Halloween III - Season Of The Witch (1982)

The black sheep of Halloween movies

People I love the Halloween series. The SHape ( Michael Myers) is my fav. horror movie icon. But I have to address this..Part 3 is not a bad movie. Not great but not bad either. It has a great musical score on par with Halloween and Halloween 2 score. It has some memorable and creepy moments. Its a movie you have to view with an open mind. September 13, 2008

Four Star Horror Film

I don't know why people don't like this one. I know Michael Myers wasn't in it and they needed something new. You hate it as a Halloween Film, but would you like it if it was just 'Season of the Witch'?

My Review May Contain Spoilers: PLOT:

This film begins with an old man running from these weird agents, a gas station clerk takes him to a hospital.

Dr. Challis ( Atkins ) returns to his ex-wifes house with masks for his children. The children tell their father that they have received 'Silver Shamrock' masks. The children turn on the TV and watch the silver shamrock commercial.

Challis goes to the hospital to see whats up with the old man the clerk brought in. After giving the man treatment, the man sees the Silver Shamrock commercial on a TV. He then makes a mental scene that "their gonna kill us a''!"

After a nurse puts him in a room, an agent walks in and pulls the mans skull apart.

When the nurse sees the body, she beggs Challis to chase the man who killed him. The agent that killed him exploded himself in the parking lot to avoid being caught.

The police then investigate the two murders. The next day, the mans daughter Ellie comes in to view of the death of her father. Ellie then brings Challis to the toy shop her father owned and shows her these records of where her father was seen at.

The go to the Shamrock Mask Factory to see if he stopped there. The rent a motel with a woman named Marge, and a very weird motel owner.

While Challis is walking alone, an RV pulls right in front of him and almost drops a childs bike on him. The father apologizes about it, ( as the son asks " Is it busted!?" ). They introduce themselves to be The Kuper Family, Buddy ( Ralph Strait ), The Wife, and their son
"Little" Buddy Jr. ( Brad Schacter ).

Later that night, Challis runs into a man who is living in a trailer besides the motel. He tells Challis about how he hates Conal Cochran ( The owner of the mask factory ) and the masks. Cochran has camera in everybodys house, motel room, every street, and microphones on everybody so he can listen in on them.

Hearing the man sware about him, Cochran sends out more agents to kill the man. The mindless agents pull the mans head right off with their bare hands. ( Challis or Ellie not hearing it ).

Ellie is talking with Marge, who has a Silver Shamrock mask for her son. She notices that a microchip has falling off the back ( asumming it is the tag ), later that night, Marge sees the chip on the floor and starts poking it to see what it is......

A lazer beam shoots right out of the chip at Marge. Ellie hearing it but Challis not. Then it cuts back into Marges room and we can see that her mouth in slahsed out, with blood spirting out, and insects crawling out........

When Challis and Ellie wake up, they see that Conal Cochran, has placed her inside of the factory where "she'll get the best treatment". Cochran the gets back into his limo and drives away along with the ambulance.

Challis and Ellie take a tour of the Silver Shamrock factory with the Kupfer family. ( Buddy insists that Ellie and Challis come ). When they reach the latex room, Little Buddy Jr. tells Cochran he would like a mask.

An agent working at the factory gives Little Buddy a brand new, unopened mask in the form of a jack-o-lantern. Cochran then exclaims, now the final process is to come in an evil voice.

Buddy ( senior ) asks him what the final process was and Cochran just changed the subject.

Buddy Senior and Challis are talking about what all stuff Cochran has done with his factory. Ellie and the wife are talking about how her husband was the best mask salesman Cochran ever had.

As they are leaving, Ellie sees her fathers car in a chop shop garage with a bunch of agents around it. That night, Ellie insists on leaving. Challis goes to checkout of the motel and when he comes back, finds that Ellie has been kidnapped by the factory workers.

He then goes to the factory and then then is severly beaten by an agent, but when Challis knocks the agent out, he finds out that all the factory workers are robots. He then is abducted by Cochran, Cochran tells his what his master plan is, and then he demonstrates what it is, with the Kupfer family.

He plans to kill every kid wearing a halloween shamrock mask with the TV. As the Shamrock commercial plays, it will kill any child that is watching through-out the world.

The Kupfer family is locked in a testing room. ( Test Room A ) The commercial then rolls, Little Buddy Jr. puts o his jack-o-lantern mask and watches the commercial, while the parents are joking off, the microchip on the back of the mask activates and his melts the childs head within the mask.

The parents then see their son laying on the ground with a mutated head, and the wife faints, streaming snakes & insects come out of Little Buddy Jr.'s and the wifes head, the father is killed by getting bitten by a snake. The whole family lies there dead, with horrified Challis watching.

The commercial then stops and Cochran shows Challis were he has hidden Ellie. Challis is givin a Silver Shamrock mask and tied to a chair in front of the TV so he will also get killed by the commercial.

After Cochran leaves, Challis kicks the TV screen until it explodes. He uses the glass to break free. He puts the mask over the security camera and crawls out through the vent. An agent notices hes gone.

He then goes to save Ellie and to escape. They go up to the catwalks on the ceiling of the factory. They take a box of microchips and all the lazers from the chips murder all of the factory workers / agents.

The flashing commercial on the TV does no good with Cochran, after a lazer beam forms from all of the TVs, the light bounces off of a giant mirror and strikes the room, murdering Cochran. The factory bunrs to a crisp.

Challis and Ellie now have to warn America about the mask, driving home, Ellie attacks Challis almost killing him, Finding out that Ellie was on Cochrans side, he then decapitates her, and slaughters all of her ramining body.

He runs all of the way to the gas station were the old man came and he rushes inside and uses the phone. He calls the FCC to tells them to stop the commercial.

Some kids go to the gas station for candy, two of the three channels are shut down. The commercial rolls on the last channel, the station fails to take down the commercial, Challis violently yells ( STOP IT! ) in the phone and then the screen goes black, and all the children are implied to be dead.



September 12, 2008

Horid and horrible sequel

This is one of the worst movie I have ever seen. It's not even a horror movie, in the true sense. The first two Halloween movies were very good and I expected the same out of the next one when I bought it. To find out that it has nothing to do with the other movies, in fact, it shows the first Halloween movie on the television as an actual film and not something that would have happened, as a sequel should be. This is more like some cheesy, stupid, 80's sci-fi movie and should not even have the Halloween name. If you have this movie, you should burn it and if you don't, don't ever see it or even waste money on buying it (like I made the mistake of). It really sucks! September 7, 2008

A surprisingly good guilty pleasure. . .

John Carpenter tried to extend the HALLOWEEN franchise with this 1982 entry, released, of course, just days before the holiday. His friend Tommy Lee Wallace, who had acted as Production Designer and Editor on both the original HALLOWEEN and THE FOG, made his directorial bow with this film. The original story was written by the great Nigel Kneale, creator of Professor Quatermass, but Kneale had his name removed from the credits when Wallace re-, re-, and then re-rewrote his script. It would have been lovely to see what SEASON OF THE WITCH would have been like with Kneale's original story. In any case, Wallace's version of the story is very much a Fifties-style horror/sci-fi film, with mysterious goings on in an isolated Southern California town (a la INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS), a terrible computer-age secret which is obligingly explained by the villain (wonderfully played by veteran character actor Dan O'Herlihy), a lead performer who is not your usual hero (TV character actor Tom Atkins), a damsel in distress (Stacey Nelkin, ditto, TV), and plenty of available victims for the baddies to dispatch in creative ways.

The very atmospheric cinematography in Anamorphic 2:35 to 1 Widescreen is by Carpenter stalwart Dean Cundey, who has also lensed JURASSIC PARK, all three BACK TO THE FUTURE films, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL along with about 65 other films and TV shows. He and Carpenter support Wallace at every turn, making SEASON much better than the usual debut Director feature. And, even though the film had a microscopic budget (courtesy of Universal), the clever use of color, light, shade and available props and standing sets give the film the look of a moderately budgeted feature. Special makeup (by Oscar and Emmy nominated wizard Tom Burman) and effects are used sparingly and judiciously for maximum impact.

The music, surprise surprise, is by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth (and there was even a soundtrack elpee on genuine vinyl, which did contain that "Silver Shamrock" commercial that will bore into your brain by the end of the movie. The music was also reissued on CD on Varese Sarabande, now out of print, but re-reissued on Alan Howarth's own label with 13 bonus tracks, in a limited edition of 1000 (and you can still get it, as of this writing, July 2008, right here on Amazon!)

If you are looking for the further adventures of Michael Myers, you won't find them in SEASON. At the time of release, Carpenter said he hoped that he could start a tradition of a different "Halloween" film every year. SEASON failed miserably at the box office, mainly because, despite the television and print advertising, the public expected The Shape. Too bad.

The DVD edition of SEASON is available in a stand-alone as well as in a double-feature pack with HALLOWEEN 2. Both versions are through Universal. The DVD is in full 2:35 to 1 Widescreen, but has no bonus features, not even the trailer. Darn.

So, if you are in the mood for witches and warlocks and things that go "misfire" in the night, try HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH. And if you want to know what I mean by "misfire", you'll just have to watch the movie. Closely. Heh, heh, heh. . .

July 8, 2008

Come back Michael, we miss you..........

What was Hollyweird thinking???
As usual, they weren't.
They saw $$$ with the Halloween name and decided to take the franchise in a different direction, the WRONG direction.
Horrid story, horrid script, horrid acting, horrid directing, horrid EVERYTHING!!!!
An insult to fans of the first two.
An insult to any movie fan with any intelligence.
This is without a doubt the worst Halloween in the series.
It has no redeeming value what so ever.
AVOID!!!!!!!!!!
June 20, 2008

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