Spooktober: Halloween III Season of the Witch

Halloween III Season of the Witch
Genre: Irish Robot Cult Horror
Directed by: Tommy Lee Wallace
Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkins, Dan O'Herlihy
Released: 1982

I guess you could argue that massive disappointment can be horrifying. With that in mind, I guess this movie is a fine way to kick off the season. Oh shit, I just gave away the ending.

So the movie starts off, kind of interesting. A man is hiding from a group of men chasing him. He manages to get away from them and winds up at a gas station. There, the attendant takes him to the hospital. A doctor is called in from his clearly unhappy family home to check on him. After the doctor says he's okay and leaves him alone one of the men he managed to avoid comes in the room, and kills him by yanking his nose bone up. The nurse catches him, screams, which wakes up the doctor, who then chases the man out of the hospital only to watch him pour gas on himself and burn himself to death in his car. Honestly, this opening bit intrigued me. Granted I have a soft spot for witches and was expecting some clever kind of either mind control, or other magic tomfoolery. Sadly, that's hardly the case.

As it turns out the doctor is the main character. He eventually meets the man's daughter and together they piece together that something must have happened in the town of Santa Mira. The Silver Shamrock, a company that makes masks that has been showcased in various commercials up to this point (and throughout the rest of the movie), is housed there and was the reason her father visited the town. Upon arriving there's clearly something going on. Everyone stops what they're doing to stare at their car drive through town, and there are multiple cameras which seemingly follow them as well. They decide to stay at the local hotel and to try and figure out what's going on.

A rather annoying woman is also staying at the hotel, claiming she's in town because her son's mask fell apart and she came down to personally make sure it got either fixed or replaced. That night she looks at the Shamrock logo that fell off and notices some kind of microchip on the back. She winds up firing a laser at herself that not only blows her face up, it causes an insect to crawl out of her mouth. The man in charge of the Silver Shamrock winds up picking her up and our main characters watch in confusion and fear, clearly something is wrong with this town.

Around this point is when all of my interest has fallen by the wayside. I can stomach a cheap horror movie from the 80's, I love several of them, but the plot and characters are both fairly awful and nonsensical. As I mentioned the doctor has an unhappy family, portrayed by his wife being rude and clearly being fed up with their life. Obviously doctor's are overworked and his long hours was affecting their relationship, but the movie slowly reveals he's also a cheating scumbag. Early on he's rather handsy with the nurse, but doesn't do anything to really betray his wife's trust. Before leaving town he openly flirts with another woman working at the hospital, talking about how much he enjoys going out with her. It's not handled with clever subtly, it's just kind of hamfisted in.

Fast forward to our "heroes" staying at the hotel, they agreed to claim they were a married couple in order to not attract too much attention to themselves. That makes sense, but later the woman steps out of the shower, and then... throws herself at the doctor? Uh. So I guess he is just a pretty shitty guy? They met, I believe, that same day, and the only connection they have is that he attended her father's funeral because his unusual death really troubled him. They then drove to a town to investigate his mysterious murder, and claim they're married to avoid attention. There's no real reason, and especially no actual connection between the two. It really confused me. This next bit is obviously subjective, but it's doubly confusing when you consider the doctor is a pretty ugly guy, and the lady is pretty attractive. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but this just doesn't make any real amount of sense.

From here the movie just falls apart. They eventually make their way to the factory, where they discover her father did pick up his package and left town. Before leaving they manage to get a tour of the factory where the masks are made and discover there is a secret "final processing" bit all the masks go through. Later on, the woman is kidnapped and the doctor just barely manages to escape the seemingly endless amount of guy's working at the factory in a really unbelievable scene.

He makes his way to the factory and as he makes his way into the final processing area of the building is captured and told what's been going on. Ugh. So the guy in charge of the factory comes from an old village where Samhain was a time of sacrifice and blood. He wants to bring that aspect of Halloween back into the modern world using a... magical stone I guess? He utilizes, apparently, ancient technology that allowed him to create an army of robots that are perfectly loyal unlike actual people with those pesky moral centers. Together they've chipped away at the stone and have been putting bits of it into each mask. On Halloween night they will play a commercial, or something, that when watched with the mask on will cause the wearer to die and bugs and snakes and other nasty creatures to crawl out of their skull. He ties up the doctor, places a mask on his head and sets him in front of a TV with a few hours until the special airs.

Luckily, I guess, he manages to break the TV, and uses the glass to cut his way out of the chair. Hilariously he flings his mask over the camera that's watching him and the robot watching the feed is just mildly confused and patiently awaits the villain to finish a phone call he happens to be having at the time instead of just letting him know the prisoner has escaped. The doctor manages to free his lady friend, and together they throw a ton of the stone implanted logos onto the robots and remotely play the commercial. This somehow shuts down every single robot, even those not immediately in the affected area, and as the villain looks at him clapping because "ohoho you managed to best me you clever bitch" the stone explodes in one of the worst explosion effects I've seen.

As our triumphant heroes make their escape in their car the lady attacks. FUCK! She's actually a robot replicant, or has been transformed into a robot, or some fucking nonsense. They "fight", he tears her apart and manages to make his way back to the gas station from earlier. There he calls the TV station with only a few moments remaining. He begs, even threatens the station to stop airing the commerical. A group of children come into the gas station, wearing the masks, and turn the TV on. To his relief the station dies. Unfortunately the kids just change the channel, the commercial is still on. He shouts for them to turn it off, and the feed dies. But the kids just keep changing the channel. The movie ends with him screaming for them to shut down every channel, in the only scene that's any kind of effective.

I seriously hate this movie. The main character is a pretty shitty guy with no charisma, the female lead is weird and basically nonexistant. The title is misleading and the movie only technically involves witches due to the magical stone from a dead town full of witches. The plot is, well, a fucking wreck. It begins with a bit of intrigue, but that intrigue dies before the movie tells us what's going on and the reveal only pushes people away further from interest rather than drawing them back in. As I said, the only scene I really enjoyed was the last one with the main character panickedly demanding they shut it down. There's one other bit earlier on where he calls his wife and demands she get rid of the masks lest their kids die, but she's so disillusioned and petty she refuses. There's also a montage showing these masks are all over the country, kids coast to coast are wearing them and eagerly awaiting the video that will kill them all. Then they drop the ball and don't bother showing any of the "carnage".

That leads me to my biggest issue with the film, other than the main character being completely unlikable and honestly really shitty. I don't understand the goal of the villain, nor what the fuck is going on even slightly? Where and how did he manage to create an army of robots that look perfectly human? How did he so quickly make, or transform, the lady main character into a robot? What does the stone do? Does the laser transform organic material into bugs? Or does it just create like a portal that lets bugs and snakes crawl through? Or does it just generate them "naturally"? Why does the laser beam that makes bugs crawl out of humans just shut down all of the robots that don't appear to have a central control unit? What does the villain gain from mass murdering exclusively children around the country aside from keeping his shitty traditions alive, which involved killing much smaller amounts of children? I guess just to make up for lost time?

Halloween III is a complete failure of a movie, and that alone disappoints me. From my understanding Halloween was originally meant to be a series of movies with different stories centered around the holiday. Michael Meyers was so popular they decided to follow it up with a direct sequel, and the third movie was their first, and only, attempt to branch out. Clearly it failed as we have swathes of Michael Meyers movies, and the film is pretty heavily lambasted overall. Even as a curiousity I can't really recommend it, it isn't bad enough to be entertaining, just baffling. I did find myself chuckling a few times throughout it's run time, but whether that was from "it's so bad it's good" or just trying to hold my sanity together is up for debate.