Halloween III – Season of the Witch

“We had a time getting it here;

you wouldn’t believe how we did it!”

Conal Cochran

What to say about the red-headed stepchild of the Halloween series? Well, quite a lot, really.

I first became aware of it when I caught an article in a copy of Starburst magazine that was lying around at school. It was a short news piece, outlining John Carpenter’s idea to take the series off into a new direction. I was sold.

Now, I wasn’t (technically) old enough to see it at the cinema. I’m not even sure if it was released theatrically in the UK. However, I did catch it one late night on BBC 1, sometime in the mid-80s. From the moment it started, I was hooked. I can even remember my dad’s interest being mildly piqued (he wasn’t normally into this kind of thing).

Director Tommy Lee Wallace is credited as the film’s screenwriter. However, for the greatest part, it’s Nigel Kneale’s baby, albeit that it was rewritten first by Carpenter and then by Wallace.

If you’ve seen Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit or The Stone Tape, it’s easy to understand his fascination with both science and the supernatural. If you think about it, Carpenter sets up the premise somewhat in Halloween II, when Dr Loomis discovers Myers’ bloody ‘Samhain’ scrawl on a school blackboard. Explaining the phrase, Loomis remarks:

“It’s a Celtic word, Samhain. It means the Lord of the Dead, the end of summer. The Festival of Samhain – October 31st.”

He goes on to say:

“In order to appease the gods, the druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners of war, criminals, the insane, animals were burned alive in baskets. By observing the way they died, the druids believed they could see omens of the future. Two thousand years later, we’ve come no further. Samhain isn’t evil spirits. It isn’t goblins, ghosts or witches. It’s the unconscious mind. We’re all afraid of the dark inside ourselves.”

So it’s clear that Carpenter was already thinking along these lines, and as a fan of Kneale’s work, he perhaps keyed the writer into the notion of pagan dark magic. Actually, I think it was producer Debra Hill who said that the pitch for the movie was (and I’m paraphrasing): “witchcraft meets the computer age.”

I’m not going to pretend that Halloween III is a grade-A feature film but it does have a lot to offer. For me, it’s far more interesting than the endless retreads featuring Michael Myers. Halloween II is fine. It’s good. I like it quite a bit, but Mikey’s story was rightly intended to end there.

I’ve always been slightly bemused by the constant slamming of Halloween III, and mainly because it doesn’t feature Myers. Do people not read up, even just a little, about a movie before going to see it? Are cinema-goers not up for something a little different? (Rhetorical question.)

The film might have been considered a failure (certainly it was critically mauled) but it made its money back at least five times over at the box office. Of course, it didn’t perform nearly as well as the all-conquering original or even its follow-up, but it wasn’t a flop, even if fan backlash resonated for nearly 30 years after its release.

Anyway, I love Halloween III. I’m not immune to its faults though. I do think Stacey Nelkin is miscast. She doesn’t really bring much to the film, which hurts it a little. Someone a little older, certainly closer in age to Tom Atkins would have made her relationship with him a little more believable. (Yes, in a film where the central premise is fairly unlikely.) To be fair to Nelkin, though, she isn’t given much to play with (other than Atkins, of course. The wily old dog…).

Other than that gripe and certain lapses in logic, Halloween III is a very entertaining movie and one that goes to some very whacky and decidedly dark places.

Dan O’Herlihy is superb as the twinkly Irish patron of sleepy Santa Mira. He gives an acting master class; effortlessly demonstrating how to tackle a B-movie role perfectly. He plays it with absolute commitment – providing a nuanced and eminently watchable performance as the film’s bad guy.

For O’Herlihy’s Conal Cochran, his job has its perks, and while he is clearly dedicated to his rather genocidal endeavour, he’s damn sure he’s going to have some fun in the process. (“A joke on the children”, if you will.)

An example: before, during and after the Test Area A scene (which is really quite disturbing), O’Herlihy plays it three ways: wry amusement, implacable seriousness and, then, a kind of weary disgust. It’s written all over his face as if to say: “This is what it’s all about. Not long to go now.”

I love the way all of Cochran’s suited guys are played. These supporting actors are clearly devoted to their respective roles and, with the likes of Dick Warlock in their ranks, they come across as blandly creepy – and rather destructive.

For me, the film is part of a near-perfect trio of Halloween movies produced by Debra Hill and John Carpenter, who were both heavily involved in number III’s gestation and realisation. And the trinity is complete with the peerless Dean Cundey, who weaves his cinematographic witchcraft into every frame.

As director, Tommy Lee Wallace, like Rick Rosenthal and Carpenter before him, does a very good job. He’s certainly got an eye for the story’s visuals elements, using the full extent of the anamorphic lens. A perfect example is the way that he directs the suited assassin as he arrives at the hospital, goes about his business and leaves, often disappearing just out of frame as the camera and Dr Challis try to keep up. Overall, Wallace brings a lot of style to proceedings, even if he’s a little uncertain with the acting at times.

The music is great too, one of my favourite Carpenter soundtracks. There are no obvious ‘hits’ but it’s a lovely, layered and rather melancholy score that enhances the mood of the piece perfectly.

So, Halloween III… it’s my second favourite of the series. It’s behind the original, of course, but it is often the one that I enjoy the most. After this, the Halloween ‘franchise’ (rolls eyes at that word) would never be this good, this creative and this much devilish fun again. (Well, not until Halloween (2018), that is…)

Haunt (2019)

Haunt’s premise is simple: a group of friends, looking for some fun on Halloween night inadvertently stumble across a haunted house attraction that delivers more scares than they could ever have anticipated.

The film is nicely put together, particularly in terms of direction, cinematography and production design. The house itself (which is really a warehouse) seems authentic and its attractions suitably low-rent.

The friends are quite well-drawn and even likeable for the most part. Certainly, Katie Stevens is effective as main girl Harper and we’re not hammered over the head with her personal baggage – in this case: a troubled family background – take note, makers of Crawl. Actually, this aspect of the film is reasonably seamlessly integrated into her characterisation and the overall narrative. And it makes sense that she wouldn’t be as gung-ho as her pals – and it’s easy to understand why she hangs onto a boyfriend that doesn’t treat her well, sadly. As for the film’s antagonists: they’re suitably unsettling and different enough from one another to be interesting in their own right.

I found myself getting into the story pretty quickly, and though I kept expecting it to fall apart, it never did. That said, I’m not sure I quite understood how the ending was arrived at but I did enjoy it – it makes for a satisfying conclusion in terms of both storyline and Harper’s personal arc.

Halloween – a story of three women

Unsurprisingly, 2018’s Halloween shares a lot of similarities with 1978’s Halloween, its immediate predecessor (in this chronology, at least). For me, the main resemblance is that both films are about three women (who happen to be menaced by a mask-wearing maniac on October 31st).

Three best friends: Linda (PJ Soles), Annie (Nancy Loomis) and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) in 1978

Laurie Strode manages to survive both encounters with her pursuer. Her friends, Annie and Linda, both perished back in ’78, however. This time around, all three ladies – Laurie, her daughter and her granddaughter survive “a night of terrifying butchery” (© the tagline on the VHS cover for the original Halloween II).

“A night of terrifying butchery…” The UK VHS cover (released on the M.I.A. label)

As with the earlier film, I enjoyed the relationships between the three leads, which rang true to me. There’s clearly a schism between Laurie and daughter Karen, who keeps her mum at arm’s length, which is not surprising since she was raised under very strange circumstances, causing her to be removed by Child Protective Services at the age of 12.

It’s easy to imagine the trauma that Karen suffered, being trained to survive – and potentially to kill – by a seemingly paranoid mother. And so it’s easy to understand her antipathy towards her mother – and her desire to move on with her life. After all, she has a daughter of her own, someone that she doesn’t want to see tainted by past events.

And that daughter, Allyson… I don’t think that she quite understands what her mother went through as a child, which means that she is not so inclined to shut out her grandmother. There’s definitely a bond between Allyson and Laurie but their relationship is somewhat illicit, and can only properly exist away from the family home, away from the family itself.

Regardless of the contrivances that get this grandmother, mother and daughter to the same place at the same time, just as a vengeful maniac is about to strike – it’s fitting that it happens. It allows them to forge a bond through necessity. To survive and to become properly reconciled, they must take down a spectre, a shape of things past – the boogeyman.

The granddaughter, the grandmother and the mother: Allyson (Andi Matichak), Laurie (Curtis) and Karen (Judy Greer) in 2018

Sure, he’ll come back; he always returns. But in the reality of this film – and especially if one chooses only to watch Halloweens 1978 and 2018, the story ends about as satisfactorily as it can. Karen’s childhood home is razed to the ground – a moment of great symbolism for her – and Laurie’s bête noire is destroyed by the purifying flames.

Prom Night (1980)

According to many ‘proper’ horror fans, Prom Night is a bit of a dud. It’s “dull” and “boring,” they say. Well, I don’t agree.

Of course, what makes a good genre movie is entirely subjective. I get that. Some people think The Exorcist is “dumb”. (Those people are dumb.)

Prom Night is well directed and edited. The acting is absolutely fine for a movie of this type and some of the characters are quite likeable. There are even moments of genuine pathos.

For me, Prom Night is enjoyable. It’s not particularly grisly (which I’m fine with). It’s also something of a slow burn, which I guess annoys a lot of people.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s no masterpiece but it’s a fun watch that hits that early-80s’ slasher-movie sweet spot.

Halloween (2018)

”Babysitter Murders, 1978”

My Halloween movie cinema-going experiences up until Halloween (2018): Halloween 4 was the first in the series that I was old enough to watch at the cinema, legally, at any rate. It scared the living shit out of me. When I saw it again a few years later, I was mystified as to what it was that I had found so frightening. Bored and dismayed, yes, but I can’t figure out why it scared me. Halloween: H20 was the one I paid money to see next. I enjoyed it – I still do enjoy it – but it wasn’t the best thing since sliced bread – or, to put it another way, Halloweens I to III, all of which I had caught on TV and/or video.

Okay, cards on the table: I consider Halloween (2018) to be a remarkable piece of horror-moviemaking. Before sitting down to watch it, I spent all day, and a number of proceeding days, prepping a move up to Edinburgh. There I was, in the Scottish capital with an evening free and I was very keen to see the film but I was dog-tired by the time I sat down to watch it. However, I knew that there would be no question of me falling asleep because I was so looking forward to experiencing the sequel (well, a sequel) to “John Carpenter’s immortal classic” on the big screen. As it turned out, that experience lived up to and exceeded my expectations.

You know that predicament you have when you want to learn a little about a film but you don’t want to know too much. Right? It’s kind of a distractingly involved dance that one has to engage in when trying to filter out potential spoilers ahead of time – and what does or does not constitute a spoiler is a different thing to different people.

I usually get a ‘sense’ of a film ahead of time, simply by picking up cues, as if out of the ether. These let me know if a movie’s going to be something that I’m likely to enjoy. This ‘me-centric movie-quality radar’ has rarely ever let me down (I have one for music, too). And so it proved to be with Halloween (2018). I knew that it wasn’t going to be a piece of shit. If I had any inkling that it would be, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to go to the cinema to watch it. If it had seemed like it was going to be that type of film, then I knew that I could always catch up with it one way or another in the comfort of my own living room.

Anyway, enough of this self-indulgent piffle, what about the bloody film?

I’m not going to bother listing all the call-backs to earlier instalments that I noticed. You know all about those already, I’m sure. There’s probably a blog dedicated to this information. Suffice it to say: they are almost too many to innumerate. They range from ‘on the nose’ to ‘almost subliminal’. I will say, though, that none of them caused me to roll my eyes. In fact, they were all so well integrated into both the film’s narrative and visuals that they didn’t take me out of the film at all. (*hypocrisy kaxon!* Okay, I did start my review with one-such innuendo and here’s another: Laurie Strode’s “shape” allusion almost caused me to produce an involuntary side-eye. Almost.)

One or two of these references were made in the form of reversals. That is to say, the antagonist and protagonist might be the same but their positions were inverted. There’s one obvious example close to the end of the film which, if you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I quickly warmed to Halloween (2018)’s many characters, pretty much all of them: the main stars and the ancillary characters – the likeable folk and the jerks. All of them. For instance, Haluk Bilginer as Dr Sartain, a disciple of Dr Loomis who works at Smith’s Grove’s and is the psychiatrist to infamous serial killer Michael Myers. He’s very good in the role; unassumingly charismatic. Prior to seeing the film, on more than one occasion, I’d heard about a left turn the movie takes; I’m assuming this is in reference to, or involving, his character. I was under the impression that this would in some way wrong-foot the narrative or take it down some moribund cul-de sac. I didn’t see it coming, which is good but I kind of liked it. Sure, it was a bit goofy but, hey, this is a horror movie so why not? In any case, it moved the story on. Sometimes one has to turn left to get where one is going, right?

It seems to me that there is a lot going on with the film’s storyline, and that there are a ton of characters – and that’s not even counting Laurie and her significant backstory. Speaking of which, it’s remarkable that the filmmakers managed to produce such a cohesive film. Imagine if they had tried to shoehorn in every wonky timeline from the series? What a complete waste of 99 per cent of everyone’s time that would have been. What a borefest this film would quickly have become: a movie positively groaning under the weight of its whacky, contradictory history. Best to cut all that crap out (including the good crap).

Just to give you an idea of that potential catastrophe, I’ve reached into the Neversphere, a shadowy realm filled with every alternative timeline imaginable. Here, there is every conceivable version of Halloween (2018) and this is a piece of sample dialogue from one of those meisterwerks:

“Yeah, there were rumours that Laurie Strode had this daughter – no, a different daughter. I heard that Laurie died in a car accident, but she didn’t, and she had a son, not a daughter, and she changed her name and went to teach in a remote boarding school. Only, you’ll never believe it, she was stalked again by Michael Myers but it was okay because she managed to chop his head off. The only problem was: she discovered that she’d actually killed some poor EMT dressed up as Myers so this caused her to go mad and be locked up in an insane asylum. There were rumours that Myers tracked her down again and killed her and that he came back to Haddonfield to become a reality star on a Dangertainment reality show – did you ever watch that?”

Happily, back in our world, writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley and writer-director David Gordon Green didn’t go this route. *phew!*

This film, the eleventh in the series or the second – yes, let’s go with that (the filmmakers certainly did) is, at its heart, elegant and streamlined. It’s about the one that got away. In 1978, Myers, for whatever reason, got it into his head that this girl, Laurie Strode, was destined to end up on the wrong end of his butcher’s knife. As we all know, she made it to the end alive.

As it turned out, the 1978 incident scarred Laurie forever – and Myers, too. Laurie lost so much on that fateful Halloween night: her closest friends and her naivety, her worldview. Her inevitable transition from shy high school girl to successful career woman (thanks to all that assiduous studying) to proud, well-adjusted mother and then grandmother was now moot, a pipe dream, a parallel life glimpsed at but now closed to her.

As for Myers – he missed out. Big time. Imagine being that man, with his psychosis, knowing that your ultimate goal eluded you. Knowing, almost certainly, that she was still alive, and only because you fucked up.

There are a lot of things that Halloween (2018) does so very well but it’s this core aspect (inherent in the original) that is perfectly re-established. This follow-up is all about giving these two characters what they want, what they need: resolution. This time, however, Laurie is ready.

That’s it. It’s very simple, really. There is no brother-sister relationship, there is no cult, no gimcrack reality show nonsense. Laurie has grown up to become a basket case. Her over-preparedness for something that is so unlikely to happen that it’s positively insane just makes her situation all the more tragic.

However, it turns out that she was right. She knew what was coming. Her brush with the living embodiment of pure evil instilled in her the kind of insight that very few people could possibly fathom.

Sure, it doesn’t make things okay for her family. Her daughter, in particular, had to grow up amid this seeming madness – and she’s still trying to keep some semblance of normal family life going. To all intents and purposes, Laurie is a crazy person, even though she’s raised an ostensibly wholesome daughter, who has gone onto to raise her own ostensibly wholesome daughter. But the near-unbearable strain that must have put on her: on the one hand loving her mother but not the part of her that is motivated by fear of a man-become-myth.

It’s clearly near-impossible for almost everyone in Haddonfield to comprehend what Laurie went through and how it changed her forever, causing her to live the life of a haunted recluse. I mean, as one character points out, there were only a handful of fatalities, small beer compared to the mass shootings that tragically occur today, right? You see, much like the way in which the horror in horror films today is more explicit than ever but barely causes anyone to bat an eyelid, the increasing horror of everyday real life has resulted in society becoming desensitised to death, whether it’s one person or 100.

It’s only when Myers is truly back (i.e. escaped) that Laurie begins to come alive. She immediately snaps back into the real world – and the real world now has to catch up to her truth…

Some general thoughts on the film…

I was surprised at how brutal it was. Not quite Rob-Zombie-brutal but not far off. Many people die in terrible ways and it’s not as if they deserve their fate. Admittedly, the film’s two British podcasters exhibit all the traits of media folk that are a little too pushy, and perhaps not respectful enough of the human impact of terrible crimes. They also make the mistake of seeing perpetrators of crimes and their victims (such as Michael Myers and Laurie Strode) as archetypes, rather than real people.

Unquestionably, it’s hard to make a case for Myers being what many would consider to be a ‘real person’. However, the fate of the journalists is just nasty; I didn’t enjoy watching them die but then I don’t really subscribe to that ‘body-count’ mentality that many fans of slasher movies have. If it’s a good film then we probably should care, even if just a little; fair enough if the stalk-and-slash movie is garbage and its characters are barely even one-dimensional.

The way in which McBride, Fradley and Green manage to pack the film with countless kisses to the past (from Halloweens II to X) so seamlessly is a testament to their skills as writers and/or director. If Halloween 2018 – which is ‘just’ a horror film – is representative of the quality of McBride and Green’s work, then I’m fully on board with them and will be checking out their other collaborations and wider filmography.

Before watching it, I’ll admit that I was a bit mystified as to Nick Castle’s role in the film but it soon made total sense. Apart from being one of a number of direct links to the original movie, it’s easy to imagine it’s him in all the scenes when the character is either with or without his mask. Of course, if Nick Castle means absolutely nothing to the average cinemagoer, his participation makes no difference whatsoever.

I can’t really say that I have enjoyed much of Blumhouse’s output – and the fact that the film has been made with the input of Trancas, Miramax, Universal and other parties would suggest that it should have turned out to be a horrible mess. That it didn’t would seem to be some kind of minor miracle. The fact that it’s above average for a horror movie is a cause for jubilation.

A bit of number crunching…

Halloween 5’s budget in 1989 was $5 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to a little over $10 million in today’s money. It’s the same as the minimum estimated budget of this latest film. Even if Halloween (2018) did cost as much as $15 million, it’s production values positively dwarf those of any Halloween movie made from 1988 to 2002. Even the well-budgeted Rob Zombie films ($15 million each back in 2007 and 2009) don’t look like they had more money spent on them.