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12 Days of Halloween: Day 8, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

10/23/2017

 
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I can't really express to you in human words how much this movie means to me. That said; it's pretty messed up. It's like the weirdest, more trifling story-line attached to a major horror franchise ever; it's just bizarre. I mean, imagine if a movie used the title of Paranormal Activity to explain to you how You or a Loved One could benefit from a Fixed Mortgage, for 90 minutes. Like that, but, fine, with less hurtful Irish businessmen trying to kill children. But I digress...

At the heart of Halloween 3 is hunky doctor Tom Adkins. That's fucking right, Tom Adkins. He plays Dan Challis, a gruff man with a failed marriage and no time to spend with his two children. A man wanders into the emergency room clutching a Halloween mask and muttering that "we're all gonna die," but no one really pays any attention until another man sneaks in, pops out the patient's eyeballs with his thumbs, and them sets fire to himself in the parking lot. Challis, then, is vaguely invested. However. soon the patient's hot young daughter, Ellie, comes looking for answers and Challis is ON IT. It seems everything went afoul when Ellie's dad, before his death the owner of a popular toy store, traveled to Santa Mira, a small Northern California town, to replenish his Halloween mask stock from the world famous Silver Shamrock Factory, run by local Irish weirdo Conal Cochran. Challis, who doesn't have 10 minutes to spend with his own kids, takes off from work indefinitely to help Ellie crack the case.
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"This is all in the name of, like, science."
Dan and Ellie hunker down in Santa Mira in a creepy ass hotel posing as newlyweds. The town is filled with creepy people staring at them and following them around and whispering about them, and because Challis and Ellie are white this is very strange to them.

They immediately encounter a luckless woman and equally luckless family who will eventually fall pray to  Carol Cochran and his Celtic Evil plans to kill all the children of the world by using the magic of robots and also Stonehenge. Yes. Yes, all of this raises more questions than it answers, but none of it keeps Challis and Ellie from making sweet, sweet love. After, though, and maybe also after they've had a bit to eat, they get down to the business of solving the crime or whatever it is. Some guys in suits kidnap Ellie, and that's finally enough to coax Challis into clumsily breaking into the Silver Shamrock Factory, threatening an old woman that turns out to be a robot and getting captured, lol.
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"I'm sorry, do I LOOK like a guy who wouldn't make Halloween masks that turn your kids' heads into a writhing twist of scarabs and venomous snakes?"
He meets the white haired Conal Cochran, who, for some fucking reason, is more than happy to explain his whole terrible plan to Challis in one beautiful monologue. Long story short: he wants all the kids for some sacrifice and is tricking them into watching "the big giveaway" on TV while wearing a Silver Shamrock mask, and then Stonehenge magic connects with a chip on the back on the mask to kill the child by turning its head into snakes and beetles. LOL, HAPPY HALLOWEEN. 

Ofc, after explaining this all to Challis in glorious detail, he leaves Challis alive and wanders off to check on something else, like maybe chili or the new episode of BJ and The Bear. Challis gets free and climbs through and air duct to save Eliie, and then the two of them find the Stonehenge room, while Challis programs all the TVs in the room to play footage from "the big giveaway," they pour a cardboard box of mask chips down from a balcony, killing Cochran and his minions. Like, all of this happens, I'm not making it up. Pretty sure I wasn't drunk or hallucinating, either, but who even knows anymore. Also, everything is robots, basically, at this point. 
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"Jolly good show, old man. I could not have guessed what a worthy adversary you would be when you presented yourself as a bumbling drunk deadbeat dad."
On the ride back from Santa Mira, Ellie, in a shocking move, reveals herself to be a robot. After dispensing with Robot Ellie, Challis finds a gas station and makes calls to the THREE NETWORKS (so so pure) to get them to stop running The Big Giveaway. Two of them fall in line, but one of them, probably fucking NBC, doesn't understand the raw power of Tom Adkins, and they keep running it. On the gas station TV, with little trick or treaters watching, the screen blinks the jack o'lantern animation of deadly snake and bug magic as Challis screams STOP IT into the phone. I mean, please, don't stop the kids standing next to you from watching, or anything, but whatever. ///end film
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 I hate to be the one to tell you, but calling up television stations and screaming "STOP IT," doesn't work. I've tried. I tried during Joe Millionaire, I tried during the 2016 Election, and I try every week during The Walking Dead when someone has a clear shot at Negan and they don't just fucking shoot Negan. But, aside from that, I have more questions:

1. This takes place on the west coast. Have all the kids on the east coast already been turned into snakes and bugs, and was this not enough to get the big three stations to pull the content anyway?

2. Like were the ratings that good?

3. What did kids ever do to Conal Cochran anyway? And how is this, as he says, a joke or a prank? Turning kids' heads into bugs and snakes isn't funny. It's too bad he died before the Internet because he'd be right at home here.

4. How did Challis know how to program the computers to play the exact program to kill Cochran? Also how was he a doctor?

5. Not all cultures celebrate Halloween, and some religions find it controversial, also surely not everyone could afford these masks for their children- that leaves a lot of kids, Conal. 

6. I feel like they'd need a bigger building to hold Stonehenge. Maybe they could store it in parts or something?

7. So, the secret of Stongehenge is that the Irish hate children?

IDK, now I forget what I was talking about. See this film, if only for the ColecoVison jack o'lantern opener that my angry husband angrily proclaimed to be the STUPIDEST THING he's ever seen. Keep in mind, we have been married 13 years, so that's a stupid that can't be missed.

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    Author

    I'm Nadine Darling, author of SHE CAME FROM BEYOND!  (Overlook Press) I write. I like to drink and watch movies! I've been published places and won awards and shit but wouldn't you rather hear what I have to say about BACKDRAFT???

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