Halloween 3: Season of the Witch Review (1982) Worth Watching?

It's about an evil toy company hell bent on killing kiddos on Halloween.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (who also directed Vampires: Los Muertos and The Presence) and stars Tom Atkins (from Trick and My Bloody Valentine), Stacey Nelkin and Dan Oherlihy (from The Cabinet Of Caligari).

The Night No One Comes Home.

Halloween 3 is the first and only Halloween to not feature Michael Myers. Apparently Halloween had always been intended to be an anthology series, which is why part 3 was a completely different story from the others. But of course fans freaked and sent the message loud and clear that they wanted more Myers. It's the same thing that happened with A Nightmare on Elm Street. The sequel completely changed the style of Freddy, he went from a dude who haunted nightmares to one that literally ran around in public and possessed people. Fans freaked and they immediately reverted back to what fans liked, what they had unintentionally stumbled upon originally. Halloween 4 brought back Michael Myers. But I personally loved that they flipped the script for this one.

This cult favorite starts with some old guy clutching a Halloween mask while being chased by a suit, who appears strangely robotic. He escapes only to be tracked down by the suit, who kills the old guy and immediately sets himself on ablaze. It's all a mystery, but one that seems to surround the Halloween masks being peddled by the Silver Shamrock company via a TV commercial with a jingle that's been forever seared into my long-term memory (in a good way). The old guy's daughter and another guy travel to the Silver Shamrock headquarters to investigate and learn a whole lot more than they wanted to.

Unlike the previous Halloween's, or any of the big slashers of its time, Season of the Witch has nothing to do with anyone slashing. Nearly the entire movie is about the mystery surrounding the Halloween mask company and the efforts to blow the lid off it. There's a few kills but they're not at the hand of any one villain. This is both good and not. I like the unique angle and demented storyline but there's not a lot of it to fill the runtime so the movie does start to drag during the second half.

Of course, the legendary scene where the kids pumpkin mask melts and spews spiders and snakes makes up for the drag. Season of the Witch seems to split the horror community in half, I happen to be on the side who likes this one. It just has such a cool story and leans heavy on nostalgia.

Worth Watching?

I think so. There's no Michael Myers but there are a lot of creative kills, several twists and turns and a very cool 80's synth score. And fun fact, or at least fun for anyone from Phoenix, AZ like I am. The iconic scene on the movie poster with the trick 'r treaters walking at dusk, that was in Phoenix! Go Dbacks.

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Halloween franchise ranked Worst to First

"I met him, 15 years ago; I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this… six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and… the blackest eyes – the Devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realised that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil."

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