Dr. Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) is a physician at a northern California hospital. One October night, a man named Harry Cambridge is carted into the emergency room in hysterics. Grasping a Silver Shamrock Halloween mask and screaming “They’re going to kill us all”. Naturally, he seems to have lost his sanity, but when Harry is murdered in his hospital bed later that night by a mysterious man (Dick Warlock) who shortly thereafter enters into a car & blows himself sky high, Dr. Challis becomes very curious as to Harry’s claims. His interest is furthered when Harry’s daughter, Ellie, tells Challis what drove her father into hysterics. Harry Cambridge was investigating the origins of the Silver Shamrock masks, and to why no orders were being taken for the following year. Daniel & Ellie trek to Santa Mira (the home of the Silver Shamrock Company) to find the answers they seek. They are horrified when they discover that the company owner, Conal Cochrane (Dan O’Herlihy), has implanted microchips, partially made from mysterious Stonehenge rocks, into the masks, and when the Silver Shamrock commercial plays with its special jingle, it will kill countless numbers of children across the country in a horrific manner. As the night goes on, time draws short, and Daniel Challis must attempt to thwart Cochrane’s evil, sinister, dreadful plan. Through relentless android assassins (who all look like Dick Warlock), a treacherous factory, and more, Dr. Challis desperately races against time to stop this living nightmare from happening.
This film is good, but not great. It has a tense and suspenseful story that plays out with some shocking visuals and lots of android gore (they ooze yellow fluid). On the other hand, the score by Carpenter & Alan Howarth isn’t one to remember, and the endless and prominent usage of the Silver Shamrock jingle is more annoying than any commercial you may ever encounter. Director Tommy Lee Wallace doesn’t have much personal style, and certainly makes the visuals feel very dull. Also, several of the sets and props seem budget-starved. and the $2.5 million budget re-enforces that statement. The low grade production values really damage the film’s potential for being taken seriously. If the film had double that budget, perhaps such things would’ve looked better, but it wouldn’t have saved the film. There are simply far more fundamental problems with Halloween III that could’ve been salvaged with the right person at the helm.
Now, Tom Atkins puts in a strong, well-rounded performance here. He shows the desperation of Challis well, and even more so, the intense fear at the film’s finale. It’s a good performance, but at times, you may feel as though he’s out-of-place here. Atkins is a big, tall guy, and having him play a less than physically capable man comes off as awkward on screen. And while he does well with what he’s given, there’s not much of a character on the page for him to inhabit. Challis doesn’t have a particularly distinctive personality to really distinguish him in the story. This is pretty common with every character.
For instance, Dan O’Herlihy does a decent job as the insidious and sadistic Cochrane, but it’s not a great performance. Granted, he’s convincingly evil, but barely more than that. We are given a preview of Cochrane’s intended fate for the youth of the country, and it is truly shocking and horrifying. Unfortunately, that alone doesn’t amplify the character of Cochrane. He needed to be more devilish, more demonic, more purely evil, but O’Herlihy’s performance does not reflect that. His motives are horrific, but the man himself acts exceptionally casual. He doesn’t exude any emotion at all – no anger, no contempt, no vindictiveness. It’s a rather dry performance. Considering his motives, one would expect a more driven, more passionately evil character to come through on screen. A casual evil can entirely work, but it needs more under the surface to make it truly disturbing. One part of it is the script, but the other is the direction. O’Herlihy might’ve been capable of more, but Wallace does nothing to motivate a stronger performance. Basically, there’s no true depth to the performances. You can look back at the wonderfully subtle work of Donald Pleasance in John Carpenter’s 1978 film to see what dramatic depth truly is, and how a great actor can inhabit a role well with the aid of a talented director.
I personally feel that this movie had potential, and if someone were to be bold enough to revamp it into a modern day production, I think it could meet that potential. These days, one never knows what Hollywood will want to pillage next. The premise mixing mystical forces with a science fiction tinge sounds great to me, but wouldn’t be an entirely new. I simply believe that, with a proper budget in the hands of a talented director and an updated script, Season of the Witch could be an exponentially better film. As it is, we’ve got a low budget B grade horror film with a stain of spite.
So, in the end, we are left with an intensely fearful cliffhanger as Challis screams at the television station over the phone to shut off the final commercial. Thrilling and suspenseful finale, and it should stick with you for sometime. As I said at the start, we have a mixed bag. The story worked, and the film had it’s frightening & thrilling moments. However, the production faltered. Tommy Lee Wallace isn’t a real visionary director, and the score was truly sub par for both Carpenter & Howarth (who would do great scores for the next three Halloween films). There are a couple of films I like just based on their potential despite the film not realizing that potential. I believe this is one of them. I can enjoy certain elements of it, but Halloween III: Season of the Witch is not even a cult classic. In the least, I suggest checking it out just so you can make your opinion of it instead of blindly buying into the scorn of decades past.
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