Halloween III: Season of the Witch Movie Review
Silver Shamrock masks are all the rage, and on Halloween night, any kid wearing one of them, and watching a particular television spot, will be killed.
Watch...if you dare!
Yes, this is technically a part of the Halloween franchise, but more than anything else, it's known as "the one Michael Myers isn't in", and thus is considered by many to not even be a part of the series. Let's address this first--it's true that Michael (or any other character from the first two movies, for that matter) is not a character in this movie, though he does appear in it briefly. In the universe in which this film takes place, Halloween is a movie--the same movie it is in reality, so we get a couple clips from the first Halloween film throughout. That's it--nothing else happening on screen ties this movie into Halloween, Halloween II, or any of the movies that followed. Does that in and of itself, as many have argued, automatically make this the worst movie from the Halloween franchise? Read on.
"I'm listening"
If you have heard die hard Halloween fans talk about this movie, there's a good chance you may be picturing the worst movie ever made--it's not that...at all. Yes, this movie is bad. The plot revolves around a madman distributing Halloween masks for the purpose of sacrificing children in the name of witchcraft. The plan involves becoming the most trusted maker of Halloween masks and toys in the United States. It also includes a pirate attack of every television station in the country (thankfully, this was 1982, so there was really only three networks he had to get). This is to be executed at nine at night in California, which means every kid in Eastern Standard Time has to be watching at midnight...on a school night. The plan includes removing the massive rocks from Stonehenge and bringing them stateside...seriously. There are laser beams, for some reason. The masks not only kill you, but also make bugs and snakes emerge from your head...don't ask. There also has to be an entire fleet of robots who look human but bleed orange juice to help make all this happen. The number of years and amount of money it would have taken to pull this all off? Your guess is as good as mine.
"No more, please!"
We do have heroes--Ellie (Stacey Nelkin) has just lost her father, and seemingly replaces him with Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins from Creepshow), the doctor who saw her dad die. We think Ellie may have had some Daddy issues here, as before you can say "trick or treat", she and the doc are in the sack together.
Oh yeah, there's lots of nonsense going on here, but as I watched this movie on a chilly Florida evening, suffering from a serious headache but enjoying my new couch while completely disconnected from technology (my phone and all computers were elsewhere), this film somehow took me back in time, to when I was a child in the 1980's--from the new televisions displayed in the store window to the old Coke machines to the silhouettes of the trick or treating children, there was something very warm and familiar about what I was seeing in this movie, and I felt...happy. The acting, dialogue, visual effects...really just about everything about this movie is awful, but in an enjoyable sort of way.
Including the ending!
Now let us circle back--Michael Myers was considered dead when this movie was made, so the idea was to create a new Halloween (the holiday) themed movie every year, starting with this one--the backlash was such that Michael was brought back, and the idea of a new, disconnected movie every year was nixed. Is this the worst movie in the Halloween franchise? No, and if anybody tells you it is simply because Michael is not in it, remind them of two things--Jason Vorhees is not the killer in the original Friday the 13th, or in the fifth film in that series, and neither of those are the worst of that franchise, so the iconic killer (or the lack of him) does not always make or break the film. If that doesn't convince them, remind the person Halloween: Resurrection exists.
On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5
Halloween III: Season of the Witch Movie Trailer
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