When is a sequel not a sequel? Is Troll 2 a sequel, even though they just slapped the title on after the fact (and the word "troll" is never uttered in the film)? Probably not. Okay, but what if the original film's director, art supervisor, and producers are all on board, and yet the "sequel" has absolutely no narrative connection whatsoever to its ostensible progenitor? Enter the strange case of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Original director John Carpenter returned (as producer and composer), as did the original co-writer (Debra Hill, now producer), art director (Tommy Lee Wallace, now director), and executive producer (Halloween godfather Moustapha Akkad). But they seem to have forgotten someone rather important: Michael Myers. And I don't mean like how Jason Vorhees isn't technically the killer in Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th VI: A New Beginning. No, I mean there is nary a mention of Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, or the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, throughout the entire film. Aside from a brief scene from the original Halloween being shown on a TV at one point, there is no acknowledgment of the previous films in the series.
Cynical cash-in? Well, yes and no. At the time, the filmmakers planned to leave Michael Myers dead (he did get blown to smithereens at the end of Halloween II, after all) and relaunch the franchise as a kind of horror anthology series, with a new but wholly unique Halloween film coming out every year. But while that's a great idea, it would have made a lot more sense had the first sequel not been a continuation of the original movie. So one can't help but conclude that the filmmakers were either hopelessly naive about audience expectations, or that this horror anthology idea was really just a rationalization for an obvious cash-in opportunity. In any case, the public was less than pleased by the apparent switcheroo, and Halloween III managed only a very modest profit. (Say what you will about horror movies, they're usually a smart investment; even the flops tend to recoup their ultra-modest budgets.)
Well that's all fascinating, you might say, but what about the movie? As it turns out, Halloween III: Season of the Witch stands on its own as a halfway decent early-80s horror film, and it's sufficiently season-appropriate as to make fantastic October viewing.
The always reliable Tom Atkins (of Night of the Creeps and Carpenter's The Fog) stars as alcoholic adulterer Dr. Dan Challis, who joins a young woman in investigating the bizarre death of her Halloween-mask-making father. Their search takes them to the aggressively Hibernian hamlet of Santa Mira, California, (also the name of the fictional town at the center of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and its financial linchpin, Silver Shamrock Novelties. Silver Shamrock happens to have the most popular line of Halloween masks on the market, and they are tied into a big nationwide Halloween-night "horrorthon" and "big giveaway" that all the kids just have to tune into.
Why kids are falling over themselves to hear the most mind-meltingly insidious, irritatingly repetitive theme music in history is never really established, but it does play into the film's sly critique of holiday consumerism. As it happens, Silver Shamrock's president, Conal Cochran, is behind some very sinister doings. In an attempt to bring the festival of Samhain back to its Celtic roots (and, really, because he's just an impishly evil fucker), Conal and his minions have brought an entire monolith from Stonehenge to Santa Mira. Conveniently, Cochran tells us this during his Big Speech, which packs roughly thirty minutes' worth of explication into about two minutes of screen time. (Oh did I mention that his minions are actually superhumanly strong androids filled with an orange-ish goo somewhere between strained carrots and uncooked pumpkin pie filling?) Anyway, each Silver Shamrock mask contains a computer chip with a tiny sliver of Stonehenge embedded in it, and when the big "Happy Happy Halloween" broadcast signal is activated, all the kiddies at home with their masks on will have their heads melted and bugs and snakes will essentially pop out of their brains. It looks something like this:
That Conal Cochran is quite the trickster, but his business acumen is shoddy at best. Melting consumers' faces off is a horrible way to encourage repeat customers. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it's pretty great.
Obviously the Halloween III experiment was considered a failure by critics, audiences, and the filmmakers at the time (the film's reputation has improved considerably with time), and Michael Myers shambled back onto the screen in 1988's aptly titled Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Although it's hard to defend the filmmakers' logic at the time, it's equally difficult to imagine that the world needed another six Michael Myers films more than it needed a quirky horror anthology.
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