A terrified man is brought to a hospital clutching a popular Halloween mask, and subsequently murdered by killer who self immolates in his car. This strange pairing of events brings the murdered man's daughter (Stacy Nelkin) and the doctor who attended him (Tom Atkins) together to try and unravel the mystery. Their investigation leads them to a strange town and the toy factory which dominates it. Here, they discover a diabolical plot to sacrifice millions of children through a marriage of occult and technological means and Halloween masks.
When "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" (1982) was released it caused an uproar. Fans of the original "Halloween" (and presumably its first sequel) were outraged that masked murderer, Michael Myers was nowhere to be found in this movie. There was aplan by the producers of "Halloween" to continue the series, but with the idea that it would be a series of entirely different movies simply tied together by using Halloween as a backdrop. The plan was dropped after this one. (Toho had the same problem with their Godzilla series startting in 2000. there the idea was to make each new movie a unique sequel only to the original movie, and ignoring everything that happened between). Over the past two and a half decades, this movie has slowly been building a fanbase of people willing to overlook the fact that it has nothing to do with Michael Myers. I wish that the producers had stuck with the idea of a series of stand alone movies, not only was "Halloween III" a lot of fun, but I challenge anyone to argue that any of the Michael Myers sequels was better.
Yes, there are some lapses in logic, and the relationship between the two leads comes out of nowhere is in no way believeable, but I could say the same thing for a lot of movies including numerous popular mainstream films. The cast is adequate with the exception of Dan O'Herlihy as the owner of the toy company who is terrific. As a writer I owe this movie a lot of debt simply for one scene in the movie which really stuck with me when I first saw it back in 1982. Part of the plot involves a stolen stone from Stonehenge. The obvious question is how does one steal a 5 ton stone and bring it back to northern California? As O'Herlihy explains "We had a time getting it here. You wouldn't believe how we did it." which I thought was a brilliant way to get around the unexplainable and I use variations on that explanation all the time.
I liked this movie, too. It was definitely better than any in the series that came after it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would even go so far as to say I find 3 just as entertinaing as parts 1 and 2... in fact, I've easily watched part 3 more times than 2. Very underated movie, I've always found it weird when people say they hated it.
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