Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 37

Cinema Obscura - The Overlooked Gems of Cinema halloween III: Season of the witch (1982) ByJeff Durkin “It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we’d be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be looking in to sit by our fires of turf. Halloween, the festival of Samhain! The last great one took place three thousand years ago, when the hills ran red with the blood of animals and children.” Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) Halloween III is an uneven film. Elements of the movie work very well; other parts fail dismally. Coming on the heels of Halloween II and the apparent death of Michael Meyers, Halloween III tells a story unconnected to the first two films. Producers Debra Hill and John Carpenter hoped to turn the Halloween franchise into a series of stand-alone films, sharing the title but nothing else. That idea failed, with the next movie featuring the return of Michael Meyers. Does that mean Halloween III failed as a movie? 37