Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) Review

Time: 98 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Tom Atkins as Dr. Daniel Challis
Stacey Nelkin as Ellie Grimbridge
Dan O’Herlihy as Conal Cochran
Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Hospital emergency room Dr. Daniel “Dan” Challis (Tom Atkins) and Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin), the daughter of a murder victim, uncover a terrible plot by small-town mask maker Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), a madman who’s planning a Halloween mass murder utilizing an ancient Celtic ritual. The ritual involves a boulder stolen from Stonehenge, the use of Silver Shamrock masks and a triggering device contained in a television commercial — all designed to kill millions of children.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is known as the odd movie of the Halloween series, as it’s the only movie in the series to not feature the iconic fictional killer Michael Myers. After the character’s death in Halloween 3, John Carpenter wanted to take the series in a different direction away from Myers, and to be more of an anthology horror movie series, with each entry being a standalone story. The movie was poorly received, and led to the following sequels bringing back Michael Myers. However, Season of the Witch has been receiving something of a cult following more recently, and having seen the movie, I can see why. While it’s not as good as the original movie by any mean, it’s pretty good and I had fun with it.

As said previously, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch isn’t really connected to the series. The most you get is footage of the original Halloween as a movie playing in the background at some points, that’s it. The story is campy for sure, and it does have a B movie feel to it. There’s a lot that happens in the movie, robots that look like humans, rituals and a Bond-like villain. That campiness does make the movie quite entertaining, and its quite creative, which was quite a breath of fresh air compared to many of the Halloween sequels which mainly just consisted of Michael Myers trying to kill people yet again. Season of the Witch also plays more like a mystery thriller than a horror film at times, with a sense of suspense and dread. Also, while I said there was some cheesiness to it, there is a good amount of horror, and some stand out gory and grotesque scenes that I’m impressed the filmmakers went for, especially with one particular iconic scene. The ending is really good too, and quite memorable. The movie is just under 100 minutes long and that was a pretty good runtime and keeps you on board throughout, though at times has some pacing issues.

The cast do pretty well in their parts. Most of them weren’t anything special, but the standouts were Tom Atkins who works as the main character, and Dan O’Herlihy who works as the rather James Bond-like villain of the whole movie.

The direction from Tommy Lee Wallace was pretty good, definitely having a pretty good handle of the movie. For one it’s a well shot movie, the cinematography is beautiful and helps convey a spooky atmosphere. It looks straight from the 80s, but it actually works to its benefit, especially considering the tone and overall story of the movie. The effects and makeup are detailed, grotesque and hold up well today. The synth score from John Carpenter is also great, a slower, darker sounding synth score.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is surprisingly good, well made, and makes for quite an entertaining and creepy 80s horror flick. While there are many other Halloween movies I have yet to watch, I think Season of the Witch is one of the best movies in the series, and I feel like the anthology approach to the series might’ve been for the better, but of course we know what happened when the movie was released. If was just titled Season of the Witch and ditched the Halloween subtitle (rather than calling it Halloween 3), it probably would’ve done better with people back then. If you haven’t given this movie a chance and you like horror, I recommend checking it out.

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IT (1990) Review

Time: 192 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Richard Thomas as Bill Denbrough
Jonathan Brandis as Young Bill Denbrough
John Ritter as Ben Hanscom
Brandon Crane as Young Ben Hanscom
Annette O’Toole as Beverly Marsh
Emily Perkins as Young Beverly Marsh
Harry Anderson as Richie Tozier
Seth Green as Young Richie Tozier
Dennis Christopher as Eddie Kaspbrak
Adam Faraizl as Young Eddie Kaspbrak
Tim Reid as Mike Hanlon
Marlon Taylor as Young Mike Hanlon
Richard Masur as Stanley Uris
Ben Heller as Young Stanley Uris
Tim Curry as Pennywise
Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Based on one of Stephen King’s bestselling novels, this is a story told in flashbacks. In a small town, a group of children are terrorized in their youth by an evil force. Thirty years later, when they learn of a new series of child murders, they return to see if they can’t stop it once and for all. Adults now, with success in diverse careers, they still must come to terms with their pasts and with the evil that stalks their New England home town, and their own fears and nightmares.

With the latest film coming out in a couple weeks, I wanted to check out the ‘iconic’ original movie (which is actually a tv mini series). Having seen some clips and watching some reviews, I had a feeling that I would find this to be an average horror movie which really wouldn’t leave that much of an impact on me. And having finally seen it I can say that it was pretty much what I expected it to be. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good things here, the first half of the mini series is okay, Tim Curry is effortlessly entertaining as Pennywise, the actors who played the kids are good, and the film has some interesting ideas. But it feels really dated, drags at many points, isn’t really effective with many of its scares and the second half is mediocre and is completely anticlimactic. Maybe this movie was impressive for its time, but it doesn’t hold up today.

There are two things I want to mention before going in depth with IT. First of all, I haven’t read the 1000 page Stephen King book of the same name, so I’m not sure how accurate the book is to the movie. Second of all, this tv mini series is made up of two episodes, each of them being 1 hour 30 minutes, making IT a 3 hour long movie. I’ll talk about these two parts separately. The first part isn’t great, it is a little repetitive with its structure, one of the adult main characters in present day gets called about Pennywise returning and then there’s a flashback to when they were a kid, rinse and repeat. Some of the ideas and concepts are interesting and fascinating, but it feels somewhat limited. Maybe because it was a tv mins series in the 90s, it was limited from going all into some really dark and disturbing areas, or maybe it was too early and for whatever reason they weren’t able to do it. There are some aspects that don’t make sense, like Pennywise having no problem killing some kids, yet won’t immediately kill the protagonists whenever he gets the chance. All he does is just gloat and talk about how things float (which at a point is just laughable). I have no idea if these unexplained aspects are explained in the book (I’m guessing it probably is, it being over 1000 pages long), but for whatever reason the mini series didn’t exactly flesh everything out well. Because of some of the interesting ideas, as well as the performances by the actors, the first half is okay.

While the first half was okay, the second half just wasn’t good at all. It’s one melodramatic, boring and disappointing climax to the story. Most of it is just the adult characters catching up on their lives, talking to each other and its hard to care about what’s going on. There are even 2 moments, each lasting at least a minute of these characters just doing something completely random. One involves two people on a bike, the other is just a montage of our protagonists just eating. There was also no tension throughout most of this second half, there was even less tension than in the first part. You never really feel that the protagonists are in danger until near the end of the movie. Pennywise is in the movie a lot less, one of his scenes, the library scenes, is still one of the most entertaining scenes in the entire 3 hour ‘film’. Otherwise I can’t really pinpoint anything I liked about the second part. The reveal at the end was really disappointing. I don’t know if it was exactly like this in the book, but whatever case it didn’t work in the movie. This second half is a step down from the first half of the mini series.

The young actors who play the protagonists in the first half are actually surprisingly good, they have great chemistry with each other and you can really buy them as being friends. They are actually part of the reason that the first half actually works, these actors were so good that I was willing to look pass some of the issues and actually pay attention to what was going on. The adult actors however are very hit or miss, some of them are fine, others really don’t work at all. Also, they didn’t have the chemistry with each other that the kids had in the first half of the mini series. The showstealer of IT is of course Tim Curry as Pennywise, who is one of the best parts of the movie. However, I must point out that it’s not because I find him scary, because really at no point do I ever find him terrifying at all. Yes, Pennywise kills kids and scares some people, but he didn’t leave any impact on me. He’s one of the best parts because of how entertaining he is and how Curry fully embraced the role. There are some moments where he is so over the top goofy that I can’t take him seriously. A good example is a certain scene with him in a library in the second half of the series, just watch that scene and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Pennywise in 1990’s IT works because of how entertaining and over the top he is, sometimes to the point of hilarity. However he just isn’t scary at all.

This film immediately feels dated, from the camera work, to the special effects, to the scares, to the music, to the sound effects, everything feels dated. Some of the sets, particularly in the sewers are nice and work fine but otherwise there’s nothing special. None of the scares work, not even the film’s direction left an impactful scare. I mentioned how there is a reveal that is underwhelming, it was made all the more worse because of how incredibly fake looking the effects were, I won’t give away what it is, but it is so embarrassingly fake looking.

1990’s IT may have been scary back when it was released but it really doesn’t hold up well today. The direction of the film is dated, the story is not always interesting, the second half is a bore and the payoff is disappointing. It’s only effective if you have a phobia of clowns. If you haven’t seen IT, I don’t think it’ll have any sort of impact on you honestly. Yes, Tim Curry is effortlessly entertaining, and there are some cheesy moments, but that’s all. It’s not even a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of watch, its just mostly a chore. As for the newer film adaptation of IT, I have a lot of faith in it, with the modern effects, darker take, a longer runtime, it has to be at least better than whatever this film was trying to be.