After the climax of Halloween II had Michael Myers thoroughly immolated, thus putting a severe crimp in any more sequel plans for him (for the moment), John Carpenter and Universal decided to go with the direction that Carpenter had originally envisioned when he first thought up the Halloween franchise - an all-new standalone movie whose sole connection to the previous films was that it was set on Halloween. And so in 1982 we were given Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a movie that, while not thought of too highly when it was first released, has achieved something of a cult status in the 30-plus years since.
After a man is brought into hospital, raving about someone coming to kill everyone and feverishly clutching a Halloween mask in his hands, and is then killed by a strange man who then immolates himself in his car, doctor Daniel Challis decides to investigate the events with the help of the dead man's daughter Ellie. Together they end up in the town of Santa Mira, which is home to the Silver Shamrock factory. Silver Shamrock is run by Conal Cochran, and they make the most popular Halloween masks in the United States - they even have a daily countdown jingle on all the TV channels, and a planned "event" on Halloween itself. Santa Mira is a strange town indeed, with a 6pm curfew and a large number of strange, silent besuited men working all around the factory. As he investigates deeper, Daniel discovers the terrible truth about the Silver Shamrock factory and the masks they produce - they're all part of a Druidic plot to return to the old ways when Halloween meant sacrifices to appease the Old Gods. The masks have all been equipped with a special microchip (fitted with a stone chip from a stolen Stonehenge slab) and when the Silver Shamrock programme is aired, it triggers what can only be described as technomagic to make deadly insects and snakes materialize inside the masks and kill everyone. Oh, and the workers in the factory are all androids. Daniel must find a way to stop Cochran from completing his ritual plan, and save the nation's children from a nasty death...
When I can reference a Spinal Tap song when talking about a movie and it doesn't make things any more surreal is when you know that a film might be a little bit round the bend. I don't know where to begin - the ancient Druid plot to kill children with microchips, the microchips fitted with magical stone chips from Stonehenge, or the magical appearing killer snakes and insects in the same movie that has the antagonist relying on androids and computers (to be fair, technomagic is perfectly acceptable on its own, but Conal Cochran would seem to me to be much more of an old school magic guy, which just makes things even more confusing).
Part of the reason for this virtual pot-pourri of plot complications is because of that reliable old chestnut, studio interference. In this case, John Carpenter had originally gotten none other than the great Nigel Kneale of Quatermass and the Pit fame to write the script. Kneale had written a script that relied a lot more on psychological horror and paid homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers among others, but when Dino De Laurentiis saw it he didn't think it was good enough and so ordered more violence and gore added. As a result, Kneale demanded his name be removed from the movie.
To be fair, most of the nailed-on gore scenes are actually quite good. We rarely see the actual acts of violence, just the aftermath. Special mention has to go to one unfortunate woman who pokes at one of the magic microchips with a hairpin and gets her face blown open like a seed pod. But most of the deaths we see are of the androids, and they bleed orange juice.
Halloween III did not fare well at the box office. Sure, it made a profit on its $2.5 million budget, but its main failing was that people had gone into it expecting another chapter of the Michael Myers saga, and therefore come out disappointed. It might have been a seen as a good, if deeply quirky, film if it hadn't been attached to the Halloween brand, and certainly that's how it's become viewed decades later with the wisdom of hindsight (and an appreciation for deeply strange films), but at the time that and its general bizarreness counted against it. In fact, to be fair it's still going to confuse a lot of people today, with its druids and shipping of 5-ton Stonehenge slabs across the Atlantic without anyone noticing. But now at least we can see it as a cult film and give it more of the recognition it deserves.
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