"Halloween" Franchise Rewind Marathon: 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch'

This movie has nothing to do with anything...and I love every single minute of it.

By: Josh McCormack

For the next few days I will be taking a quick look back at the long-running "Halloween" franchise leading up to the release of David Gordon Green's latest entry. Since the newest film is wiping the slate clean of all the sequels and remakes, I thought we could turn back the clock and talk about all of the films in reverse order. 

Happy Halloween!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' is one of my favorites of the entire franchise. I've probably seen it more times than any of the other films and if I ever need a movie to put me in the Halloween spirit, I throw this one on. It shares no continuity with the rest of the franchise and is completely its own story that was meant to spawn a slew of sequels based on different aspects of the Halloween holiday and not return to Michael Myers.

Of course, audiences didn't get the memo and the film wound up being a flop mostly due to the fact that Michael Myers was not at all in the story. This of course led to Michael being brought back six years later in 'Halloween 4' and the  ever growing blandness of the franchise would soon follow.

'Halloween III', however, remains a wonderful little oddity in franchise filmmaking. There's no way in hell a movie like this would be green lit now, but that's part of why I like it. It's an unapologetically different film, full of androids and murderous Halloween masks. Yet, it also marks the last of the original Carpenter crew working on a 'Halloween' movie and it's just a reminder of how integral their style is to the franchise and how much it is lacking in subsequent sequels.

The premise of 'Halloween III' is incredibly goofy, with a villainous plot from the fictional novelty corporation, Silver Shamrock, to kill all the children in the United States with these popular masks as a form of pagan sacrifice on Halloween night. But I get the feeling that 'Halloween III' was sort of meant to be tongue-in-cheek, sort of like an R-rated episode of 'Goosebumps' even if it's never explicitly said. The fact that actors like Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, and the fantastic Dan O'Herlihy  play it with such utter sincerity is just part of the charm.

The movie starts out as a fun, well-paced (if somewhat uneven and silly) mystery movie with fantastic art direction and cinematography from the great Dean Cundey. It would be worth your attention for the colorful characters and gorgeous Halloween imagery alone in the first act, but it's around the second and third acts where the film starts to get interesting. The kill count shoots up considerably, but in really interesting ways. Heads get torn off, a woman gets a high powered laser to her face and in one of the most gruesome deaths in the entire franchise, a young boy and his family are subject to the first test-run of our main villain's child killing experiment. It's a brutal display consisting of the kid's head getting crushed by the mask he's wearing and a huge assortment of bugs and snakes somehow crawling out of his mouth once he's dead. This back and forth between lighthearted, spooky mystery to brutal displays of violence would seem out of place in any of the other sequels, but I feel like 'Halloween III' is already so different, wacky and all over the place that it just adds to the overall product.

The score is also one of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's most underrated. So far in this marathon I had not watched any film in which Carpenter had provided the soundtrack and it's really something you miss after a while. Luckily, this film features one of the duo's best scores yet, taking some influence from the original 'Halloween' and the previous year's 'Escape from New York'. The opening credits in which the score plays over the form of a computerized pumpkin being pieced together is one of my favorite Carpenter-esque images in a film he didn't even direct.

Speaking of directors, Tommy Lee Wallace does a wonderful job taking over the reigns of this film. There might be aspects he has more talent in than others (he doesn't know how to direct background extras), but as a veteran of the franchise himself and a close personal friend of John Carpenter's, he's able to translate Carpenter's momentum-based camerawork rather well and still add in his own flourishes. 

The performances are all fine too with Tom Atkins doing his best "tough guy" act as the seemingly alcoholic, womanizing hero and Stacey Nelkin making for a spunky leading lady. But all the performances pale in comparison to the scene stealing Dan O' Herlihy as the evil mastermind, Conal Cochran. 

The villain's plan seems so silly, but Herlihy plays Cochran with such a pure joy of being evil and manipulative. My favorite scene of the film is when Cochran explains to our protagonist why he is sacrificing the children on Halloween night and Herlihy plays it so villainous and convincing that this ridiculous plan actually winds up sounding truly thought out and terrifying. Honestly, this sequence is so wonderful with Carpenter's brilliant score underlying the whole thing. And as the perfect capper to this display of madness, Herilhy looks at the camera, telling our hero to have a "Happy Halloween" while the original 1978 'Halloween' plays on a tv set in the background. It's wonderful.

'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' is a goofy, wild, gory ride and it's one of the best movies to watch during the Halloween season. It doesn't have anything to do with Michael Myers or the rest of the franchise, but that shouldn't stop you from seeking it out immediately if you haven't already.

Oh, and good luck trying to get that Silver Shamrock theme out of your head!