1) Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982)
Hard to believe now but there was a time when people were far more daring in terms of what they would allow into their horror franchises. These days killing Jigsaw in the third Saw film is about as daring as it gets in the midst of a seven film franchise. Back in the early 80’s with Halloween and Halloween 2 kicking off the slasher genre and being big successes, the producers decided to do an about-face and make the third movie absolutely nothing to do with Michael Myers killing teenagers. John Carpenter was on board as a producer for a film written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. The idea was that the Halloween series would branch of into an anthology series of movies with different stories taking place around Halloween. Halloween 3 is a full-blown fever dream nightmare placed on celluloid. It’s surreal and disturbing in a way that wasn’t very common in the early 80s and even by today’s standards would be pretty weird. The plot revolves around toy maker Conal Cochran in the small town of Santa Mira, California who is plotting to use Halloween masks with fragments of stone henge to bring about the end of the world and return to the true meaning of Halloween. Yes, it’s as daft as it sounds but it’s nasty and unique, and the effect of the masks is to make people’s heads melt into a mess of bugs and snakes and somehow seeing this never gets less disturbing.
Only good old Tom Atkins stands in the way of this madness but of course because John Carpenter is involved, you’re not necessarily going to get a happy ending. I remember when I first saw this, BBC screened it between Christmas and New Year (!!) late one night and I was baffled, fascinated and terrified by what I was seeing, and it ruined Christmas. Although made on a low-budget it grossed only 14 million at the box office and was beaten in the same year by things like Poltergeist, Creepshow and Friday the 13th part 3. The film was attacked by critics who couldn’t quite comprehend the nihilistic nightmare that had been unleashed. It’s only really in recent years that the film has gotten a re-appraisal as some kind of satire of consumerism with a whole generation of grown-ups remembering back to how that early viewing baffled and terrified them and this lead to a DVD re-release. At this time of year Twitter is rarely without someone tweeting “X more days til Halloween,Halloween, Halloween…Silver Shamrock” An echo of the ad campaign within the film, a sign that the film has finally made an impact. Halloween 3 is a fascinating, disturbing oddity memorably scored by Carpenter himself but left out when discussing the director and deserves better than what it got on its initial reception.
————
If you liked this you may also like:
