• Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
• With: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy, Michael Currie, Nancy Kyes
• Music by: John Carpenter & Alan Howarth
• Duration: 1h38
• my rating: 7/10

Synopsis:

After the death of her father under very suspicious circumstances, Ellie Grimbridge and Dr Daniel Challis decide to investigate the shady activities of Conal Cochran, the owner of the Silver Shamrock Novelties company. Before long, they discover Cochran’s diabolical plot to brainwash the children of America into doing his bidding through a mixture of ancient rituals, technology, and witchcraft. This Halloween, wearing the mask of a skeleton, a witch, or a pumpkin can be deadly. Can Ellie and Daniel thwart the plans of the evil toy-maker?

Review:

A Halloween movie without the iconic masked killer Michael Myers, aka The Shape? In 1982 one was made, indeed. And today when watching it you would say: why was this ever made? A Halloween movie without… well, you get what I’m trying to say… initially Carpenter never wanted to make another movie with The Shape, and rather wanted to make an anthology movie series revolving around Halloween stories but studio executives wouldn’t hear anything about that idea and opted to make Halloween II, with Michael Myers chasing Laurie Strode… that movie failed and after a lot of going around Carpenter got what he wanted: another Halloween movie, only without Myers… and it failed as well, because by now people expected Myers in a Halloween movie! (This would later lead to other horror villains reappearing in sequels such as Freddie Krueger, Ghostface, Pinhead…)

In my honest opinion, this is a far better movie than Halloween II, but it shouldn’t have been called a Halloween movie… if they would have left out the Halloween III signature in the title, this wouldn’t have failed at all… Is it a perfect horror movie (if ever such a thing exists)? No, definitely not… again this is too dark (and I mean the lighting mainly) and it’s gorey in times (at least as a horror fan we get to savour some gore) but it lacks depth and it is not all too thrilling… Dr. Challis runs around a lot and hides a lot… and the old Cochran spins a tale about Samhain, the origin of Halloween as we know it, but there’s no real motivation as to why he does what he does… why would a toymaker kill kids? 🤷‍♂️

Other than that, this was only my second viewing of this movie so far, I enjoyed it for its campy atmosphere and its very open ambiguous ending! But it’s no Halloween movie… oh and that soundtrack, again by Carpenter and Howarth, is a favourite of mine (it even has sound elements that return in the soundtrack of Christine – which is my fav Carpenter soundtrack, btw!) (having recently watched They Live as well, I can honestly say that one was my least favourite 🤣)

7/10