“I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever. A joke on the children.”
After Halloween and Halloween II, John Carpenter and Debra Hill thought that the story was concluded. And why wouldn’t they? Michael Myers was dead, Laurie Strode lived, the bloody saga had come to an end. But the title, and the franchise, still had legs. It had brand recognition. So Carpenter came up with the idea for a series of films, each of which would take place on Halloween. It wasn’t a bad idea, and if brought to fruition, Michael Myers would have just been the monster in two of the franchise’s installments, not its iconic villain. This plan was immediately aborted in the wake of the profoundly insane Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The film was so roundly rejected by the moviegoing public that the next Halloween installment was brazenly subtitled The Return of Michael Myers. Season of the Witch is largely regarded as the worst entry in the franchise, which is absurd, given that this franchise also includes Halloween Resurrection, a lifeless atrocity in which the best performance comes courtesy of Busta Rhymes.
The film starts promisingly enough. We open on Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry), clutching a Halloween mask and running for his life. He evades two of his pursuers, killing one of them, before escaping and being taken to a hospital. In the hospital we meet the alcoholic Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins), as well as a bevy of nurses he’s apparently sleeping with. One of Harry’s pursuers, a nondescript white man in a forgettable suit, finds Harry’s room, where he lies comatose, holding the mask as if it were a totem. He’s awoken by the jingle for Silver Shamrock Novelties, an increasingly irritating ditty set to the tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down.” The attacker kills Harry by gouging his eyes out with his thumbs, and then crushing his skull. The man then goes to his car, douses himself in gasoline, and immolates himself. Right off the bat, Season of the Witch is gorier and nastier than its predecessors, and tries to establish itself as something far weirder. It’s in this last pursuit that things really go off the rails.
Just to be clear: this movie is insane. Not only is it not a Halloween movie, it’s barely a movie at all. That’s not to say that this is the worst in the franchise; I don’t think it is, because it exists so firmly outside the franchise (at one point, Challis sees an ad for the original Halloween on TV). It’s easy to see why people hate this thing, but you really have to hop on its wavelength. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect – it isn’t, not by a long shot. Nor is it scary, but it makes up for some of that with pure ick factor. Writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace (It) gave himself an impossible task here, and failed so miserably at it that the entire Halloween project was aborted. Not only is it impossible to make a coherent ninety-minute movie out of Wallace’s script, it might be impossible to make a coherent ninety-episode television series out of it.
Challis, seemingly on a whim, teams up with Harry’s daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), and the two decide to get to the bottom of not only Harry’s death, but also his cryptic utterances of “They’re coming to kill us.” There’s the glimmer of an interesting premise here, but it makes less and less sense the more you think about it. Challis is a doctor, not a detective, one presumably with obligations, yet he has no difficulty grabbing a six pack of Miller and spiriting off for a few days. For some reason, the wreckage of the assassin’s car is being sifted through not by a forensic examiner, but by Teddy (Wendy Wessberg), another nurse in Challis’s harem. The pervasive Silver Shamrock commercial advertises three masks – yes, three – which are a skull, a witch, and a pumpkin. These masks are apparently a hot-ticket item, as they’re sold literally across the country. I’m telling you, you really have to roll with the punches with this one.
Challis and Ellie find themselves in the small town of Santa Mira, CA, a quiet northern town that is dominated by the Silver Shamrock factory, run by the mysterious Conal Cochran. Everything seems a little off, and this is one aspect that the film does a good job with. Challis and Ellie’s arrival is noticed by everyone, and the town is pocked with security cameras. Later we find out that there’s a six PM curfew (announced over a PA with a voice cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis). The weirdness intensifies, and so does the violence. Another suited assassin kills a homeless man by ripping his head clean off, and later, another tenant at the motel gets her face blasted off by a laser, causing insects to swarm out of her body. She’s taken away in an ambulance – one owned by Silver Shamrock.
Before we delve into the lunacy that is Halloween III, we should talk about the performances. As might be expected, it’s hard to convey any realistic human emotion or logic given the nonsense framework of Wallace’s film. The cast tries their best, though. Atkins isn’t bad as Challis, and while he believably plays an alcoholic, the character itself is so bland that it’s hard to understand why he’s such a woman magnet. Nelkin gives probably the film’s best performance as Ellie, even though the character displays some truly bizarre behavior (such as drying off in a bedsheet rather than with a towel). One of Season of the Witch‘s many missteps is in introducing a romantic subplot between Challis and Ellie, but to be fair to the actors, they do manage to produce a bit of sexual tension.
Dan O’Herlihy gets the meatiest role, as the town hegemon Cochran. O’Herlihy plays him like a Bond villain, never dropping his genial facade. Cochran’s Irish accent comes and goes, but he remains a compelling presence. The problem is, there is not a cast of actors in the history of the medium who could make the plot of Season of the Witch in any way cogent.
Part of the fun of Halloween III – and yes, this movie is pretty damn fun – is in marveling at the sheer audacity and willingness to go completely off the rails. This is a movie that packs into its ninety minutes witchcraft, robots, Stonehenge, Irish ancestry, snakes, bugs, and a plot to kill children all over the country for a reason that is ill-defined at best. I watched the thing. I took notes on the thing. And I could not explicate the plot with a gun to my head.
By now, you should know if this movie is for you. If it is, it will be extremely up your alley. As Cochran is escorting Challis to his underground lair, we see a large slab of Stonehenge in the middle of the room, with techs scraping dust off of it. When activated by a hypnotic commercial, the dust interacts with microchips in the masks, melting the kids into piles of insects and snakes. I beheld this tableau, and in my notes I wrote “Does this movie rule?” The fact that I still don’t have an answer should be indicative of what a wild ride Season of the Witch is (and I give the film major kudos for having the courage to end on an extremely grim note).
Mileage will vary a lot for Halloween III. Don’t go into this looking for a sequel to Halloween, or even something that takes place in the same recognizable universe. Nothing here comes close to the slick effectiveness of John Carpenter’s original. But it’s still something of a shame that Season of the Witch was so roundly rejected. With some time and practice, Tommy Lee Wallace could have been a contemporary of Stuart Gordon. We’ll never get Carpenter’s idea for a Halloween cinematic universe. But we do have this strange relic of what might have been: one of the most bizarre films ever put to celluloid, played completely straight by its cast, either unaware or uncaring of how quickly it would alienate viewers. As a Halloween sequel, and as a movie, Halloween III: Season of the Witch fails on just about every count. But as a gonzo curiosity, as a grindhouse take on the slasher genre, as ninety minutes of sustained insanity, it stands alone.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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