Writer's Note: Warning- the following section contains flashing images- as does the movie, for that matter- which have been known to cause seizures- view at your own risk! 🎃💀👽
No more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...
No more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...
Silver Shamrock!
It's time! Time for the big finale. Halloween has come. All you lucky kids with Silver Shamrock masks, gather 'round your TV set, put on your masks and watch! All witches, all skeletons, all Jack-O'-Lanterns, gather 'round and watch!
Watch the magic pumpkin! Watch!
Carpenter and Hill were able to convince financiers and producers Moustapha Akkad, Irwin Yablans and Dino De Laurentiis to participate, in spite of their reluctance to do a Michael Myers-less Halloween film. However, at the time, their fear of doing one without the core team behind the original two movies outweighed such hesitance, so the idea was green-lit, nonetheless.
Carpenter recruited a writer he'd always admired, Nigel Kneale, author of the famed Quatermass series, to do the screenplay. His intent was to do a more psychological-based sci-fi/horror film, with an emphasis on inducing dread and fear, not gory shocks. However, De Laurentiis was not a fan of the result and ordered more in the way of a horror element, complete with graphic violence and the like.
As a direct result, though the final script used a lot of Kneale's ideas, he requested his name be removed from the script altogether after seeing what it eventually became over the course of several rewrites. Stepping in to take up the slack and do the directing honors, as well as re-write the script, was Tommy Lee Wallace, a long-time associate of Carpenter and Hill's, who had worked on most of their projects to date.
Wallace had been originally offered Halloween II, but passed, not particularly interested in rehashing the whole Michael Myers thing. With this film, having free reign to do something new and basically do what he wanted, he chomped at the bit and signed on immediately.
Though he would come to regret the choice somewhat, given the initial reaction to the movie, the film did give him a directing career that later culminated in the much better-received TV mini-series IT, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and the moderately successful sequel to Fright Night. He also wrote the screenplay for the excellent Amityville II: The Possession, which many horror fans regard as the best in the series.
Much of the same crew that worked on the first two Halloween movies and various other Carpenter films were involved in this film as well, notably cinematographer Dean Cundey, whose rich work here is amongst his best, IMHO.
His use of the widescreen format and the way he frames things, particularly in regards to revealing certain visual information in the film (i.e. the way the phones are bugged and the presence of cameras everywhere), is very impressive and went on to inspire many filmmakers in the years to come, just like his other efforts with Carpenter before this.
The plot-line to the film is admittedly bonkers. We open on an old man, running for his life from a gang of well-dressed men in suits- shades of the infamous Men in Black, of UFO lore. After successfully evading them in the short-term, he collapses in a nearby gas station and the attendant takes him to the local hospital, where he is sedated and treated.
Cue another man in a suit, who comes into the hospital, kills the old man in a decidedly unorthodox fashion and promptly goes to his car, pours gasoline on himself and strikes a match, blowing up himself and the car in one fell swoop.
Stunned, the hospital staff calls it in, with no one sure quite what they just witnessed. Incidentally, one of the men in the suits is none other than stuntman Dick Warlock, who met with a similarly fiery fate in the previous Halloween, where he played Michael Myers.
The next day, the old man's daughter, Ellie (cutie Stacey Nelkin) arrives and immediately starts looking into her father's death, with help from Dr. Daniel Challis (horror stalwart Tom Atkins), a functioning alcoholic, who seemingly hits on every woman he sees, to sometimes amusing effects. (His un-amused ex-wife is played by Wallace's then-real-life wife, Nancy Kyes, aka Nancy Loomis, who played Annie in the first two Halloween films.)
Going by a clue to where he was last before his untimely death, the pair head to the scenic, isolated small town Santa Mira, the name of which is a nod to the setting of the classic sci-fi/horror book/film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, from which this film nabs certain plot elements from as well.
The town is the home to Silver Shamrock Novelties, who make a line of popular masks that are all the rage at the moment, thanks to the incessant advertising on TV. (That's director Wallace as the announcer on all the commercials, BTW.)
The two check into a local motel and immediately start nosing around, which does not go unnoticed by the denizens of the town, some of whom wear those trademark grey suits the men who chased Ellie's father wore and are prone to driving away anyone who gets a little too adventurous. There are also cameras all over the place, and grumpy townspeople, who lament the fact that the owner of the factory out-sources all his employees.
In no time, things start going sideways, with one woman in town to pick up a misplaced mask order ending up dead when she pokes around a chip that was implanted in the logo that is on the back of every one of the signature masks. It literally zaps her face with a laser and melts it off, as bugs and various critters swarm out of her mouth- or what's left of it.
Dr. Challis and Ellie eventually make their way to the factory, where they piggy-back onto a tour given by Silver Shamrock's founder, Conal Cochran (a game Dan O'Herlihy, hamming it up to wonderful effect), along with a family, whose patriarch sold the most masks in the area.
Lucky him, as later on, he gets a special preview of that Halloween's main event that they've advertising throughout the movie, which causes his son to convulse and the mask to melt into his face, as, once again, bugs, and this time, snakes, pour out onto the floor and kill everyone concerned. Now that's one way to reward your best customer! 😱
While on the tour, Ellie spots her father's missing station wagon and makes a run for it, but the men in suits drive her away, and later on, kidnap her, just as she and the not-so-good doctor are about to get the F out of Dodge.
He naturally goes after her, and ends up captured himself, but only after, in true James Bond villain fashion, Cochran tells him his nefarious plan to try and wipe out as many kids as he can on Halloween night, courtesy of that insane flashing pumpkin display we saw earlier. Real nice, CC!
The doctor manages to escape and turns on the pumpkin display, then dumps a bunch of those SS logos onto the floor, which causes everyone to be shot with 80's CGI lasers and have seizures, which was probably the case for a lot of people who watched this movie in general, whether they had epilepsy or not.
CC gives the doctor his best golf clap before he himself is capped by a laser straight from a massive piece of Stonehenge that he somehow had shipped there from Ireland. He then turns to ash (?) and disappears on the spot, because of course he does. The doctor then escapes, with Ellie- or what he thinks is Ellie- in tow, as the factory goes down in rear projector flames.
Along the way back home, Ellie gives the doctor a look, and not the good kind that says: "I think I'd like to have sex with a middle-aged alkie deadbeat dad." Instead, she tries to throttle the doc, and he ends up crashing the car and battling her to the "death," or whatever you call dismembering a android/cyborg/whatever she is.
Finally, Challis stumbles into the very same gas station Ellie's dad ran into way back when at the start of this crazy movie, and asks to use the phone. He manages to somehow convince the local TV stations to shut down the whole flashing pumpkin thing on one, two... but not all three stations. As we fade to black, Dr. Challis yells "Stop it!" over and over, to no avail. Credits.
Yep, you read that right. In this film, evil does indeed prevail, which means that a whole lot of kids are going down, along with a healthy dose of their parents and friends and what have you, presumably kick-starting a mass slaughter the likes America has never seen. Happy Halloween, everyone!
Okay, all kidding aside, I really do kind of love this movie. It's completely nuts, plot-wise; it's got some excellent gore effects that are admittedly very 80's and kind of fake, but still pretty effective; the cast is highly entertaining, especially Atkins and O'Herlihy; the score (by Carpenter and Alan Howarth) is one of the best in the series- if not THE best; and I love that it has such a downer of an ending. Every now and then, it's nice to see evil end up on top, you know? Okay, maybe not in the current political climate, but you know what I mean, lol.
Here are some fun facts about the movie:
Just like in the movie, director Wallace casually tossed the skeleton mask onto the camera like Atkins does in the movie on the first try. However, when they went to shoot it, it ended up taking over forty tries to get the shot. The resulting shot through the eye-holes of the mask was intentionally meant as a homage to the opening of Halloween, where we see through young Michael's eyes.
Though not set in the same "universe" as the other Halloween films, it does feature several cameos from the first film, which is the night's main feature presentation, to be followed by the "Big Giveaway" afterwards.
Interestingly, this has led to some great fan theories, including the one that Silver Shamrock made the Michael Myers mask, and that he was the first "test subject" for their nefarious ends, but that it went sideways and he went crazy and started killing people and became generally unstoppable.
This would be a cool theory if it weren't for the fact that a young Michael wore a clown mask first, and killed his sister, long before he donned the famous mask we all know and love. Even if you go by the idea that SS picked him for that very reason, how would they know that he would steal that particular mask from the general store that day? I like the creative thinking on this theory, though.
That's none other than Jamie Lee Curtis on the phone lines when Dr. Challis tries to call out of Santa Mira from various phone lines in town. That's also her voice telling the town that curfew is in effect. So, the film technically features two Halloween vets, including Nancy Kyes.
The names on the registry at the hotel are all crew members, and the gas station is the same one used in Carpenter's The Fog. That's Tom Atkins' then-wife Garn Stephens as Marge, the ill-fated woman who gets zapped with the logo laser.
Both Carpenter and Wallace re-wrote the screenplay, though only Wallace got screen credit, after Kneale sued to have his removed, even though a good 60% of his ideas were retained. Joe Dante (Piranha, Gremlins) was also a front-runner to direct, but dropped out to do another film. John Landis (who gets a shout-out in the film, via a store name) was also considered, but his directing fee was too high.
The infamous commercial jingle is played 14 times in the film, much to a lot of people's chagrin. The film was originally supposed to end with the screams of millions of dying children (!) as Dr. Challis continued to yell "stop it!", but cooler heads prevailed and the score music was played instead. Just when you though the film couldn't get any darker!
Needless to say, the film leaves a lot of unanswered questions, and has plot holes big enough to drive a Silver Shamrock tractor trailer through. What about the whole time zone thing? Was the attack just on Americans? What's up with the men in grey suits exactly? Are they androids? Cyborgs? Living mannequins?
And at what point did Cochran find the time to fashion one for Ellie to dupe Dr. Challis? What happened to the real Ellie? What exactly was Cochran's intended end-game? How exactly do the mask logo chips work, and how can they conjure up spiders, snakes and other assorted critters out of thin air? What in God's name is the "dead dwarf gag" and why does the TV version replace "sticky toilet paper" with "sticky dwarf toys"? What does someone have against dwarves exactly?
And, perhaps most importantly, how does Dr. Challis have so much game for one man? Okay- I know the answer to that one- because he's Tom Atkins, bitch! 😜
Halloween III was not a box-office success, grossing a mere $14 million on a $2.5 million-dollar budget. Not terrible, but certainly not typical Halloween franchise numbers, that's for sure. It didn't help that critics and fans alike hated the movie at the time, and bad word-of-mouth spread like wildfire.
To be sure, the film was badly mis-marketed, and not enough people knew going in that Michael Myers wasn't going to be involved, really, save the aforementioned "cameo." To this day, I still see people bitching about this fact, when you'd think by now, people would know better. I don't know what to tell those people. If you're that determined to see Myers, there's ten other movies with him in the franchise, so you're set. Why bitch about the lone wolf of the series?
Regardless, the producers were not pleased, and fan reaction meant that it was back to the drawing board for Akkad and crew. Not wanting anything to do with another Michael Myers-themed film, Carpenter and Hill promptly sold off the rights to Akkad, and he went on making them until the day he died, with son Malek taking over after his death, with a little help from his brother.
It's too bad, as the anthology idea had promise. It was an approach that would eventually reap dividends with the modern-day cult classic Trick 'R Treat and to a slightly lesser extent with Tales of Halloween. But unfortunately for all concerned, the idea was just a little too ahead of its time, and had the misfortune to be too tied into the Halloween franchise as it then existed.
As it stands, I really dig the film, and I'm not alone in that, as the film was eventually re-assessed by fans and critics alike, who ultimately decided that it was a worthy entry in the franchise that might have led to some cool movies, had Carpenter and Hill been given the benefit of the doubt at the time. I guess we'll never know, but be that as it may, we'll always have Halloween III: Season of the Witch and that's good enough for me.
Well, that about does it for my Halloween franchise review. I'll be back tomorrow with a short wrap-up and to let you know what my next plans are for the immediate future. Until then, sing it with me now:
Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween
Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...
Silver Shamrock! 🎃
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