Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacy Nelkin, Dan O'Herlihy, Michael Currie
Directed by: Tommy Lee Wallace
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
1982

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A doctor (Tom Atkins) and the daughter (Stacy Nelkin) of a man mysteriously murdered team up to investigate a deadly plot by a Halloween mask maker (Dan O'Herlihy), who sets his sights on ruining Halloween forever.

Review:

Tim: After delivering one of the best horror films of all time and a very worthy sequel, what did John Carpenter and his team have up his sleeve for the third film? Well, they decided to completely scrap the Michael Myers storyline and go in a new direction. Some people praised John Carpenter and the others involved for changing things up and trying a new, unique approach to the Halloween movies. Others decried the absence of Michael Myers and criticized this movie greatly. I'm in the second camp.

I just don't understand how you follow up two praiseworthy horror films by ignoring the main character of the franchise. I do love John Carpenter's intentions, though. Too many franchises play it safe, telling slight variations of the same story over and over again (Friday the 13th, for example). Carpenter rolled the dice with a new idea- every Halloween, come out with a different, unique stand-alone horror movie. Terrific idea, horrible execution. Audiences might have bought that idea if it was implemented immediately after the original film. However, after giving us two Michael Myers films, all of a sudden they wanted to change the direction of the franchise? Not going to work, I'm afraid.

Trying to look past the absence of Michael Myers (and I've never missed a horrible serial killer more in my life), I tried not to let that fact bias me with this movie. I am not sure I was successful. This film gives us some absurd, nonsensical plot about an evil businessman out to ruin Halloween forever. It's so stupid that I'm not even going to go into it. The story just seems silly. I suppose I like the basic, basic idea of a horrifying Halloween, but the execution is just too absurd. We have extremely lifelike machine people, we have suspect technology that has some pretty amazing abilities, and some very, very questionable science. I will admit that the film provides some pretty horrifying scenes. I've seen many awful things in movies over the years, but I admit this film had a few scenes that made me cringe. John Carpenter certainly pushed the boundaries of what is in good taste here. There is a pretty gruesome death of a young boy, which was hard to watch. There's also some use of bugs and snakes which made me shiver. The film really gave us a number of gross out (almost too nasty to look at) scenes. I suppose the film receives some credit for chillingly frightening the audience, but I almost thought these were just too much. This was not an easy film to watch.

I really didn't like this movie much. I know it is loved by some horror movie fans, but I just don't get it. The acting is atrocious, and in Tom Akins, we get one of the most wooden, boring actors I've ever seen. I wanted to yawn every time I saw him, and he has a great deal of screen time. There are some disgusting deaths in this film, but very little payoff. We get a half baked plot, no one to care about and a cliche-filled conclusion. All this does not add up to a very good movie.

I am all for directors and producers and writers being unique and trying new things. However, this is one case where the experiment did not work. This is not the A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th franchises, who got so old and stale that they desperately needed an infusion of uniqueness and energy. The Halloween franchise gave us two solid, entertaining horror movies before making this gigantic misstep. I wonder what this franchise could have been if John Carpenter decided to go out and make the best Michael Myers movie yet, rather than throwing away all that goodwill on this run-of-the-mill horror movie. We'll never know, but we do know that Halloween III: Season of the Witch was a major letdown and a bust.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 4



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Halloween, Halloween II, Scream 1-3, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street