s the character of Dr. Challis felt, from his Tom Selleck moustache to how he serves as a prism for the screenwriter’s somewhat dated views on women. Challis’s ex-wife is a nagging shrew with no redeeming qualities who drives him to drink. Later he sleeps with a woman 24 years younger than him.
While helmed by first-time director Tommy Lee Wallace, Carpenter’s fingerprints are all over the film, most prominently in a fantastic synth score. It’s very different from the classic Halloween theme, and I think I like it even more as a full soundtrack. The music reminded me of nothing so much as Brad Fiedel’s legendary synth work for The Terminator, which came out two years later. Halloween III might be the most Terminator-esque film I’ve ever seen other than James Cameron’s own T2. Combined with the earlier Halloween films, it reminded me how much the original Terminator owed to slasher flicks and the Halloween series in particular. Even much of the cinematography reminded me of Terminator, from night scenes in a California underpass to a male and female character staying in a motel. You can tell how both Fiedel and Cameron drew upon the influence of Carpenter.
To sum up: a bit silly and the plot is kind of stupid, but the film looks and sounds great and the actors are solid. I found it more compelling than some of the latter-day Halloween sequels that just rehash what has been done better before. I understand why 1982 audiences missed Michael Myers; a brief commercial showing John Carpenter’s Halloween only underscores how much better that film is than this one. But it was nice to see filmmakers at least trying to be more creative and to tell a Halloween-related story that felt fresh and different.