“Do I need a reason? Mr. Kupfer was right, you know, I do love a good joke And this is the best ever: a joke on the children. But there’s a better reason. You don’t really know much about Halloween. You thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy. It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we’d be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be looking in to sit by our fires of turf. Halloween, the festival of Samhain! The last great one took place three thousand years ago, when the hills ran red with the blood of animals…and children.” -Conal CochranThere’s a hot new item all the kids want to wear this Halloween, masks by Silver Shamrock! They come in 3 great designs: spooky skeleton, wicked witch, and…jack’o’lantern…! Don’t throw out your costumes, because Silver Shamrock masks make for great accessories to any style, no matter how hodgepodge (plus Silver Shamrock didn’t even make outfits, they just banked on most kids wanting these 3 specific masks…). And if your overworked policeman father brings by a special Halloween costume that doesn’t have a Silver Shamrock mask, tell him to get stuffed! ‘Cuz there’s only one company whose jingle got drilled in your head every 5 minutes! SILVER SHAMROCK!!!
What does any of this have to do with out beloved slasher prince, Michael Myers? I dunno, but the guy that played him is a robot in this. No, THIS is a story about the murder of a man who worked for Silver Shamrock being investigated by our overworked, divorcee father from above, Daniel Challis. After Challis is attacked by suspicious men in black (who turn out to be robots…because…), he teams with the murdered man’s daughter, Ellie, and ramps the sexual tension all the way to the top! The top being Silver Shamrock’s founder and CEO, Conal Cochran, who is very pleasant and willing to help if he weren’t so busy. See, Halloween is tomorrow, and he’s got some very big plans. Big plans, indeed.See, as quoted above and demonstrated by a hapless ginger boy, Halloween night that incessant commercial jingle will play across the country, shoot lasers into the Silver Shamrock logo on all the masks and… create bugs to eat the children’s heads?… turn the kid’s heads into bugs?… whatever happens, it’s shocking and very gross! It’s up to Challis to get hold of the broadcasting stations to have them cut the commercial. If only he weren’t being hindered by Ellie, who’s been (replaced by?) a robot, herself! Was she a robot before or after the sex scene? I don’t know; but if she was, she probably got most of her circuit boards and floppy disks complete destroyed by Tom Atkins!Directorial debut of Tommy Lee Wallace (Twilight Zone ’80s, IT mini-series). Veteran actors of horror, Tom Atkins (The Fog, Night of the Creeps, Maniac Cop) as our hero, and of sci-fi, Dan O’Herlihy (Robocop 1&2, Last Starfighter) as our villain; with Stacey Nelkin as the luckless lady who brings them together. While unappreciated when first released, it has grown quite a following in recent years. It was simply the name “Halloween III” that was the problem, and most people agree it would’ve done better had it just gone by it’s subtitle, “Season of the Witch”.Addressing the whole “Halloween-sequel/lack-of-Michael-Myers/Part-3-ain’t-so-bad”-thing: We all know how the video game Super Mario 2 isn’t like the previous game. That’s because it was originally an Arabian style game with matching characters called Doki Doki Panic. Halloween III is if the characters weren’t ever changed from Arabian to Mario characters, just the title Doki Doki Panic to Mario 2. It wouldn’t change anything about the story or its gameplay, but it’s not what was advertised to you.
Can Challis stop Silver Shamrock’s plan and save all the children in the United States? Well, let me leave you with his last lines in the film:
“Stop it, please, for God’s sake, please stop it! There’s no more time! Please stop it. Stop it now! Turn it off! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!! Stop it!!! STOP IT!!!“
Texan, y’all! Cinema glutton, horror enthusiast, sci-fi nerd, comic lover, and I like Japanese stuff too (the culture, kaiju, martial arts, samurai, some anime). Love me some Mario, Sonic, and Pokemon.