Halloween III: Season of the Witch: 18 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

It seems to me that Horror Movies have the most franchises of cinema history.  Sure there are your long format films that are broken into multiple parts as Television Miniseries and then I suppose TV series in general comes in many different genres, but when I say the word Franchise, more often than not an image of a masked killer is going to come to mind.  Halloween, being one of the ultimate franchises in cinema history, much like Nightmare on Elm Street, never seemed like it was a film that intended to spawn a series of sequels, but like Nightmare, miraculously did.  The first sequel followed directly after the events of the first, but then comes the third film, which seemingly has nothing to do with the first, Halloween III: Season of the Witch may belong more so than any of the sequels following it.

The film is a meta sequel, meaning that it follows the theme of an evil force unleashed upon unsuspecting citizens, as well as referencing the titular film a few times playing on TV.  Story wise it's about Dr. Daniel Challis, played by Tom Atkins, is thrust into the mystery after a terrified Harry Grimbridge is interred his hospital and moments after being stabilized is murdered by an even more mysterious business suit clad man who then sets himself on fire.  He joins the patient's daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin) on a fact finding mission to a small town called Santa Mira and to the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory where they uncover a sinister plot involving Witch Craft through a television broadcast.

As far as I can remember, the film was reviled by fans of it's predecessors, most likely because it is a standalone story from the Michael Myers arc that dominates the rest of the franchise.  Produced by John Carpenter and Debra  Hill and even featuring one of the best scores Carpenter and Alan Howarth ever made, the film failed to achieve the box office success of the previous installments, not to mention was universally panned by critics.  So, in effect, it likely only achieved moderate monetary success (12 mil on a 2.5 mil budget) because of the Halloween prefix.  However, the film is really not as bad as it could have been.

Sure, the film has a bit of cheesy dialogue (all Horror films seem to) and a couple of questionable moments, but I attribute those to executive producer Dino DeLaurentis' usual intervention.  The original script was written by Nigel Keane and was designed to be more of a psychological thriller, but typicial of DeLaurentis' imposition, his script was revised and revised to up the sex and gore and make it a bit more exploitative.  Carpenter and Hill had stated that they did not want to make another Myers film and were more interested in the themes they were presenting in the original film and in that sense the film delivers, it just hiccups a few times, rather noticeably.

Not as good as the first two, but definitely not as bad as any of the following films of the franchise, Halloween III was restored digitally and is available by itself or as part of the recently released Franchise box set.  Worth a watch and if you can find a copy of the score it's a worthy add to your collection.

3 out of 5 skulls.