Michael Who? — ‘Halloween III: Season Of The Witch’ Imprint Blu-ray Reviewed

What’s in a name? In the case of Halloween (the franchise, not the holiday), quite a lot. This isn’t a series where all of the films are numbered 1-13. Casts change, stories restart. Continuity gets complicated. Three of the thirteen films go by the single moniker Halloween. For the general lay person who isn’t up on the order of the films or which ones are considered stronger than the rest, it creates generalizations — namely that I might not know which Halloween film this is and whether it’s a standalone film or a sequel, but I bet it has Michael Myers in it. Otherwise why call it Halloween at all?

Why indeed? Which leads us to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a film I would’ve usually overlooked for a couple reasons. One: I don’t love slashers. Two: I have no attachment to Michael Myers. And three: with the number III, I would’ve assumed that I needed to watch II first, which isn’t actually the case at all.

The truth: Halloween III is a movie unto itself, where you don’t need to have seen any other Halloween movie to watch it and where it sounds like the title’s been more of a curse than a blessing over the years — especially at the time of its release, when fans were quite upset to have been misled into thinking Michael Myers would be showing up.

To this day, Halloween III is the only Halloween movie without the legendary slasher icon (though Dick Warlock, one of the actors who played Myers in Halloween II, does appear in a different role and was the stunt coordinator). The idea was to launch an anthology series of standalone movies that could themselves spawn sequels around the theme of Halloween. In Season of the Witch, Tom Atkins is Dan Challis, a divorced doctor whose plans to spend time with his kids get upended when a patient is killed at the hospital where he works. When he runs into the patient’s daughter (Stacey Nelkin) at a bar, he decides to help her retrace her father’s steps. This takes them to Santa Mira, CA, an Irish town known for its Halloween mask factory.

Silver Shamrock is the company’s name and unequivocally the best part of the movie is the Silver Shamrock commercial — with its accompanying jingle — which can be heard counting down the days to Halloween. Is that the only thing the commercial’s counting down, though? Well, it’s a horror film, so undoubtedly not.

Those with a nostalgia for 1980s Halloween decorations and that aesthetic will definitely appreciate the look of this movie. Don Post created the Silver Shamrock masks and, as writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace explains in his commentary with Rob V. Galluzzo (Icons of Fright) and Sean Clark (Horror Hound), while the witch and the skull mask existed beforehand, the pumpkin mask was made specifically for the movie. The mixing of holidays (with Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day) is also interesting and could’ve been amped up even more.

For a film that deals heavily with children’s toys I do feel it could have benefited from having more children. Instead, the main scene involving a child feels like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Horrible, but placated by the fact that we’re not attached to the kid.

The ending isn’t entirely satisfying. Like, to be vague, bugs suddenly enter the picture but why bugs? It could be argued that being horrible for no reason is scarier than having a reason, but the explanations in this movie are weak sauce — especially once the main antagonist is revealed.

Most of the bonus features on Imprint’s Blu-ray are ported over from Shout! Factory’s 2012 Blu-ray, like a making-of documentary. In the commentary with Wallace he talks about Halloween III being more about Halloween than its predecessors, being inspired by Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the locations (which is also the subject of a featurette hosted by Clark that’s also included).

Atkins has a commentary with DVD producer Michael Felsher that’s more of a career retrospective, where he talks about Halloween III but also other films he was in like Night of the Creeps and The Ninth Configuration. It’s also fun to listen to him be amused by what his character gets away with in Season of the Witch

The new addition to this set is a commentary by film historian Lee Gambin, who passed away in May, and is his usual brilliant self here as he talks about Halloween III being an example of tech horror, the makeup by Tom Burman and his team, and the witch in the campaign art who never appears in the movie. There’s also a special appearance by filmmaker Joe Dante.

While the limited edition (which came with six photo cards and one of those lenticular covers that are fun to scratch) is sold out, the standard edition of Halloween III: Season of the Witch is available now from Imprint Films and has all of the same bonus features. The disc is region-free.