Halloween III: Season of the Witch



"You don't really know much about Halloween. You thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy."

- Conal Cochran

The red-headed stepchild of the Halloween franchise, Halloween III came about when producer John Carpenter, feeling that Michael Myers had died for good at the end of Halloween II, decided to instead try to transform the series into a yearly Anthology of films centered around various aspects of Halloween. Halloween III was an attempt to do just that, but led to a massive backlash from a fanbase hungry for more of Michael.

In a nutshell, Halloween III details the travails of Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) who, a week before Halloween, is called in to treat Harry Grimbridge, a horribly beaten toy salesman who's clutching a Halloween mask and mumbling ominous warnings. It gets stranger from there -- one of the salesman's mysterious assailants breaks in, murders him, and then sets himself on fire. Challis subsequently teams up with the man's daughter, Ellie (Stacy Nelkin), to unravel the mystery. The trail leads them to Santa Mira, home of the Silver Shamrock Novelty Company, which her father had been visiting to pick up a shipment of their phenomenally popular Halloween masks -- masks like the one Harry was holding the night he died. While investigating the town, Dan and Ellie discover that Silver Shamrock is up to no good -- and that Harry's death won't be the last this Halloween season.

Halloween III gives us:
"Conal Cochran: "Ha ha! We had a time getting it here. You wouldn't believe how we did it!""
 * Air Vent Passageway
 * All Hallow's Eve
 * Alliterative Name: Conal Cochran.
 * And Then John Was a Zombie
 * Apocalypse How: One of the more horrifying examples:
 * Artifact Title: From the beginning, Carpenter had planned for all of the Halloween movies to be stand-alone stories taking place on Halloween. With that in mind, the title isn't really so baffling. Then Michael Myers wound up becoming so popular that the Halloween series basically became the Michael Myers series, and...
 * Body Horror: When in Marge's face, it's partially peeled away. What's left stays alive a while longer -- unfortunately.
 * Book Ends: Film opens ends the same way, man with a warning arriving at a gas station (the same gas station, as matter of fact).
 * Brown Note: The last commercial.
 * Celtic Mythology:
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Conal Cochran. The man runs Santa Mira like a police state,.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: Several. have several very nasty and creative ways of killing their targets, including power drills, crushing their nasal passages to suffocate, and simply ripping people's heads off. Never mind what happens to Marge when  in her face. The ultimate has to be Buddy and his family, though, when
 * Deceptively-Human Robots: Possibly even Ridiculously-Human Robots, in the case of.
 * Doppelganger
 * Downer Ending/Diabolus Ex Machina/Cruel Twist Ending:
 * Faux Affably Evil: Conal Cochran.
 * For the Evulz: "Mr. Kupfer was right, you know. I do love a good joke, and this is the best ever, ."
 * Go Out with a Smile: Cochran.
 * Graceful Loser:
 * Helping Hands: After Challis destroys one of Cochran's automatons, its severed arm attacks him.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: Cochran.
 * Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday
 * Human Sacrifice: Make that sacrifices.
 * Infant Immortality:
 * In Name Only
 * Ironic Nursery Tune: The Silver Shamrock Jingle is based on London Bridge.
 * Jingle
 * Karma Houdini: Conal Cochran.
 * Lampshade Hanging: Conal tells Challis that they had a devil of a time getting the Stonehenge monolith to California -- which fails to explain how (though a magician never reveals his secrets, he points out). Also anticipated by the news broadcast about the theft of the monolith.
 * Load-Bearing Boss
 * Magitek:
 * Mr. Smith: Alias of Ben and Ellie when they arrive to Santa Mira.
 * Mr. Vice Guy: Challis -- he's a womanizer and an alcoholic, but he's far from being a bad person and does everything he can to stop the Silver Shamrock plot.
 * Noodle Incident: How the bad guys got the piece of Stone Henge.


 * Oddball in the Series: There is a reason why this movie has its own page.
 * Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Averted and inverted. Cochran - played by an Irish actor - doesn't have a strong Irish accent for most of the movie, but his pronunciation of Samhain in Irish Gaelic is exactly correct.
 * Public Domain Artifact: Conal's Unobtanium comes from chips of Stonehenge.
 * Pursued Protagonist
 * Robotic Reveal
 * Theme Music Abandonment: The classic theme is not heard, because this was an attempt to take the series in a different direction
 * We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Subverted -- when it happens, it's a good thing for a change.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: Was Ellie
 * When the Planets Align