In my opinion Halloween III: Season of the Witch is one of those horror movies that will always be underrated and misunderstood. It ranks high in my all time favorite 5 horror movies. I know Pumpkinrot, fellow blogger and prop maker extrordinaire, makes no bones about his love of Halloween III. I myself fall into the same category of being a huge fan of this movie and I go to great lengths to defend my adoration of it. There are so many aspects about Halloween 3 that I appreciate, not only as a lover of Halloween but also horror movies. Just to name a few: it has a well written story, amazing soundtrack and score, features some classic Halloween masks, there are human looking killer robots, creative death scenes and a scheming villain. Conal Cochran, the villainous toy maker gone bad, is truly a monster and a madman. Using his misguided practices of witchcraft and adapting them in order to carry out a worldwide mass killing is truly sinister. One thing I noticed in this movie is the writers were not afraid to make children the target. One of the things that does not occur in most horror films is harming children. I said children, not teenagers. I believe the reason for this is that most writers, directors and film studios believe it is taboo and "won't go there". Now I certainly do not advocate the killing of children, but anyone that has a problem with this knows that it is just a movie.I happen to favor horror movies that do not have the cliche happy endings and this one appears to not. I say appears because it is not spelled out for you and just leaves you hanging. It's an ending you love to hate. Although this can be debated, I believe that many children and families were unable to be saved by Dr. Challis's best efforts that night.
Upon it's release this movie left a bad taste in people's mouths. It's understandable as there is no Michael Myers storyline in it and many people assumed that it would continue where Halloween 2 left off. After writing the first two Halloween movies, John Carpenter wanted to abandon the Michael Myers storyline and its characters to come up with something different. His plan was that each year they would make a completely different Halloween based movie that would be all to its own. Each movie then on would be completely separate than the one that preceded it. The first of these to be was Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Unfortunately upon its release it did not do well and John Carpenter has never had anything to do with another Halloween movie. Take away the Halloween title and I believe this film would have been much more enjoyed by the audience at the time. If you have never seen Halloween III then don't you think it's about time you did?
