Halloween III: Season of the Witch

(1982) ****

That's right, I'm giving this a whole star over Halloween II. This was way better than I remembered. I was hooked from the opening sequence, in which the Magic Pumpkin is shaped on an old computer screen, line by line. This movie's got the whole "mystery conspiracy in the middle of nowhere" feel to it, which it shares with Videodrome and They Live. Movies in which the fate of the world is decided in sodium-lit parking lots.

Divorced doctor Dan Challis has a terrified patient brutally killed on his watch, then watches the assassin douse himself in gasoline and blow himself up. Eventually, he teams up with the victim's daughter to get to the heart of the mystery, in an investigation that involves a lot of drinking and sex.

Seriously, how does Tom Atkins keep scoring? He did the same thing in The Fog. He's a big, drunk, pockmarked guy with a mustache. I don't get it. Fortunately for us, the investigation also involves a string of good sideline deaths and a new iteration of John Carpenter music that's got a Tangerine Dream smoothness to it. It's perfect for watching Tom Atkins run around diving behind hedges.

The bad guy's an evil toymaker! Yes, an evil toymaker. It's the Old Man from Robocop, dryly talking about how this is going to be the best joke ever, "a joke on the children." He delivers this as if it were a big ball of chocolate they were getting, instead of their rubber masks melting onto their heads and exuding snakes and bugs.

The one thing that made me almost drop a half star, the one thing, is that the scene in which we see the Magic Pumpkin do its work on Little Buddy Kupfer just doesn't hit the gore-mark suggested by the idea. I actually read the novelization before the movie came out, if you can believe that (I suspect it was JPX's copy), and I recall this scene disappointing me back then. The mask is meant to melt onto the victim's face, so it should shrink. Instead it gets bigger and floopier. I guess they didn't want to actually suffocate a child. In the end I decided the idea was gutsy enough, and I have to give a nod to any horror flick that crosses the line and does in a kid. After that, the other bits of goof were easy to ignore.

I must admit one item of professional jealousy, that is the Magic Pumpkin's appearance at the end of the "Horrorathon." D'oh! This television event culminates with, in a bit of meta-weirdness, the original Halloween. Sure, why not?

Not only is this a good horror movie, it teaches us the valuable lesson that kids who get what they want from their parents also get their faces melted off.