Halloween III: The Troll 2 of the Halloween Series

Halloween III
Given to me by my brother, who purchased it from a Goodwill as part of a Halloween 1,2,3 box set for $1-  on like March 7 2012 or thereabouts.

    I wasn't allowed to see R rated movies as a kid (wich according to my mother was until I was 17) so I grew up envying of all the other geeky kids who had seen ALL of the horror movies that I could not.  I do allot of vintage shopping and have been hunting for VHS's of the Halloween series for quite a while.  I thought I had picked up a copy of Halloween II six months ago, but had my world shattered when I went to watch it and found a dog training video inside (not even home-made porn...).  When my brother came back from the Goodwill with a box set of Halloween tapes last wekk, I was pretty excited, even though we already have at least one copy of the original Halloween.  At the adult at the age of 27 I had never seen 2, or 3.

      I was fairly underwhelmed by Halloween II, really just more of the same guy in a mask stuff that has become quite commonplace, on the upside it does have Jamie Lee Curtis, and Donald Pleasance returning.  After a little bit of research, I was shocked to learn that Halloween 3 has nothing to do with Mike Myers, and the mythology of the series!  Haloween III revolves around a novelty toy maker named Silver Shamrock and the masks that they make.  Apparently series creator John Carpenter had the idea to make a new Halloween themed film each year... that idea failed, and we are left with Haloween III a film that bears no connection to it's predecessor (can't really call them prequels), in the same way that Troll 2 famously has no connection to the film Troll.
    Halloween III is produced by J.C. and also features his amazingly crafted synth-cheese tunes.  It does also have some voice work done by Jamie Lee Curtis (she also did the opening narration for Escape From NY) which was fun to stumble into.  The quality of the tape was significantly better than that of Halloween II, and I found the film to have reasonably good production values, and even the acting wasn't too jarring.  In fact the main baddy is played by Dan O'Herlihy of Twin Peaks fame (woot woot), and even leading guy Tom Atkins (in previous Carpenter productions Escape From New York, and The Fog) holds is own as Dr. Chaliss... our hero.
  The basic plot is that Silver Shamrock is making Halloween masks that are going to do something bad to the kids wearing them.  When watching the film you will soon hate Silver Shamrock via their brain numbing "X more days to Halloween" adverts that permeate the film.  One little plot point that irritated me was that Silver Shamrock only makes three variety of masks, seriously... all the kids in the U.S. will wear one of three masks???   Another thing that was odd, is that there is no real explanation of what is to be gained from messin' up a bunch of kids, other than a general contribution to evil. The movie isn't super exciting until Dr. Chaliss gets to the town of Santa Mira, where things to get genuinely creepy.
    Overall this film has a worse rep. than it deserves, sure it has nothing to do with the Mike Myers mythology, but had it not been released as a "Haloween" film it may have been received (a bit) better.

Left at the Haley House Bakery/Cafe at 4:00 PM  on 3/12/12    -Wiley