Halloween 3: Season of the witch
Perhaps my personal favourite of the Halloween sequels, mainly because the central idea is such a f***** good one that its a shame commercial forces and the audience desire for familiarity won over the desire to provide something new. Essentially the film ditches Michael Myers entirely and takes a script first drafted by Nigel Kneale then filtered through Carpenter and Deborah hill before a polish by director Tommy Lee Wallace to deliver a Bodysnatchers-esque tale of an evil toymaker producing killer masks in order to make a sacrifice to the forces of Samhain utilising stolen stones from Stonehenge and Druidic rituals. If that concept sounds mental, well it is, the film itself is an oddity bu a welcome one with 19th century automatons as henchman, a small factory town with more CCTV than a British high street and an infuriatingly catchy add for the silver shamrock masks that will have you humming for days.
Fortunately Tommy Lee Wallace sells the shit out of the concept as a director and it all works very well indeed. John Carpenter & Alan Howarth provide an excellent and moody score, Dean Cudy works his magic with some terrific photography all to provide a great atmosphere to the picture. Dan O'Herlihy is absolutely fantastic as evil toymaker Conal Cochran and really delivers the goods as far as villains goes, charming and likeable at one moment, malicious and psycopathically evil another. Tom Atkins gives a great performance as the drunken doctor trying to bring him down. Stacey Nelkin is also great and the fact that she's not afraid to 'get them out' certainly helps sell the film and cements my belief that Tom Atkins has some kind of magic luck powers.
The film was supposed to take the franchise in another direction, essentially a different Halloween themed horror to be released each year around Halloween. Sadly it seems audiences wanted more of the same, the film flopped and the franchise got put on hold until....
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