With nary a glimpse of Michael Myers, the third instalment of the Hallowe'en franchise is supernatural in nature. In late October, Harry Grimbridge is chased by a bunch of people in business suits into petrol station wearing a mask and proclaiming "They're going to kill us!". He collapses and is put under the care of a doctor in the hospital called Dr Challis. However, someone sneaks into his room, kills Harry and then immolates themselves in the hospital car park. Dr Challis and Grimbridge's daughter Ellie do some snooping and end up in a small Californian town where an Irish man called Conal Cochran is holding up the town's economy with his mask factory - the same mask that was on Harry. Challis and Ellie are in a hotel where a lot of the residents - with a link to the factory - start dying due to the masked men in suits. They tour the factory and see Harry's car outside, it guarded by the men in suits. When they cannot get any access to the outside world back in the hotel, Ellie is kidnapped and Challis breaks into the factory to save her. Cochran appears and tells Challis that the be-suited men are androids he has been making to enforce his desire to kill children on Hallowe'en. His trademark masks contain a computer chip which will be activated on 31st October through a television broadcast. They will explode and kill the wearer, and to add insult to injury - they will unleash snakes and horrible creatures to kill people within the vicinity of the wearer. This is apparently to do with an old Gaelic festival called Samhain. Will Ellie and Challis defeat Cochran and avert this terrible catastrophe on time? So it's a serious case of Save The Children in Hallowe'en III. It sticks out in the Hallowe'en franchise like a sore thumb due to its exclusion of Michael Myers as a character. I think that a lot of people dismiss the film unfairly due to Myers' absence in it. This does the film a grave disfavour because it is actually a fairly tight little number that I would rather watch any day over Myers' boring slasher fests which all look the same to me except it is different actresses being chopped up. With a very good score and enough gore to satisfy the average horror fan, Hallowe'en III should probably have been just named Season of the Witch but I appreciate what the film makers were trying to do with the franchise - push it beyond Myers and tackle a different theme with each new instalment. Unfortunately this visionary approach to the franchise did not go down well at the box office and Myers was eventually brought back to start in the crappy Hallowe'en IV. Veteran actor Dan O'Herlihy does an amusing job with his despicable Irish baddie role and the ending to the film will stick in your mind for a while. I demand a reappraisal!
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
