This year I decided to revisited some horror films that had not worked for me when I watched them the first and see if with a different set of eye and life experiences if these film had been unfairly judged the first time I viewed them. I continued that last night with Halloween III: The Season of the Witch.
Released in 1982 this movie has the distinction of being the only Halloween franchise film that does not present silent, psychotic, slasher Michael Myers as it’s principal terror. Producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill has intended to created an anthology series of horror film under the Halloween banner that Season of the Witch represents the one and only example of that concept. Had they not created a direct sequel to Halloween which continued with the night Michael Myers came home they might have achieved their anthology objectives but by the third installment people’s expectations were set and it was too late for that major of a course correction. Their aims were also hampered by this entry being a particularly poor horror film.
Moving away from the slasher sub-genre Season of the Witch follows the investigations of Doctor Dan Challis as he tried to determine why a patient was gruesomely murdered in his hospital. He quickly finds himself teamed up with the victim’s adult daughter, Ellie Grimbridge and they follow an trail of obvious clues back to a small town whose sole industry is a novelty and mask factory owned by Irish industrialist Conal Cochran, played by veteran actor Dan O’Herlihy the only artist bothering to give any real life to their performance.
It did not help the other lead actors, Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin, that the script gave them so little to work with. In a story scenes can serve Plot, Character, and Mood and ideally a scene should further all three aspects simultaneously. In this movie nearly every scene is one that moves the plot along and ignores all other aspects of good story construction. Dr. Challis wants to know who killed his patient and why without every speaking to a police officer or detective he launches his private investigation because the filmmakers want the plot to move are loathe to waste time on the logical consequences of the events. Challis and Ellie go to the distant and tiny town, during the drive their conversation is only about the mystery, nothing said illuminates character or gives any sort of interaction between the pair that doesn’t serve the plot, and yet when they arrive at the motel they becomes lovers. Why? because it will raise the stakes for the characters when things turn lethal not because it is an outgrowth of the characters and their emotional interior lives.
The only aspect of the film that contains even a spark of originality is Conal’s motivation. A devotee of the ancient pagan religion his disgust at their holy night, Halloween, at having been turned into a night for children to go begging candy, feels honest and real and as something that could drive someone to murderous revenge. This is the only aspect I suspect that survived from un-credited writer Nigel Kneale’s concepts. In the end there is a big ending that the production did not have the budget to realize and an ending that is both incredulous, (what one number could you call to have three different networks yank programming in real time?) and ultimately unsatisfying.
My original reaction remains unchallenged, this is a horror film to skip.
