Halloween III History: Following the release of Halloween II, which fared well at the box office but not too well with critics, new ideas began to circulate around Universal for a Halloween III. However, the plot and climax of the previous movie left little room for story expansion. The solution the producers came up with was to start a whole new storyline. John Carpenter's idea was now to release a different Halloween-themed movie each year, without Michael Myers or any of the characters or story elements from the previous movies. So, Halloween III was penned. John Carpenter again oversaw in the position of producer while Tommy Lee Wallace, who worked on production design on the first two films, directed Tom Atkins, who had starred along with Jamie Lee Curtis in Carpenter's 1980 effort The Fog , and Stacey Nelkin, along with Don O' Herlihy, who went on to play the CEO of OCP in Robocop and Robocop 2. John Carpenter again wrote and performed the score for this science-fiction/horror entry in the series, along with Alan Howarth. The story here was that a mad mask manufacturer in a small town who owned the company Silver Shamrocks was cooking up an evil scheme to kill children on Halloween. Somehow, whenever someone wearing the masks saw the Silver Shamrocks commercial on Halloween night, they were hypnotized by it and eventually were gruesomely killed by the masks. Tom Atkins, who plays the hero of the story, tries to stop the commercials from airing before it's too late, but one is still on the air as hundreds of kids sit around their TVs watching...
and then the movie ends.Carpenter had again left his audience on a cliffhanger ending with what was supposed to be a "classic" Halloween film.HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, was released to theaters in October of 1982. The audience was left wondering where Michael Myers was, and for that matter what happened to all the original characters and storylines. The fact that the TV spot for the original Halloween was shown on a TV in a bar in part III added to the confusion. Ultimately, Halloween III was a bomb and was viewed as a mistake by Universal, who opted not to renew the franchise for another installment. It was at this time that John Carpenter left the sequels and has never had anything to do with the production of any Halloween movie after that. |
