10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982)
7. It's A Bit Rushed
There are certainly moments where Halloween III's ambition outweighs its actual craft.
The film was written, filmed, and released all within the span of a year so as to keep up with Universal's proposed plan to make the franchise an annual event. And while the film is delightfully bonkers and frequently better than it has any right to be, there are certainly moments where this shows.
Franchise cinematographer Dean Cundey gets in some truly beautiful work, but there are also shots that are uncharacteristically out of focus or unevenly framed. The acting too suffers from a limited amount of multiple takes - moments like Stacey Nelkin's Ellie seeing her father's corpse for the first time come off as clunky instead of impactful.
Most crucially, the first two acts of the film suffer from sporadic pacing issues, due to the fact that the script was constantly in flux. Originally written by Nigel Kneale, it was then rewritten by Carpenter, only for director Tommy Lee Wallace to rewrite it again during filming - it often feels like the first draft of a movie that badly needed a second.