Hal­loween III: Why Sea­son of the Witch is the most dar­ing film in the franchise

Fans of the Hal­loween series are a loy­al bunch, hav­ing stuck with it through Michael Myers join­ing an ancient Celtic cult in part six, mas­sive con­ti­nu­ity flubs between entries and Michael get­ting his ass kicked by Paul Rudd, Bus­ta Rhymes and even Don­ald Pleas­ance through­out var­i­ous sequels. Michael him­self has gone from the spec­tral bogey­man of John Carpenter’s peer­less orig­i­nal to a lum­ber­ing punch­line eter­nal­ly doomed to return for mediocre sequels.

The fan­base recent­ly got a shot in the arm with the announce­ment of the next Hal­loween, which boasts one hell of a line-up: David Gor­don Green directs, Dan­ny McBride is co-writ­ing, Blum­house are pro­duc­ing, Judy Greer is co-star­ring and even Jamie Lee Cur­tis is return­ing as orig­i­nal final girl Lau­rie Strode. Most sur­pris­ing is Carpenter’s return as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and com­pos­er, since Michael’s cre­ator has been absent from the fran­chise for over three decades, hav­ing not want­ed it to become a series at all.

Car­pen­ter has long eschewed sequels, out­side of Escape from LA, and has spo­ken many times of how his involve­ment with 1981’s Hal­loween II – where he act­ed as screen­writer and pro­duc­er – was pure­ly con­trac­tu­al. He once labelled it, ​“An abom­i­na­tion and a hor­ri­ble movie,” and made sure the film end­ed with Michael blown to smithereens so he couldn’t return again. Since the stu­dio was still inter­est­ed in mak­ing Hal­loween a fran­chise, Car­pen­ter and pro­duc­ing part­ner Debra Hill tried a dif­fer­ent tact for the third entry. They want­ed to make an anthol­o­gy series cen­tred on the hol­i­day itself.

Hence, Hal­loween III: Sea­son of the Witch was born, with a sto­ry­line uncon­nect­ed to the pre­vi­ous movies. In fact, things briefly get meta when it’s revealed that the orig­i­nal Hal­loween is a film with­in the real­i­ty of part three. The sto­ry fol­lows a doc­tor inves­ti­gat­ing the bru­tal mur­der of a patient, which leads him to a small town that man­u­fac­tures spe­cial Hal­loween masks, before he even­tu­al­ly uncov­ers a con­spir­a­cy that will change the world for­ev­er. Put in those terms, the plot sounds almost straight­for­ward, but that omits the killer robots, explod­ing heads and that scene with Stonehenge.

The sto­ry doesn’t make a whole lot of sense exam­ined under a micro­scope, but where Hal­loween III suc­ceeds is in cre­at­ing a thick air of dread. Start­ing with the omi­nous title sequence of a dig­i­tal pump­kin being formed through a tele­vi­sion sig­nal, to some down­right dis­turb­ing mur­der sequences, the tone is relent­less­ly gloomy. Char­ac­ters die painful, lone­ly deaths, with the bar being set high when a man’s skull is pulled apart only ten min­utes in. Hal­loween III also breaks, with sadis­tic glee, the unspo­ken rule that you don’t kill chil­dren in per­haps the most unset­tling sequence of the entire franchise.

Which isn’t to say the film relies on gore or shock val­ue. Instead, Sea­son of the Witch taps into the inher­ent eeri­ness of the hol­i­day, incor­po­rat­ing its tra­di­tions and iconog­ra­phy into the plot in a way few oth­er hor­ror movies have cap­tured – includ­ing the oth­er Hal­loween sequels. The sto­ry is about the clash of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy with ancient tra­di­tions, but new direc­tor Tom­my Lee Wal­lace infus­es it with some Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers-style para­noia too. The movie has an odd tonal mix, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to clas­si­fy. It has ele­ments of a slash­er movie, but it def­i­nite­ly can’t be labelled one. There’s a dash of para­noid thriller, a sprin­kle of cor­po­rate satire, a pinch of Ham­mer Hor­ror and a dol­lop of ​’80s gore when necessary.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, Wal­lace man­ages to wres­tle these ele­ments togeth­er in a way that gels. The film works exact­ly because it’s hard to pin down, mak­ing it hard to pre­dict where it will go next. A goofy romance scene will give way to a dis­qui­et­ing mur­der, all while the excel­lent score drones in the back­ground. The music was once again com­posed by Car­pen­ter, with assis­tance from cohort Alan Howarth. It’s hard to judge how well Sea­son Of The Witch would work sans Carpenter’s score, but the omnipresent synth feeds into the ever present para­noid mood. Spe­cial men­tion should be made of the mad­den­ing­ly catchy Sil­ver Sham­rock com­mer­cial jin­gle that reap­pears through­out, which is set to the tune of ​“Lon­don Bridge Is Falling Down.” What starts as an innocu­ous, annoy­ing tune becomes a lit­er­al sig­nal of mad­ness by the time the cred­its roll.

Need­less to say, those who paid to see Hal­loween III expect­ing more of the same were utter­ly baf­fled and angered, and the film received scathing reviews. The anthol­o­gy con­cept last­ed exact­ly one movie, and when it came time to revive the series Michael Myers was dust­ed off once more; Hal­loween IV was even sub­ti­tled The Return Of Michael Myers to avoid con­fu­sion. For many years, Sea­son Of The Witch was the series black sheep that writ­ten off and mocked, but things start­ed to change around ten years ago. Thanks to video and DVD peo­ple start­ed to redis­cov­er it and sep­a­rat­ed from the back­lash and weight of expec­ta­tion, found it to be a sol­id, stand­alone hor­ror tale in its own right.

Thir­ty-five years after being declared an embar­rass­ing fran­chise killer, Hal­loween III: Sea­son of the Witch is now arguably con­sid­ered the best sequel. It’s not fault­less; the cen­tral threat is daft and the attempts at com­ic relief don’t always land, but it’s a moody, styl­ish and exper­i­men­tal ride that’s more than wor­thy of its belat­ed reassess­ment. Tom­my Lee Wal­lace once lament­ed it might have per­formed bet­ter had it sim­ply been called Sea­son Of The Witch, so those expect­ing Michael wouldn’t have been dis­ap­point­ed. On the oth­er hand, it’s unlike­ly such a bizarre film would have got­ten stu­dio back­ing with­out the Hal­loween brand name. In hind­sight, it would have been fas­ci­nat­ing to see where the anthol­o­gy con­cept could have gone, because on the evi­dence of Sea­son of the Witch, it would have been any­thing but safe.