Okay, so it's the early 80s, and you hear that the new Halloween movie is coming out soon. You were a big fan of the last two flicks, so you get a bunch of friends together and head for the theater, expecting another round of Michael Myers versus dumb teenagers action. But then the movie starts, and the famous theme music isn't playing. Michael is no where to be seen, and neither is Laurie Strode, the main heroine played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Wouldn't you be ticked off? See, that's why I understand how some people really hate Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It has nothing to do with any of the other entries to the series, and is a pretty dumb B-movie. It's so poor in quality that another Halloween film wasn't made until 6 years later, the subtitle of which was The Return of Michael Myers. I guess the studio in charge wised up and went back to the formula. So what is this black sheep entry about? Well, it involves this company called Silver Shamrock, the head of which wants to kill millions of young trick-or-treaters with his popular line of seasonal masks. For some reason, at a certain time on Halloween night, all of the masks that he has sold will murder these kids and make bugs come out of their heads. Why? I don't know, it's never really explained. One kid who gets killed during a test has snakes and other rodents crawl out of his skull. Doesn't make a lick of sense, but I guess the filmmakers thought it would be a good gross-out moment. The main plot has to do with a doctor and the daughter of a man who was killed by the Shamrock company's men. They try and figure out what's going on behind closed doors and if they can stop the madman in charge of it all. We learn that the workers at Silver Shamrock are actually robots (???), and that the mass murder of children has to do with a sacrifice to the Druid gods. What??? I really don't understand the story here, since the whole sacrifice to the Druid thing is barely even discussed. The bad buy steals the Stonehenge rocks, brings them back to his headquarters, and plans to do...what exactly? I don't know, it's all very confusing and stupid. Two things really got to me during this movie: First, the romance between the doctor and the woman felt extremely tacked on and pointless. The two barely know each other, and yet suddenly they're full on making love? Right. Plus the fact that they're romance is disgusting, since he's this greasy tub who can't be younger than 45 and she's this bony little girl who looks like she could still be in high school. In a word: EEW. Secondly, I couldn't stand that commercial for Silver Shamrock. "8 more days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 8 more days 'til Halloween, Silver Shamrock!" Now imagine having to hear that about two dozen more times and you'll know where I'm coming from here. Oh, and the whole format of having a card saying, "October 24, 25, etc." wasn't used to its full potential. They introduce the idea, then pretty much chuck it out the window. And it doesn't work right when whole days are shown in the span of literally one or two minutes. The suspense kind of goes downhill, ya know? I'm glad I saw this, though, because now I can mark off one more name on my list of top 100 worst movies. 1/4 stars
Review of Halloween III: Season of the Witch
