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Classic Movie Review: 'Halloween 3 Season of the Witch is Halloween without 'Halloween'

Silly and unnecessary, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is bad in interesting ways.

By Sean PatrickPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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Halloween 3 Season of the Witch (1982)

Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace

Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Starring Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O'Herlihy

Release Date October 22nd, 1982

Published October 14th, 2022

A Halloween movie without Michael Myers was long the vision of creator John Carpenter. For Carpenter, Michael's story ended in Halloween 2 with a massive ball of fire. So convinced of the death of his creation was Carpenter that he re-conceived the entire Halloween franchise to eliminate Michael Myers. But, typical of the character, he could not be killed, only briefly detained. Michael Myers may be limited to a stock footage cameo in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, but the lack of Michael looms over the whole enterprise.

Actor Tom Atkins takes up the starring role in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch as drunken doctor, Dr. Dan Chellis. Dan has a bit of a drinking problem and a whole lot of ex-wife problems. Michael, late as usual for a visit with his son and daughter, only to find that his gift of Halloween masks was too little too late. Mom, fearing Dad would forget about his kids at Halloween, took the initiative to buy the hottest Halloween costume of the season, the all new Silver Shamrock series of masks featuring Pumpkins, Witches, and Skeletons.

After getting paged back to the hospital for some drunken doctoring, Dr. Chellis is accosted by a nearly comatose patient. The patient, thought to be dying, wakes up after hearing the Silver Shamrock jingle that plays at various intervals at extraordinary volume, on a nearby television. The patient warns Chellis that the bad guys are coming but he dies before he can elaborate further on the matter. The man's death came at the hands of a cold blooded and powerful assassin. Catching a glimpse of the killer, Dr. Chellis is forced to watch as the murderer douses himself in gasoline, killing himself in a subsequent explosion.

Following the twin tragedies of the death of his patient and the seeming suicide of his patient's killer, Dr. Chellis needs a drink. He retires for the night to a nearby bar where he is met by Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin). Ellie has come to identify her father and she wants answers as to how and why he was killed. She believes that the answer has something to do with the shady company behind the season's most popular Halloween masks, the aforementioned Silver Shamrock.

From there we are treated to a bizarre and not particularly scary series of events in a company town run by a former joke factory. Dan O'Herlihy plays Conal Cochrane, the man behind the masks of the season and a man dangerous enough to build killer robots in order to protect his plan to kill America's child population with his new line of bestselling masks. And, boy, is this a silly premise for a horror movie. What was anyone who participated in making Halloween 3 Season of the Witch even thinking?

It's clear that someone, be it John Carpenter, Debra Hill, or director Tommy Lee Wallace were watching far too many Twilight Zone episodes but failing to recall what made The Twilight Zone any good. The Twilight Zone was clever and compact. In a mere 30 minutes, Rod Serling could develop characters we care about, give them a strange and intriguing plot for us to puzzle over, and get out before the premise ever loses steam. The makers of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch have no such luxury.

The team behind Halloween 3: Season of the Witch have a feature length runtime to achieve and so the movie meanders about introducing canon fodder characters who exist to be killed by killer robots and pretending that actor Tom Atkins is some kind of sex symbol. No offense to Mr. Atkins, he has a rugged look and a whole load of confidence but he's no sexiest man alive. The makers of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch feel that every woman should find Atkins irresistible, especially a character more than 20 years younger than him who just met him but must sleep with him for.... reasons.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is very silly, especially in the bizarre performance of Dan O'Herlihy, a cuddly Irish grandpa whose idea of a gag is murdering as many American children and their families as possible at one time. The script gives him some kind of cockamamie motivation but the only fun comes in considering the bizarre lengths that O'Herlihy's character had to go to achieve something where the pay off can't be that great. It's not like there is a profit in killing all of your consumers.

The main reason that anyone remembers Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is that commercial jingle. It's a true earworm. You won't be able to get "Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween" out of your head for days or weeks after you see Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. And, on a macro level, maybe that's the joke. Maybe the makers of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch were playing an elaborate prank on us all by plaguing the world with that awful, unforgettable jingle. It's their version of the killer mask in the plot only this makes us want to take our own lives after prolonged exposure, thus leaving the filmmakers blameless in our demise. Pretty sneaky Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about the Halloween movies on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcast app. If you've enjoyed what you have read consider subscribing to my work here on Vocal. If you'd really like to support my writing, you can make a monthly pledge or leave a 1 time tip. Thanks!

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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