Films We Love: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF the WITCH (98)

January 11, 2013 by Evan Husney

Films We Love: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982) Ya got yer Day Of The Deadcretins, yer Phantasm IIbros, the Predator 2 crew, even the extremely microNightmare On Elm Street Part 2: Freddys Revenge fascinateddevotees and you got yerHalloween III: Season Of The Witchworshippers. I belong to the cult of the latter. Is there a Jason Takes Manhattan brigade?

Perhaps one of the ballsiest sequels of any kind, Halloween III fiercelydispenses entirely with the Michael Myers mythos and instead embarks on 90 minute journey of uninhibited nightmarish delirium set to John Carpenters finest musical score to date. The film is about a sinister corporationss scheme to unleash mass death and destruction across the country with their tinkered halloween masks and trance enducing television commercials.

The producers of this project concocted a bold concept to transform the franchise into an anything-goes annual series (to span decades!) with a caveat of only a horrific story taking place on Halloween - perhaps the most original concept brought to a single franchise in the history of cinematic dilution. Obviously, the universally negative response at the time of the films release would kill this idea at birth. I would have loved to see what brilliance and garbage that framework could have yielded.

Halloween IIiincludes an incredibly traumatizing sequence that you may recall watching on cable TV when you were a small person a womans lips are viscerally lasered off, exposing her teeth and then....a pause...a giant bug crawls out of her mouth and skitters away. BLAAAAH!!! That scene along with the ghastly toxic mutation of that thug in Robocopis completely universe crushing for any unsuspecting adolescent.

Although the original Halloweenis legendary and pioneered an arsenal of genre films to obsess over and even a mega-decent sequel, I can say with conviction that H3is my personal favorite of the entire franchise for its no-holds-barred loopiness, overt nightmare logic and complete detrailment of its predecessors. Loony bat-shit franchise derailments are always welcome and truly make any film series infinitely more interesing if there is always the good one, the underrated one, and the goddamn insane one.

Scream Factorys recent blu-ray release and Death Waltzsvinyl reissue of the stellar soundtrack of this film are completely unmissable. Stop now, act and buy right now.

Also, Im thinking about finally starting thatManiac Cop 2 militia, whos with me?

Previous FIlms We Love entires:

The Visitor (1979)

The Silent Partner (1978)

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (1988)

LINK:	http://drafthousefilms.com/blog/entry/films_we_love_halloween_iii_seas...
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