Only John Carpenter knows what he was thinking when he agreed to let Tommy Lee Wallace helm this strange non-sequel (which he both wrote and directed) which is the third entry into his iconic Halloween series.
The plot, in as much of a nutshell as I can come up with is this: Michael Myers was (to be ret-conned in future films) burned to smithereens at the end of Halloween II—and is thus nowhere to be seen in this movie which may or may not take place in an entirely different universe (characters at one point are seen watching the original film on a monitor).
In his place, the lead villain here is a company called ‘Silver Shamrocks’ ran by an evil dude named Conal Cochrane, who has designed the most popular Halloween masks of all time (all time!) which are set to (I guess) blow up and kill all of America’s children on Halloween night as they are sent a secret signal from the TV commercial featuring the most annoying ditty in the history of annoying ditties.
As dumb as it sounds, and is, the movie started off good and scary as creepy looking figures dressed in black stalked around slaying folks via methods such as crushing their freaking face in with their bare hands. Then, it all degenerates into one long, plodding, boring trip to the demonic Willy Wonka factory.
The main characters here are that classic slasher movie mash up of boring, dumb, and forgettable. The story follows a daughter (Stacey Nelkin) of one of the people killed in the opening minutes of the film, who happened to run a local toy shop. She along with a local doctor (Tom Atkins), retrace her father’s final steps which sets off the whole Scooby-Do ensemble.
This is such a strange movie. Re-watching it with an open mind and without the shock and befuddlement when I first saw it as a kid, I expected to kind of dig it in a cultish Ed Wood sort of way—but it was not to be.
Halloween 3: Season of the Witch gets a one out of five: AWFUL.
Vortainment 