Halloween III: Season of the Witch
HORROR-THON 2024 • SEEING RED
9/10
DIRECTOR: Tommy Lee Wallace
STARRING: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy
RELEASED: 1982
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 38 min
WATCH ON: Peacock, Prime Video, AMC+, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS: Look but don’t touch.
Every kid in America wants the same three Halloween masks: a witch, a skeleton, and a pumpkin. They’re all from Silver Shamrock Novelties, and they’re all advertised by the same incredibly catchy TV jingle counting down the days to Halloween. Spoiler: You should not buy the masks.
A man is brought into a California hospital clutching a Halloween mask and screaming that “they’re going to kill us all.” That night, he’s murdered in his hospital bed. Dr. Dan Challis teams up with the man’s daughter, Ellie, to find out what happened.
The trail leads to a small company town run by Conal Cochran, the cheerful owner of Silver Shamrock. His masks are about to be on the faces of millions of children for the big Halloween night broadcast. And Cochran has a very old, very nasty plan for that broadcast.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
A classic. There’s no Michael Myers, no Laurie, and no Haddonfield. That’s why people hated it in 1982, and it’s exactly why I love it.
It’s batshit, but it’s also smarter than its reputation. It’s a movie about brainwashing and groupthink. Millions of kids glued to the same TV ad, all wearing the same mask, all chanting the same jingle. That feels more relevant now than it did then.
I named the Horror-Thon after the one being advertised in the catchy commercials throughout the movie. That Silver Shamrock song is a bop. I’m sorry. It’s set to “London Bridge,” and you’ll be humming it all October. The masks also make their comeback in Halloween Kills, too.
The minuses: It obviously has nothing to do with Michael Myers, which threw off the franchise for decades. But frankly, that’s not even the most egregious minus. I can’t figure out why Dan and Ellie fall in love when there are clearly bigger fish to fry.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
This is the only Halloween movie to not feature Michael Myers because John Carpenter intended for the series to be a different Halloween story each time. He produced Season of the Witch after killing off Michael and Dr. Loomis in Halloween II, but people were expecting Michael Myers, so it failed. He eventually sold the franchise rights years later, where Michael and Dr. Loomis returned with little explanation on how they survived.