Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

A large Halloween mask-making company has plans to kill millions of American children with something sinister hidden in Halloween masks.

Director:

Tommy Lee Wallace

Writer:

Tommy Lee Wallace

Stars:

Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O'Herlihy

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tom Atkins	...	Daniel Challis
Stacey Nelkin	...	Ellie Grimbridge
Dan O'Herlihy	...	Cochran / Conal Cochran
Michael Currie	...	Rafferty
Ralph Strait	...	Buddy Kupfer
Jadeen Barbor	...	Betty Kupfer
Brad Schacter	...	Little Buddy (as Bradley Schachter)
Garn Stephens	...	Marge
Nancy Kyes	...	Linda Challis
Jonathan Terry	...	Starker (as Jon Terry)
Al Berry	...	Harry Grimbridge
Wendy Wessberg	...	Teddy
Essex Smith	...	Walter Jones
Maidie Norman	...	Nurse Agnes
John MacBride	...	Sheriff

Storyline

An apparent murder-suicide in a hospital emergency room leads to an investigation by the on-call doctor, which reveals a plot by an insane toymaker to kill as many people as possible during Halloween through an ancient Celtic ritual involving a stolen boulder from Stonehenge and Halloween masks.

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Plot Keywords:

mask | halloween | stonehenge | hospital | doctor | 

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Taglines:

The night no one comes home.

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Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

The Lair of Michael Myers Trancas International Films

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 October 1982 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alla helgons blodiga natt 3

Filming Locations:

Domino's Pizza - 17 Kersting Court, Sierra Madre, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$2,500,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$14,400,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Dino De Laurentiis Company, Universal Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

98 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film's original director, Joe Dante, approached Nigel Kneale to write the film while Kneale was temporarily living in Hollywood writing the remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon for director John Landis that was never made due to budget cost. Dante wanted a new and different story than the two previous films in the series, so he suggested Kneale write a treatment around the word Halloween. The producers liked the idea, and after Joe Dante moved on to another project, producer John Carpenter's regular collaborator, Tommy Lee Wallace, came in as the new director. Kneale initially blamed the drastic changes to his script on executive producer 'Dino De Laurentiis' not understanding his dialogue when it was translated to Italian. Kneale requested his writing screen credit be removed once his comical mystery screenplay was rewritten by an uncredited Carpenter, and then later Wallace (who received sole screen credit as writer), to include more gore and simplify the story.

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Goofs

Cochran is shown reaching into a box to give a mask to Buddy Junior, but in the close-up of the hand removing the mask from the box, the hand is obviously female, with painted fingernails.

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Quotes

Conal Cochran: [turns to see Dan] Aw, Mr. Chaliss.
Daniel Challis: Where's Ellie?
Conal Cochran: Mrs. "Smith"? I'm sure she's resting just now.
[Looks at his watch]
Conal Cochran: Didn't take you long to get here, Mr. Chaliss. DOCTOR Chaliss, I should say.

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Connections

Referenced in 'Halloween': A Cut Above the Rest (2003)

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Soundtracks

"Do The Boogaloo"
Performed by Quango & Sparky
Written by Sammy Burdson & Jean Claude Madone
c/o Sonoton Music Inc

User Reviews

Not without its charm

Halloween III has taken on a new life on the AMC cable channel. It is used to pad some time during their "Monsterfest" marathon in the 10 days leading up to Halloween.

It's not a good movie. People who like it, when asked, "Do you want to see a movie that's like the Twilight Zone, only slower, longer, and not as good?" would probably answer, "You had me at Twilight Zone."

There are a few things to enjoy about this movie:

1) The 1-man synthesizer soundtrack is pure early 80s. 2) Also for nostalgia lovers, this movie came out when personal computers had been out for about a year and any kind of computer graphics were considered cool. 3) The producers showed some guts by breaking from the formula (and unfortunately got creamed at the box office for it.) 4) It doesn't have an eye-rolling formulaic ending. 5) It turned out to be somewhat prophetic. 15 years after this movie came out, hundreds of Japanese children were stricken with seizures after watching an episode of "Pokemon." 6) If you like the song "London Bridge," this is the movie for you.

Unfortunately, it's kind of plodding and layers implausibility upon implausibility until it just gets too much. If you watch this movie, here are some things NOT to think about. It'll just make your head hurt: (Spoiler alert)

*How could someone steal a 5-ton rock from Stonehenge?

*If you're a supervillian, is there a better use for your lifelike androids?

*How does Silver Shamrock pay for all those TV ads that must change on a daily basis?

*How much revenue can a company generate with a product line that features a whopping three different masks? (two of which are pretty lame.)

*Did stores used to carry Halloween merchandise for longer into October? (since currently, the Halloween stuff is moved to clearance by about October 20th to make room for Xmas stuff)

*Would a factory so paranoid that it enforces a curfew on its citizens be a little suspicious of two buyers who showed up to get masks on October 29th without phoning first?

*Why is Buddy Kupfer's family staying in a motel if they have a big RV? In fact, why is "one of the richest men in the country" staying in a cheap motel at all?

*When are football games televised on Friday afternoon?

*What makes divorced alcoholic 47 year old deadbeat dads attractive to hot 23 year olds?

*Why are there so many leaves on the trees on October 31?

*Has there ever been a lazier attempt at a montage of cities than the one that appears in this movie?

*Wouldn't time zones put a kink in Cochran's wicked scheme?

*Did network TV used to air horror movies at 7:00 PM? ("The Big Giveaway" at 9:00 follows the airing of the original Halloween movie, with a run time of about 2 hours, including the inevitable commercials.)

*Whom can you call to immediately pull programming from multiple networks, especially if you don't have any special credentials?

*What did this movie have to do with witches or the Donovan song?

I could have overlooked all those glaring problems if Cochran had shown even a modicum of motivation for his evil plan to murder all his customers (and ensure bankruptcy even if he dodges criminal proceedings) but the plot is so preposterous by the time Challis confronts him that Cochran can't even offer up a response. "Do I even need a reason? ... In the end, the planets determine our actions." That's right. Blame it on astrology.

Sheesh!