Halloween Review: Halloween III Season of the Witch

I imagine that anyone who follows my blog, if such people exist, guessed long ago that Halloween III: Season of the Witch would be my review for Halloween 2016 (interesting note: I'm writing it on New Years Day). It's one of the most Halloweeny movies ever made, with witches, masks, decorations everywhere, and that song that you can never get out of your head (“Three more days 'til Halloween!”)

No other film has divided the horror community quite as sharply. There are those who say this movie sucks, and others who feel that it was smeared merely because it didn't had Michael Myers. I think I've developed my own theory on the matter: Anthology series need to, for the most part, maintain a similar tone. Sure there was the occasional comedy episode of The Twilight Zone, but for the most part their episodes were far more serious than, say, Tales from the Crypt.

In the same way, if they wanted to turn Halloween into an anthology series, they needed to at minimum maintain a level of serious horror. Instead, we were given a campy film that, while good in it's own right, really didn't fit with the tone of the series. Imagine Scream Queens presented as a season of American Horror Story. As much as I love both series, they are, on a fundamental level, not the same show.

The premise of the film is that a shop owner, fleeing a town based around a Halloween-mask factory, is attacked by a group of mysterious men. He collapses in a gas station, and is taken to a hospital, where one of the men comes to finish him off. His attacker then burns himself alive.

Naturally, when a death this mysterious occurs, it's only natural for his attending physical from the hospital to team up with his daughter to investigate. Tom Adkins does an admirable job portraying Dr. Challis as a basically good family man, who has drifted away from his children and ex-wife, but who desperately wants to protect the innocent. However, the sheer silliness of the material makes you want to applaud his ability to keep a straight face.

Having watched this movie several times, I still have no idea how the doctor got involved in this story. Why did the daughter team up with him? Why did he feel the need to investigate this case? Why was he even allowed in the factory when he had no business-related reason to be there, and no authority to investigate anything? As far as I can tell the answer is “because he's the hero, and there wouldn't be a movie otherwise.”

Avoiding too many direct spoilers, before the film is over it's involved a plot by druids to sacrifice children in the most impractical way possible. Those druids employ the services of an army of robots that look completely human. Also, any nut with a telephone can get apparently get a television station shut down on the drop of a hat with one phone call.

The ending goes into the territory of the utterly baffling, but I'd say it's supposed to. At a certain point in the last twenty minutes or so things just start happening because...reasons... But, the effect is glorious. In fact a major gag from Austin Powers 2 appears to have been ripped off from this movie, only here it's played straight.

So, the answer is yes, I recommend this movie. Seek it out in the Halloween season. It's fun, it's silly, and it can only be improved by the presence of friends and alcohol.