By Todd Garbarini
Halloween
III: Season of the Witch
is a strange concoction that never seemed to get a fair shake at the box office
during its original release. It's kind
of like the unwanted offspring of the Halloween
films and was originally projected to be the first in a series of yearly horror
yarns released every October that dealt with different stories surrounding the
titular holiday. The film is among the
least successful of the series, so any future franchise plans were abandoned,
which is a shame because Halloween III
is a fun little movie in its own right. In addition to being marketed
incorrectly, it has not been represented properly even on home video. DVD certainly hasn't been kind to it, having
seen no less than three incarnations in “movie only†editions released in 1998
by Good Times Home Video, and in 2003 and 2007 by Universal Home Video. This is
about to change, however, thanks to the fine folks at Shout! Factory. Their new “Scream Factory†line is releasing
a widescreen, feature-rich DVD in September (along with Halloween II from 1981) that should satisfy any passing or diehard
fan of this film. Having been erroneously
promoted as the third installment of the popular horror series at the time, it
is the only film having absolutely nothing to do with the manifestation of pure
evil, Michael Myers. Halloween III is more of a science
fiction/horror film in the tradition of Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (1956), the film the director obviously admires
greatly.
Released on Friday, October 22, 1982, Halloween III was co-written and
directed by Tommy Lee Wallace whose future credits would go on to
include episodes of the of the mid-1980's revival TV series The Twilight Zone and the 1990
made-for-TV movie adaptation of It by
Stephen King. Halloween
III features
Tom Atkins, who worked with John Carpenter on The Fog (1980) and Escape
From New York (1981) and with George A. Romero in Creepshow (1982). He is also
known for Fred Dekker's Night of the
Creeps (1986) and Richard Donner's Lethal
Weapon (1987). Mr. Atkins always
delivers a terrific performance regardless of the subject matter of the films
that he appears in, and Halloween III is
no exception. Here he plays Dr. Dan
Challis, who looks no more like a doctor than yours truly, and ends up playing
doctor with Ellie Grimbridge
(Stacey Nelkin), the twenty-two year-old grand-daughter of a man who died in
his care (actress Nelkin is reportedly the woman Woody Allen had an affair with
in the mid-1970s and inspired Mariel Hemingway’s character of Tracy in his 1979
film Manhattan). It turns out that a company producing
Halloween masks (courtesy of Don Post Studios) is actually a front for an evil
man named Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy) who has produced a legion of androids
in the form of well-dressed men, and is the monster behind the television
commercials for Silver Shamrock Novelties which are geared towards children. Cochran’s plan is to kill children who wear
his masks on Halloween night by activating a microchip in their masks which
contain a fragment of Stonehenge. He wants to resurrect the festival of Samhain
which he relates to witchcraft.
The story has elements of science fiction and reminds one of the
aforementioned granddaddy of social paranoia flicks. The well-dressed men remind me of the
soulless crew members of the Cygnus in The
Black Hole (1979). Some critics even
claimed that the film is a social commentary about the pitfalls of consumerism
and the power of large corporations. To
paraphrase Sigmund, sometimes a thriller is just a thriller!
Halloween
III has become one of those films rescued from obscurity
thanks to the availability of home video. Were it not for the ancillary markets of cable television and video
playback devices, it is highly unlikely that so many genre gems would have ever
retained any sense of life and made it into the homes of fans around the world.
While obviously it is better to see such films on the big screen, particularly
movies such as Halloween III which
was shot in the 2.35:1 anamorphic aspect ratio, for many of us, this was the
only way to see these films at all. Network
TV airings were hit or miss.
John Carpenter and Alan Howarth provide a nifty synthesizer-driven film
score which aids in giving the film a spooky and alien feel to it. The Silver Shamrock theme is a variation of
the public domain children’s song “London Bridge is Falling Down.â€
I love going to the locations where
movies are shot, and Sean Clark of Horror's Hallowed Grounds does another
excellent job of taking us on a tour of the locations for Halloween III. However, I
must say that this is about as close as you would want to get to the town of
Loleta, CA where the bulk of the film takes place. While it looks industrial and low-key in the
film, 30 years have not been kind to this location. The motel where the aforementioned tryst
occurs is dilapidated and home to people you don’t want to know.
If you're going to own Halloween III, this is the
edition to get. This special DVD comes with the following extras:
- Audio
commentary with director Tommy Lee Wallace, Sean Clark of Horror's Hallowed
Grounds and Rob Galluzzo of Icons of Fright
- Audio
commentary with actor Tom Atkins
- Stand
Alone: The Making of Halloween III:
Season of the Witch featuring Tommy Lee Wallace, Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin,
Dick Warlock, Dean Cundey and more...
- Horror's
Hallowed Grounds - Revisiting the original shooting locations
- Still
Gallery
- Theatrical
Trailers and TV Spots
Click HERE to purchase from Amazon.com.