Halloween III: Season of the Witch
(1982) 98 min.
Rated: R (Gore)
Country: USA
Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
A mysterious set of events in a hospital pull a doctor towards uncovering a conspiracy involving Halloween and a mask factory.
Synopsis:
A scraggly man holding onto a mask runs desperately away from a younger man in a suit. He is Mr.Grimbridge and he’s trying to escape. The younger man catches up to Grimbridge and tries to choke him, but Grimbridge escapes as the man in a suit is crushed between two cars. Grimbridge runs and seeks shelter in a gas station and is taken to the hospital.
Meanwhile, a man named Dr. Daniel Challis (Atkins) arrives at his ex-wife’s house and tries to give his children some cheap masks as gifts, however they already own Silver Shamrock masks which their mother got for them. Suddenly he gets a call on his beeper and has to go back to the hospital.
At the hospital, who should need attention but Grimbridge, still clutching a mask. He’s in a state of shock and repeating that “they’re going to kill us. All of us!” Grimbridge is given Thorazine and put in a room.
A man in a suit walks into the hospital room, covers Grimbridge’s mouth. He inserts his fingers into Grimbridge’s eye sockets and breaks the bones in his face, killing him. The man in the suit casually walks out of the hospital, sits in a car and lights himself on fire to the shock of the rest of the hospital.
The next day, a young woman named Ellie Grimbridge (Nelkin) identify her father as the man who was killed. Dr. Challis broods a bit in a bar and Ellie finds him there. He’s extremely disturbed by the events that took place in his hospital. Dr. Challis tells her how her father talked about people trying to “kill us” and then he was murdered. They decide to join forces to investigate the matter on their own.
Ellie goes into her father’s shop and looks through his records. He logged every event. After he went on a trip to pick up Silver Shamrock masks he never returned. Ellie and Daniel decide to go to the town that makes the masks which happens to be located in a nearby town.
They arrive in the town. The place is always monitored with cameras planted on every corner. The townsfolk quietly stare at the newcomers. The Silver Shamrock mask factory seems to be the main place of employment and the pride of the town.
Ellie and Daniel decide to pose as a married couple and check into the local motel. Daniel checks the guest log and sees that Mr. Grimbridge did check in. Ellie sees Conal Cochran (O’Herlihy), the factory owner, drive past in his car. Soon afterward the obnoxious Kupfer family pull up to the motel in a Winnebago.
At 6pm a call goes out on loudspeakers around town that the 6 o’clock curfew is in effect and all residents are expected to stay indoors. Daniel decides to go out and see what he can find. He runs into a drunk bum who tells him Cochran made the town of Santa Mira into a dried up shell of its former self. After Daniel leaves, two men in suits walk over to the bum and rip his head off, killing him.
Ellie talks to one of the other motel residents, Marge Gutman. She talks about the trademark shamrock falling off one of the masks, then goes back to her room. Daniel, meanwhile, calls back at the hospital to check on the autopsy of the man who killed himself in the car but his friend Teddy informs him that all she has to work with are parts from the car, no human remains.
When Daniel returns to the motel room Ellie is waiting for him and they proceed to have sex because they apparently find each other very attractive.
Marge decides to take a better look at that Shamrock label. On the reverse side there seems to be some sort of electronic chip, which she tries to dislodge with a hairpin. This ends up sending a blue ray of light to her mouth. Marge’s mouth is now burnt open and a large potato bug crawls out.
A white van pulls up to the motel and a few men in lab coats wordlessly retrieve Marge on a gurney and whisk her away. The motel owner assures Daniel that she will receive the best care money can buy because Cochran will be in charge. Mr. Cochran, himself, inexplicably shows up and tells them she’ll have the best care.
The next day Ellie and Daniel go to the Silver Shamrock factory to inquire about Mr.Grimbridge’s order. The staff have proof he was there and picked up the order, but they have no other information.
The Kupfer family walk in and Mr.Cochran shows up explaining that Mr.Kupfer was the best salesman for Silver Shamrock in America. Mr.Kupfer asks if Daniel and Ellie can go along on their factory tour. Mr.Cochran agrees to it, so he gives both families a guided tour of his factory.
Mr.Cochran alludes to a Final Process that the masks endure, but won’t elaborate further. Ellie and Daniel decide to go off on their own and they see Mr.Grimbridge’s car in a shack under a tarp guarded by men in suits. She’s stopped before she can go further by the men in suits. Daniel and Ellie decide to return to the motel but they are quite shaken up about the ordeal and intend to leave.
Daniel leaves the motel momentarily to attempt to make a phone call (which fails) and upon his return finds Ellie is missing. A group of men in suits attack his motel room. Daniel escapes but goes to Silver Shamrock to try to find and rescue Ellie.
Daniel fights with one of the men in suits and finds that they are actually mechanical creatures with a yolk-like liquid filling.
He’s captured and given a sort of underground tour by Cochran. He reveals that he stole a piece of Stonehenge and used parts of the rock in the masks he’s created. Cochran shows Daniel a few monitors and informs him that a demonstration will begin soon.
The Kupfer family is ushered into a small room decorated to look like a living room. They believe they are to give advice on a new “commercial” but when the Kupfer child dons the mask and stands in front of the flashing screen he falls to the ground in pain and insects and snakes spill out from the mouth of his mask. Mrs.Kupfer faints and Mr.Kupfer is bitten by a snake, dying on the spot.
Daniel watches this unfold on the monitors in horror.
Back at the hospital, Teddy starts to think that perhaps there was never a human in the car to begin with, but she’s quickly killed by a man in a suit before she has a chance to tell anyone.
Cochran goes on to explain how Halloween comes from, at it’s root, Samhain. He explains that sacrificing animals and children was a way for his people to control their environment. He leaves Daniel to watch the TV and experience the event when Silver Shamrock will show their commercial and activate the masks.
After Cochran leaves, Daniel escapes from the room, saves Ellie from her room and manages to pour Silver Shamrock medallions all over the electrical equipment. This causes it to short circuit and also causes the robotic henchmen to short circuit too. Mr.Cochran looks on in horror mixed with amusement at being one-upped. Then he’s electrified and sucked into the piece of Stonehenge.
Daniel and Ellie escape in a car, but as Daniel worried about what steps to take next to stop the broadcast, Ellie attacks him. Apparently she’s a robot and they fight with each other, causing the car to crash. Daniel eventually is able to be rid of her and runs off to the nearest gas station.
Of course this is the same gas station that Ellie’s father wandered into at the start of the film. Daniel gets to a phone and pleads with the person to take the Silver Shamrock show off the air, but it’s showing on multiple stations. A group of kids in masks switch through the tv stations as the commercial plays on the TV. Daniel desperately pleads with the person on the phone to stop it as the film ends.
Review:
This is the one Halloween out of the series that has nothing to do with Michael Myers and instead focuses on a crazed mask maker who has, for flimsy reasons, decided to play a trick on all the children who have made him so rich and powerful. A hardworking Irish immigrant who apparently still practices pagan traditions of killing children for his Halloween celebration.
This concept probably could have worked at some point. Perhaps as an episode of a tv show or a made for TV Halloween special. As it is, it’s pretty poorly written. Everyone in town is completely oblivious or ignores the obvious sinister undertones of the town. Mr.Cochran is apparently an evil genius who can not only build extremely life-like robots, but also micro-chipped masks that will, with a piece of Stonehenge rock, cause snakes and insects to pour out of a child’s mouth.
The ideas tossed around in this film are so out there and outrageous that suspension of disbelief is impossible and you’re really better off just enjoying a cartoonish mad genius manipulate a town and attempt to dominate the world kill the children of America.
The most fun to be had here is in the almost classic scene of the Kupfer kid reduced to a pile of bugs and vipers. It’s the only redeeming scene in the film and he’s really the only child killed in the film. And that’s just as well, since no one really wants to see kids murdered and the film wants us to justify this murder since, well, he was an arrogant child who didn’t listen to his mother.
There was absolutely no chemistry between Daniel and Ellie, so the love scenes seemed forced and completely unnecessary. The pair didn’t seem too familiar with each other and it was so forced that they had to have sex at least twice to convince the audience that, yes, they are now in lustful steamy relationship during their search for whatever happened to Ellie’s dad.
The special effects are pretty decent for their day and they are amusing. There’s nothing very scary here by today’s standards. There’s not too much of a tension buildup in this film. It seems to want to just carry out this exciting idea it feels it has to share with the world. And I guess it’s worth seeing once just for that. There’s really not any other films that contain a commercial that will induce children into lumps of vermin.