Halloween 3: Season of the Witch
[DVD Info]

Northern California, October 23rd. Two men in a car are chasing down a man. The man who's running tries hiding at a construction site but the two men in suits track him down and attack him. While one chokes him (and the other sits in the car), he manages to pull a wheel stop out from underneath a car and crushes the man on top of him. One hour later the man in pursuit bursts into a gas station and passes out in front of the clerk there, holding a Halloween mask. The clerk brings the man to the hospital where we meet Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins). When Dan is talking to the clerk, the man wakes up, still clutching his Halloween pumpkin mask, and gasps out “They are coming. They’re going to kill us all!” They sedate him. Later that night, the man that was chasing him appears by his bedside and proceeds to gouge out his eyes and rip the front part of his skull off his face. The man in the suit then goes outside to his car, pours gasoline on himself, and lights himself on fire.

Ellie Grimbridge (Stacy Nelkin), the daughter of the man who was killed in his hospital bed, comes to the hospital to identify her father’s body. She’s suspicious of the circumstances that her father died in, and tracks Dr. Challis down at the bar and asks for his help. He blows off his ex-wife and kids and their Halloween plans to follow Ellie to Santa Mira, home of Silver Shamrock factory, the last place that her father was seen. Silver Shamrock is a Halloween mask company, which plays its commercials on TV constantly and has the best selling masks in the United States. They stay at a local hotel and pretend that they are husband and wife, while they try to figure out their plan to find out about the company’s owner Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy). The longer the duo stays, the weirder the situation surrounding Cochran and Silver Shamrock becomes. What is the big secret this town is hiding and why? What does it have to do with October 30th?

There's nothing wrong with slapping a nurses butt in encouragement.
No one cares that their number one doctor is a drunk.
The best time to ask a girl how old she is after after you've molested her.
"I'm older than I look" is not an answer to that question.
Everyone has a potato bug inside them waiting to get out.
Some people get pissy about the real meaning behind Halloween.
The Stonehenge has the ability to shoot bright light at you, exploding your face and releasing your inner creepy crawlies.
Drunks have no credibility.

Cochran: "It's all part of the craft."
Challis: "Which craft?"
Cochran: "Precisely."
(Okay...this wasn't what was really said...but that's what I thought it said and it was hilarious.)

The actors were fine...a little over acting...but hey...

Wow…there was so much wrong with this movie. First things first…the opening/beginning was so boring. Ick. TERRIBLY boring…it really lowered my expectations of the movie as a whole…which I guess is good because I didn’t hate it, since I was expecting crap anyway. It did pick up after a while though. About half way through I was curious how they were going to end it. I really don’t understand why they called it “Halloween 3” in the first place (well… I do but…). They should have just called it “Season of the Witch” and left the Halloween part out of it. Once you make a franchise, that’s what people expect. It wasn’t even remotely like the first Halloween. This movie was a cross between Diagnosis Murder and Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?. The main character is a DOCTOR but does not hesitate to take the law into his own hands to investigate a murder. He even looks like a younger, brown-haired Dick Van Dyke (with a little McGyver mixed in). Anyway, here’s what made this story ridiculous…

Well…this didn’t make it ridiculous but the flashing pumpkin drove me crazy. What if I was epileptic? I would have had a seizure within the first five minutes of the movie. Instead it gave me a headache. Especially with that ANNOYING jingle that went with that commercial. That got old real fast. Next…this Cochran guy. He’s manufacturing these masks so that he can kill all the children and they show every kid in the U.S. has one of the three masks they make on. Um…hello??? Kids don’t want to have the same costume! A little girl who’s a ballerina is not going to wear a pumpkin head over it. It’s entirely unrealistic to think that that many kids are going to wear your masks. Idiot. Also…he’s planning to kill them by having them watch a movie (which is Halloween) and then the commercial afterwards with their masks on. On Halloween night…kids are not home by 9 pm and they’re not going to watch it with their suffocating rubber masks on. I can see Halloween 4 right through that plot hole. Another thing…if all these assassins he sends out are robots, why are they wearing gloves when they kill people? They have no DNA to leave behind. Also with the robots…when the robot attacks near the end (like 100 times the idiot!) if the hand can burst forth and choke someone without the body present…what stops it from crawling around and taking him out? It doesn’t make sense!!!

The gore was decent and well done. The movie…wasn’t that great. It was more like a murder/Halloween special that they show on TV than anything scary or remotely related to Halloween. The plot holes are too big to miss and bring the movie down. It drags for the most part and is a little long for what it is (a made for TV movie!). There’s no boobie but there is an unnecessary man-ass shot to keep you warm at night. So…move along, there’s nothing to see here… Because of this, the jury gives this flick:

(Amused at the "Are You Afraid of the Dark"-esque Ending)

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