cult film freak: TRACKING 'HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH' FOR HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN III SEASON OF THE WITCH 1982 Rates ****

The plan was to have a separate Halloween yarn within each HALLOWEEN movie, but John Carpenter had no idea how gigantic his relatively low-budget horror/slasher with Michael Myers would become, so, following the Carpenter-produced followup with Myers, they went back to the drawing board, which confused audiences since the Shatner-mask-donning spree killer's image was synonymous with the franchise...

But HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH takes the MASK element and runs, basing this horror/science-fiction tale around an Irish-built Halloween mask company in a small Northern California town that a doctor, Tom Akins, checks out with Stacey Neklin (too young and hot for Atkins), the daughter of a slain toy store dealer...

Iconic Arizona image that made the poster for HALLOWEEN III: Season of the Witch

A kind of mystery-driven investigation that not only takes up the entire second act, but has the best scenes where cheap jump-scares are replaced by a formidably menacing aura, first from the HALLOWEEN II-inspired hospital location (where Atkins works) and leading to the town's connected corporate factory...

Run by Dan O'Herlihy as a kind of b-horror Bond villain plotting his own domination connected to those masks and ignited by a creepy TV jingle that, as this point, along with the simple yet spooky Witch, Skull and Pumpkin masks, are as iconic as the original John Carpenter score... in its own way since, directed by executive producer Carpenter's student Tommy Lee Wallace, this HALLOWEEN is a cult film within a cult franchise.