Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Stars: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy
Snack Report: Leftover pumpkin pie
Everyone has their favorite horror film that they like to watch every Halloween. For a lot of people, that’s John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the movie that made an icon out of Michael Myers in his spray-painted, teased-out William Shatner mask.
After Michael died at the end of Halloween II (1980), Carpenter intended to turn the franchise into an anthology series. Unfortunately, tonight’s film, third in the series, bombed at the box office. So of course they went running back to Plan B, which was to just keep resurrecting the same villain over and over again.
I never understood this, because Halloween III: Season of the Witch is my favorite of the entire Halloween series. In fact, it’s one of my favorite Halloween movies EVER.
Why is Halloween not complete for me unless I watch this movie? I’m not sure… but I think it may be the commercial. I CANNOT GET THAT JINGLE OUT OF MY HEAD. And I mean that in a good way.
*****
The movie begins with an old man being pursued by cars down a deserted road. He attempts to hide in a junkyard, but they find him anyway, though he’s able to escape.
Nearby, a gas station attendant is watching a little TV to pass the time. For an unknown reason, the news reports that the piece of Stonehenge that was stolen is still missing. Then there’s a commercial for Silver Shamrock Halloween masks as the old man staggers into the gas station.
Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins), recently divorced dad, stops by to see his kids. He brought them a present – Halloween masks – but the little snots whine that Mom (his nasty ex-wife) already bought them better masks. In fact, they’re the cool Silver Shamrock masks like all the other kids have. Like in the TV commercial that’s on right now.
Apparently Silver Shamrock bought a buttload of TV time in the weeks before Halloween. In addition to the hypnotic earworm jingle, the announcer tells the kids about the Halloween “Horror-Thon” featuring Halloween (inside joke? Or shameless self-promotion?), followed by a “big giveaway!” All you have to do is wear your mask and waaaatch… waaaatch.
Called back to the ER, Dan checks out the old man, who wakes up screaming when he hears ANOTHER Silver Shamrock commercial on the TV. (As do a lot of people.) “They’re going to kill us!” he shrieks.
He’s correct about that, because later a suit-wearing guy calmly walks into his room and pokes his eyes out, killing him. Then Suit Guy calmly wipes his hands on the bed curtains, walks out to his car, and blows himself up.
The next morning, Dan meets Harry’s daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin). Who was the well-dressed murderer? Probably some guy on drugs. Dan knows something weird is going on, and he enlists the help of the assistant coroner, who is sifting through the ashes for clues. Strangely, she hasn’t found any human body parts as yet.
Ellie and Dan drive to Santa Mira, California, home of Silver Shamrock Novelties, to check out the factory. In fact, Silver Shamrock is about the only business in Santa Mira. The townspeople are super suspicious of strangers, and there are surveillance cameras and loudspeakers everywhere.
Dan and Ellie check into a cheap motel, where they sneak a look at the guest register and find Harry’s name. They also meets some of the other guests – Silver Shamrock salesman Buddy Kupfer, his wife, and their pre-teen son, as well as Marge, who sells the masks in her store in San Francisco.
Dan heads for the liquor store, where he meets a disgruntled Silver Shamrock job seeker. He says that most of the workers aren’t locals and are brought in from somewhere else. He hates Conal Cochran, the owner of Silver Shamrock, and expresses a wish to burn down the factory someday.
And then of course, when Dan leaves, more well-dressed assailants show up and decapitate the guy.
While Dan and Ellie are busy doing what you do in an R-rated movie, Marge notices that one of the masks has lost its trademark badge, and she examines it. She notices a microchip sort of thing on the back. She pokes at it with a bobby pin and then KA-POW! A lightning bolt shoots out of it and turns her face into hamburger. Really disgusting. To make things worse, a creepy bug crawls out of her mouth.
Soon Marge is being taken away in a van (not an ambulance), and Conal Cochran (Ed O’Herlihy) himself is there overseeing things. Dan hears him say Marge was “hit by a misfire” and wonders that that could mean.
On Halloween Eve, Dan and Ellie are checking out the factory, where they’re invited along on a factory tour with the Kupfers. Dan notices some very well-dressed guards standing around, and the red flags go up. When Ellie sees her dad’s car partly hidden in a garage, they decide to call the police and get out of town.
Dan tries to make a call but can’t – he gets the same recorded phone message every time. When he returns to the room, Ellie has been abducted by the sharp-dressed men, but he escapes out the back window.
Hoping to rescue Ellie, he sneaks into the factory and gets into a fight with one of the guards. But when he punches him in the stomach, he pulls out a bunch of wires, and orange juice pours out of his mouth – he’s a robot! Dan is captured and eventually taken on a factory tour of sorts… this time to the forbidden “Final Processing” area.
There’s a giant slab of stone (obviously the missing piece of Stonehenge) being chipped into bits by workers/robots. Each of the mask badges gets a tiny piece of Stonehenge embedded in it.
Dan’s tied to a chair in a room with video monitors and forced to watch the Kupfers used as test subjects. As their son puts on his mask and watches TV, the Silver Shamrock commercial plays, but this time it’s followed by a flashing pumpkin.
Little Buddy clutches at his head and writhes around, and falls to the ground. The pumpkin mask shrivels, and bugs and snakes start to pour out of it! Soon, the whole family is dead.
Now Dan is moved to a room with a TV set, and Cochran gives the full exposition speech about why he wants to kill all the kids in America – apparently, something to do with the War on Samhain. (Druids can’t say “Merry Samhain” anymore due to Political Correctness!)
Dan escapes through a ventilation duct, finds Ellie and frees her. They end up in the main control room with the Stonehenge rock.
By dumping a crate of the microchips onto the control center (where the commercial is playing), killing the android workers, a supernatural chain reaction is set off, and the whole place goes up in flames.
It’s 8:45 pm, with only 15 minutes left to prevent the massacre. Can Dan and Ellie save America’s children? Or is it too late? You’ll have to watch it yourself to find out!
One last plot hole nitpick: If the broadcast that sets off the masks takes place at 9 pm Eastern, wouldn’t the people in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones find out about what happens 1 to 3 hours before it would be broadcast in their area? Assuming the show takes place in California, 9 pm Pacific would be midnight on the east coast, when kids would be in bed already.
Also, why was it daytime in New York but it was already dark in Phoenix and LA?
*****
A few trivial things about Halloween III…
- Roger Ebert named Halloween III to his “Most Hated” list. Sigh.
- Though technically Michael Myers isn’t in this film, he actually can be seen as the original movie plays on a TV in the background.
- The Silver Shamrock factory is in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California – where Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) takes place.
- The recorded phone message about not being able to connect your call is the voice of Jamie Lee Curtis.