"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" Talkback (Spoilers)

[RD!]

The Night Nobody Came Home.
http://superloo.us/images/6305137307.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Release Date: 1982
Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacy Nelkin
Plot: A sinister plot to destroy Halloween lies dangerously within its own masks and the media.
Notes: This is airing on Halloween 04 on SciFi at 3pm! No excuse not to see this gem of horror!

[Kury Wagner]

Oooooh. . .maybe I'll watch it!

[Toon Capone]

Halloween III was okay, but nothing spectacular. Also being that it had nothing to do with Michael Myers the movie should have been named something else.

[Mysteryinfoman]

Love the first one, not sure if i've seen this one, maybe I'll tune in, nothing better to do.

[JDuncan]

Sacrilegious as it may sound, this has always been my favorite Halloween sequel. It may not feature Michael Myers, but it's a crafty little horror film with some great setpieces. Too bad it bombed, would've been interesting to see some more in-name-only sequels from Hill and Carpenter.

[Caffeine King]

I saw part of this and I thought it was terrible!

Not only it didn't have Michael Myers in it but the plot but was just plain stupid. :shrug:

[Michael24]

A great underrated little horror movie. Much better than HALLOWEEN 7 & 8. (I love H1-6.) Dan O'Herlihy is great as Conal Cochran. And it didn't actually "bomb." It actually did pretty well at the theaters, it just wasn't that excepted as the first two.

Of course, the film was never supposed to deal with Michael Myers in the first place. John Carpenter wanted to go against the grain and not have a repetitive franchise about a knife-wielding stalker and instead wanted to turn HALLOWEEN into a TWILIGHT ZONE-like anthology of Halloween-themed stories, telling a different story each year. A really creative choice on his part, and I think it could have worked had the public been a little more open-minded.

So for people who say it sucked because it didn't have anything to do with the rest of the movies, that's because it wasn't supposed to! :D

[Silly McGooses]

It would have worked better as an hour-long Twilight Zone. It isn't as bad as people say it is though. I like the ending.

[Silly McGooses]

OOh, lookie! It's on right now on Sci-Fi

[The Drizzle]

OOh, lookie! It's on right now on Sci-Fi
Strange coincidence.

I'm taping this now so I can watch it later.

[RD!]

This is a fun movie. It's nonsensical and the plot is inane. A mad man wants to kill millions of children by rotting their heads with Halloween masks embued with the power of Stonehenge with no real motivation. What's not to love?

Though seriously, it's not that great of a movie. I do however like the idea it was setting up and I wish it had done better. If only to prevent us from some bad Halloween movies (I think all Halloweens after 4 were a complete waste of time, except for maybe h20).

[Michael24]

One of the things I like about the HALLOWEEN series is that actually tried to do something new and interesting with each sequel. Whereas, say, the Jason films are basically just rehashes of the first, HALLOWEEN tried exploring new areas in each film.

HALLOWEEN 2 offered up the twist of Laurie being Michael's sister, HALLOWEEN 4 actually went back to the basics of the first and relied more on suspense than gore (and H4 was the #1 movie in America for three weeks straight), HALLOWEEN 5 had some neat ideas about Michael's niece being psyhically(sp?) linked with him (and Jamie herself was supposed to be the killer, after the set-up in H4, with Michael finally truely gone forever), and HALLOWEEN 6 offered some interesting potential into why Michael is the way he is. Unfortunately, H20 came along and decided to restart from HALLOWEEN 2, pretending 3-6 never existed, and--along with HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION--did turn the series into a standard rehashing.

Needless to say, I'm a big HALLOWEEN fan. :D

[randomguy]

I love the bad guy's plan in this movie. He wants to sell millions of halloween masks, brainwash the buyers to put them all on at the same time, whereupon laser beams at the base of the neck will fry their heads off.

As a half-baked scheme, it's the zenith of bad plans. Even Bond villians can't compare to this guy. He pursues this goal with a fanatical level of dedication, and I sometimes wish I could step into the movie and ask him why he was pursuing this plan. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?

[GMB]

Heaven help me, this movie is a joy to behold. Eeverything you need to know as to why can be summed up thusly, when O'Herlihy looks up at the Stonehenge rock and says "We had a devil of a time getting it here," and that's the only explanation you get for how they smuggled a huge friggin' rock from a presumably well-guarded English site.

That kind of "ehh, who cares?" logic is why I love this movie so. Also, because one of the snottiest most annoying kids (and his equally snotty annoying family) die ugly. Thank you, movie. :)

It's not a good movie, but that's it's charm. One of the theories as to why it's so weak is Carpenter wanted to intentionally sabotage the Halloween franchise out of the gate, but as there is unfortunately no Special Edition of Halloween III on DVD, we'll never know the real story there.

But O'Herlihy seems to be having fun with it (lord knows, he was getting mad work in the 80's between this, Robocop and Last Starfighter) and also has Tom "Night of the Creeps" Atkins as the laziest, drunkest, most unmotivated hero ever lamely fighting off a fake arm for no real good reason.

Just a great, fun, bad movie. Also, you learn robots bleed Tang. :)

[Toon Capone]

I never knew that John Carpenter wanted to make Halloween an anthology type series. Sometimes I wish that what all the other Halloween films were like because the last few Halloween movies Michael have sucked big time.

[Kathy Kane]

I haven't seen the whole thing but the part that gets me is when the good guy sees the villian's plan in effect. You know the kid watching the tv then his head hurts and suddenly those bugs come out of the mask, freaky:eek: ! I also love the good guy's reaction to the scene he's helps to do anything, there's anguish his face.

Interesting movie but how did it end? And who was the hero, a concerned citizen?

[Michael24]

The hero is a doctor who sort of gets swept up in the events.

Since is says "Spoilers" in the thread title, I'm about to say how it ends. I don't know how to do the black spoiler block thingy, so all I can do is warn anyone who doesn't want to know the ending. HERE IT COMES!!

Although the hero, Dr. Challis, manages to destroy the factory and everyone in it, he's unable to get the Halloween commercial off the air in time, and the film ends with a rather ambiguous ending. You can take it as you want. Either he did succedd getting the last commercial off the air or didn't. It's really a creepy finale. The music is building and building, the tension is increasing, Dr. Challis is yelling into the phone, "Turn it off! Turn it off! Stop it! Stop it now! Stop it! Stop it!" then finally looks right in the camera as the music reaches a high note and screams, "STOP IT!!!!!" and we cut to the closing credits and one of the best musical cues John Carpenter has ever done.

Of course, the finale is better than I can describe there, but that's basically what happens. :)

[Eddie G.]

Here is just a little rundown on the Halloween movies

1-Fantastic
2-Good
3-Crap
4-Good, but really it's not as good as it seems
5-Okay, I do admire that they carried through with the story set up in 4
6-Never Happened
H20-Pretty good, not good as 1 and 2 but provided a great ending for the series that was ruined by
8-Which sucked like nothing has ever sucked before

Halloween III is without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made and is the worst in the series. When I was a kid and was making my way through the Halloween series I actaully skipped this one because my mom didn't want to waste money on it. The scheme's good though, it's a really good idea. But the execution is poor and nothing else in the film equals that really good scheme.

But while this is one of the worst horror movies ever, you're not a horror movie fan if you haven't seen it. And unlike Halloween six which takes away from Michael Meyers and makes you want to kill everyone involved, this film can be fun. Sure it's terrible, but if you're with friends or your special-some-one and you have drinks not sold on certain days in certain towns it is a really fun watch.

[Kathy Kane]

The hero is a doctor who sort of gets swept up in the events.

Since is says "Spoilers" in the thread title, I'm about to say how it ends. I don't know how to do the black spoiler block thingy, so all I can do is warn anyone who doesn't want to know the ending. HERE IT COMES!!

Although the hero, Dr. Challis, manages to destroy the factory and everyone in it, he's unable to get the Halloween commercial off the air in time, and the film ends with a rather ambiguous ending. You can take it as you want. Either he did succedd getting the last commercial off the air or didn't. It's really a creepy finale. The music is building and building, the tension is increasing, Dr. Challis is yelling into the phone, "Turn it off! Turn it off! Stop it! Stop it now! Stop it! Stop it!" then finally looks right in the camera as the music reaches a high note and screams, "STOP IT!!!!!" and we cut to the closing credits and one of the best musical cues John Carpenter has ever done.

Of course, the finale is better than I can describe there, but that's basically what happens. :)
Thanks for the info, that's a different ending. Does anyone remeber that creepy song "happy Halloween"? How does Dr. Challis find out about the evil company and what kind of doctor is he?

[Michael24]

"3 more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 3 more days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock." :D

I don't remember exactly what kind of doctor, but he's an ER doc. A hysterical man comes into the hospital, clutching a Halloween mask, and babbling on that someone's trying to kill him. Without going into details, the man is later mysteriously and grusomely murdered, and Dr. Challis winds up helping the murdered man's daughter find out what happened to him when he went to Santa Mira (home of the Silver Shamrock company) to pick up a shipment of Halloween masks.

I really suggest renting the movie. It's on DVD and is really a cool little flick. :)