31 Days of Halloween (Day 31) - Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

What better way to celebrate the big day, than with the most underrated film in the Halloween series. Yes, Halloween III, the only film I know of to feature murderous druids using Halloween masks to enact a mass sacrifice of America's children. Fun!

Before getting into that, a little announcement: starting Monday and going through all of November, The Last Great Roadshow will be devoted to film noir. Yep, it's time for Noir November. Each day, I'll check out a noir film, from the most well-known to the most obscure.

Now, on to Halloween III!

The movie drops the audience right into the action. It is October 23rd on a lonely road in California. Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is running for his life, pursued by two men in a car. He kills one, evades the other and stumbles into a filling station, clutching a Halloween mask and muttering "they're coming." Harry is taken to a hospital where we meet our hero, Dr Challis (Tom Atkins). He's an alcoholic doctor with an ex-wife (Nancy Loomis). Not exactly a matinee idol. A few hours after arriving, a man in a suit (not unlike the man Harry killed) shows up and kills Harry, then immolates himself in his car. It's an effective opening, one that grabs your attention and one that let's you know something is weird and sinister is happening, without spoon-speeding you information.

Later, Challis is approached by into Grimbridge's daughter, Ellie (the yummy, if bland, Stacey Nelkin) and the two of them travel to Santa Mira, home of Silver Shamrock, makers of the mask that Harry had in his hands. Why they do this is not really well established; it's the last place Ellie knows he was and thinks there is something fishy about the company and Challis goes along because...well, she's hot.

This is why parents tell kids not to eat too much candy on Halloween. True story.

Santa Mira is the definition of a company town. Most of the people work for the Silver Shamrock, which is run by Irish immigrant Conel Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy). Surveillance cameras are mounted everywhere, there's a curfew, and men in suits patrol the streets, but no one seems to have a problem with this (well, one guy does, but he comes to a bad end).

Over the course of the film, we find out that Cochran is a late-20th century druid who has a) stolen a megalith from Stonehenge, b) placed microchips made from the stone in each of the masks, c) created a spell that will be broadcast on Halloween (the feast of Samhain, as Cochran points out, when the "barriers are down between the real and unreal") and will cause the wearers head to erupt into a fountain of snakes, insects, and other noxious creatures as part of a sacrifice to the old gods. Oh, and he's also made killer robots that look like people (i.e., the dapper hitmen).

Challis does his best to stop Cochran's plans. He kills Cochran and his underlings and blows up the factory; however, he fails to get all of the TV stations to pull the "big Halloween give-away" which is carrying the signal and the film ends with Challis screaming "stop it" as the ad plays and we fade to black. The end.

I appreciate what the filmmakers tried to do. With the death of Michael Meyers at the end of Halloween II, producers Debra Hill and John Carpenter wanted to create a new film each Halloween, but not limiting it to the increasingly crowded slasher genre. The story, by Nigel Kneale, the man responsible for the Quatermass series (with rewrites by Carpenter and director Tommy Lee Wallace; Kneale was not happy with the amount of violence in the film and had his name removed) is an interesting critique of commercialism, the power of corporations, and growing paranoia (healthy, in this case) in the expanding surveillance society. It also has some neat ideas, particularity the melding of ancient religion and primal magic with cutting edge technology. And, as an apocalypse-film junkie, I like the idea of a quasi-magical disaster, one that is realized, not averted by the last minute heroics.

Stacey Nelkin's only expression...come on crack a smile or something...you're creeping me out!

But, there are a lot of plot holes. While I don't need everything explained to me, I do need some things - like character motivations - made clear. Also, there is one plot point - where Ellie is replaced by an android, which we find out later when she attacks Challis - that makes no sense at all and was obviously put in just to give the audience a last little jump. It fits in with the theme of tricks being played (Cochran says his murderous plan is, in part, "a trick on the children") but is so nonsensical it greatly detracts from the film.

The acting is uneven. I like Atkins; although his motivation is a weak, he does make for a believable reluctant hero. O'Herlihey seems to be enjoying his part, effectively mixing joviality with a sinister undertone. Nelkin, however, doesn;t have much range, coming across as a blank slate. And none of the other characters make an impression.

The effects are in general good - there are some nice gore effects including a well-done decapitation - although there are some weak one's as well. The direction by Tommy Lee Wallace is adequate, with some standout night photography that effectively creates tension and has a rich depth of field (the result, I assume of DP extraordinaire Dean Cundey). The score by John Carpenter is great (assuming you like Carpenter's music, which I do).

Apparently, Tom Atkins really doesn't like telemarketers. Calm down man, they gotta eat too.

It is in the terms of story and plot that the film has it's faults. There are numerous moments - particularly in the third act - when you really, REALLY have to suspend disbelief. A few are addressed in the film. My favorite occurs when Cochran is monloguing to Challis about his plans while standing in front of the Stonehenge megalith, telling him that he "wouldn't believe how" they got the stone to the US. It's a clever moment; this throw-away line hints at greater forces at work behind the story we are being told. However, for every smart bit of writing like that, there are a lot of other plot points that make no sense. How can Cochran create lifelike androids in a run down factory in Northern California? Why are technicians still chipping off pieces of Stonehenge hours before the signal is going to be broadcast? The final scene, with Challis trying to get the signal pulled from air, makes no sense. Who is he even talking too? Someone who can get a commercial pulled nationally off of every channel...except one, of course. Cochran has one of his androids kill a pathologist (Teddy played by Wendy Wessberg) who is working with Challis and discovers that the hospital assassin was an android. Why does eh do this? In a few hours, every kid who has a Silver Shamrock mask on is going to have his or her head burst open in a shower of snakes and crickets. Won't that be enough to have the US Air Force bombing Santa Mira out of existence the next day? And these are only some of the problems with the story.

In the end, with the numerous problems of story and character development and motivation, is Halloween III a movie worth watching? Yes, it is. The film is still engaging and there is a real sense of danger. There are a lot of fun and interesting ideas, even if they are not all fully realized or adequately integrated into the story. And the movie does get points for trying something different, a techno-magical apocalypse, one that does not have a happy ending. Released into a sea of slasher films, this was a bit of a gamble, one that unfortunately didn't pay off as Halloween 4 would see the return of Mike Meyers.

Finally, as my own little trick, watch the video below and see if you can ever get rid of the Silver Shamrock advert jingle once you hear it. And...Happy Halloween!!!!!!!