halloweenIII-Behindthescenes

Fangoria magazine reported that Debra Hill almost fainted when approached with the idea for a third HALLOWEEN film. The only circumstance under which Carpenter and Hill would create a third entry is if it were not a direct sequel. "This is a 'pod' movie, not a 'knife' movie," she said. Tommy Lee Wallace, who served as director on the film, can be heard during the Silver Shamrock commercials, as an announcer. "It is our [Carpenter, Hill, Wallace] intention to create an anthology out of the series, sort of along the lines of NIGHT GALLERY, or THE TWILIGHT ZONE, only on a much larger scale, of course," he said.The movie was written originally by Nigel Kneale, but he requested to have his name dropped from the credits. The budget for the film was set at $2.5 million. Producer Debra Hill, associate producer Barry Bernardi, and Wallace settled on a remote California costal town, Lolita, to film the movie. The mask factory was actually a milk factory. Due to health standards, no explosions or smoke could take place inside the factory, so the crew moved to Don Post's studio, the legendary mask maker who created the masks for the film. "The effects in this aren't bloody. They're more bizarre than gross," said star Tom Atkins. Also in the cast was actor Dan O'Herlihy, who Debra Hill referred to as "Mr. Halloween."

Facts-
Various UK video releases of this movie had been heavily cut in places, although this was done by the previous distributors "Thorn-EMI" and not the BBFC. These trimmed the scenes where the old man in the hospital gets his eyes gouged, the scene where they rip the head off the old tramp and most notably, the scene where the lady in the motel has her face blown away by an energy beam and then a bug crawls out of her mouth (instead the scene fades to black before we see her face). However, the version on the "Quantam Leap/Game Entertainment" label appears to be uncut. As the film has not been re-classified by the BBFC, it is possible the distributers accidentally released the uncut version by mistake.
The uncut version has also been screened on terestrial TV by the BBC, Channel 5 mostly every year round the Halloween time and on sattelitte by SKY Movies and the Sci-Fi Channel.

The original writer of the story was Nigel Kneale but he sued the producers to take his name off the movie after seeing how violent it was.

Apparently John Carpenter wanted to take the series in a new direction with this film, but instead cursed the series to critical damnation, as the film flopped at the box office.

Tom Atkins is a regular actor in John Carpenter films, having also starred in "The Fog", "Assault on Precinct 13", "Prince of Darkness" and even having a minor role in "Escape from New York" as one of the prison guards.