Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

The Worst Film Ever

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Halloween 3 is my personal favourite of the franchise!!! An original & exciting Horror movie in it's own right with perfect casting in the legend that is TOM ATKINS in a great role that he made fun & gritty. Tom as dr. Dan challis is such a fun flawed character that it's a real treat to watch Atkins enjoying this character & leading man role!!! So wish ATKINS got more leading roles because he has a be screen presence & makes any movie instantly better by his appearance in it & thats why he has this huge following & fan base & he so deserves this later in life recognition!!! Actors like ATKINS don't come around often at all i mean he's rugged & naturally tough without living in the gym to look like the Hulk & he's charming & such a blu collar kinda guy & that's him in real life too. So yeah a perfect Halloween movie that drips scary atmosphere & extremely uneasy creepy music by the legend Carpenter & a really terrifying & evil plot, that makes this movie that I've loved since childhood on old vhs a complete underrated classic of Horror & proves you don't need Michael myers to make a BRILLIANT Halloween themed Horror film!!! Tom Atkins is fantastic & everything else fits perfectly into place to create this one of a kind Halloween Horror that i absolutely love & watch every year lots!!! 10/10

The nicest comment I can make about Halloween III: Season of the Witch, is that it felt like an hour and a half-long, R-rated Goosebumps episode. It's certainly an oddball movie, with a huge case of having multiple WTF moments. I respect it for being "different" from the previous Halloween movies, but to me, it was a little too goofy for my taste and it didn't entirely work as an effective horror flick. (Verdict: C)

Horror franchises are naturally inclined to become stale, obvious and boring after a while, say, after the third or fourth installment, when the formulaic script simply has nowhere else to go. There's no reason whatever to supposed the same wouldn't happen with Halloween. Everybody knows John Carpenter DID NOT want Halloween to become a franchise. But the first two movies made a lot of money, and then they decided they HAD to release a new Michael Myers story every couple of years, if only to satisfy fans of easy and predictable slasher flicks. The third installment in the franchise- Season of the Witch- was a huge departure from the story told in the first two parts- and was also a sign that the real intention was to create a collection of stories based on Halloween, but independent of each other. Of course, it did not succeed, and in the fourth chapter there we went to meet our "dear" Michael Myers and his endless thirst for blood again.It was really a pity things went this direction. Because, truth be told, every Halloween sequel was worse than the previous one, with an indestructible killer who simply was a "seasonal" variation of Jason Vorhees, and all the writers had to do at a certain point was creating a new excuse for bringing Michael back, because the killer invariably ended "dead" or severely injured in each chapter. The rest of the "plot" was basically the same in every movie: Halloween night, Michael comes back to Haddonfield, people are sure he's either dead or only a legend, he starts to kill everyone in sight, someone realizes he's alive, there's a relative of his that he's willing to kill, etc, etc.If this third installment in the franchise had been successful, things could have been different. And instead of having THE SAME MOVIE over and over again, we could have now a very interesting collection of good horror stories. Why didn't this work out? My theory is very simple: this didn't work out not only because people wanted Michael Myers back after his hospital bloodbath in Halloween II, but also because Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a very, VERY bad movie. People might have thought: If the other installments in this series be like this one, then we'd rather have Michael Myers coming back every damn year for more of the same.What can I say not to "spoil" (sic) the party of anyone else? Well, I will not describe the "plot", yet I must say this film does not have any sense whatsoever, bad actors, bad story line, horrible villain, pathetic death scenes, and you end up asking yourself if what you're seeing on screen is really for real. The movie does have a promising beginning, but it all goes downhill from there. I must confess, being a John Carpenter work, the soundtrack is eerie and fantastically atmospheric. Yet the story being told does not deserve a good soundtrack. I think the best way to describe this thing is: bizarre. It's really weird, but not in a positive, Kafka kind of way. It's weird because it doesn't go anywhere and has an awkward story line.I will not give any spoilers, so go and watch for yourself if you haven't yet. I can assure you that you'll understand why the chose to bring Mike back after this "thing".

Wait, what? Halloween? I guess Carpenter had the grandiose idea of expanding the franchise to one movie released around Halloween that was kind of about Halloween...the holiday not the movies.Mike did die in Halloween II. It was a good idea, one year, one horror movie, all under the same anthology franchise.Except the audience, after two stellar slasher films wanted Mike, so best laid plans of mice and men and all that.What we got instead of Mike was a movie that would have been a halfway decent stand alone end of the 70s horror film, one that was atmospheric, moody, and though it was too flawed to be big, it would have been a fair enough start to the franchise...it would have made a bit of money for the seasonal scare fair.Except....it was called "Halloween III" and all the publicity in the world wouldn't have stopped the public from expecting Mike.So, "robbed" would be the best phrase to describe how one feels whilst watching this film.Even now after knowing what it was intended to be...still feel a little robbed. And I am a fan of anthology series, I feel it lets writers and directors tell unique little stories that wouldn't otherwise be made.Still, Mike was a slasher and after Fred and Jason, you want to see him keep coming back until you vomit.