Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) October 31st, 2020

Halloween is a classic, I personally enjoyed Halloween II more, but Halloween III: Season of the Witch was neither classic nor enjoyable. If you’re unfamiliar with the legend allow me to summarize, John Carpenter envisioned a Halloween franchise beyond Michael Myers and wanted the series to become an anthology. He envisioned producing new horror films under the Halloween label spawning a slew of exciting characters and stories as iconic as big Mike. Too bad his first attempt Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a silly pedophilic anti-romp.

Understanding Halloween III: Season of the Witch‘s puzzling plot must be done slowly lest the absence of logic begins fraying your own sense of reality. Spoilers ahead. First understand that costume manufacturers are already working on the following year’s catalog before October 1st rolls around, but not in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Not Silver Shamrock Novelties! The biggest mask manufacturing company in the world who’re just barely able to crank out enough masks to meet their demand by October 31st. See, these aren’t just any masks. They’re special. They come in not one, not two, but three designs to thrill and chill your children’s imaginations! The choices are Jack-O-Lantern, witch, or skull… let’s give some credit to the art department here because while these aren’t the most exciting masks they do hit the iconic-halloween-imagery bullseye. Ads for these masks are on TV all day reminding the kids to wear them when tuning in for the horrorthon giveaway at 9 p.m. Halloween night. The masks are rigged with microchips that react to a signal delivered through the TV during the horrorthon. That signal creates a dangerous kind of magic that’ll kill the children… somehow. Why does the mask company want to kill every one of their customers? No idea, but somehow it involves Stonehenge and ‘Irish magic’.

“That doesn’t make sense! Stonehenge is in England and shouldn’t have anything to do with Ireland!”

That doesn’t matter! The movie doesn’t care to explain itself and I’m not going to pretend it does or that any of this makes sense because it doesn’t!

The weirdness doesn’t stop there, this whole story is told through the eyes of an alcoholic doctor who’s patient was murdered by men wearing these masks. Dr. Daniel Challis’ investigation into the strange case leads him to his dead patient’s daughter Ellie who makes it very clear to him that she’s not yet 18 and very much in high school before they have sex in a seedy motel.

“Stop, why is that part of this review?”

Why is it part of the movie?! What was John Carpenter thinking?

“He was probably thinking about how confident he was that Halloween III: Season of the Witch wasn’t a masterpiece project but instead a soulless cash grab attempt to revitalize his stale franchise.”

Shut up! Why are you here?

“You invited me?”

Invitation revoked.

*POP*

It’s not often that the heroic protagonist embarks on a quest that’s so far removed from their own concerns. Is that innovative?

I might’ve forgiven most of this nonsense if the masks exploded when the microchips activated during the horrorthon instead of sucking the life force from the wearer and transmitting it through the TV to the mask-company’s owner who absorbs it through Irish-Stonehenge-Magic to become eternally young. Oh and then the children’s corpses burst into swarms of insects and snakes evoking a couple misremembered Egyptian plagues. Pure nonsense. In the end the bad guys kind of win when the cradle-robbing doctor is unable to prevent the horrothon from airing, causing countless children’s essences to be sucked into a pile of rocks outside Salisbury.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a movie for people who enjoy films without scruples like coherent themes or a hero who’s not a child-rapist. You can call it virtue signaling if you’d like but that’s not a movie for me.

“Ok, it’s virtue signaling.”

You son of a bitch!