Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982, 98 minutes

Just before Halloween a panic-stricken man is murdered in a Los Angeles hospital and his killer burns himself to death himself before he can be arrested.  Attending doctor Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) and the victim’s daughter Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) team up to investigate these seemingly motiveless deaths.  Ellie’s father arrived at hospital clutching a Halloween mask, this leads them to Santa Mira, the small town where best-selling Silver Shamrock masks are manufactured.

John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ (1978) helped to popularise a genre which swamped video library shelves throughout the 1980s. The nascent home-video market ensured that Carpenter’s hit left a trail of derivative sequels and copycats in its wake. More recently Wes Craven’s self-conscious ‘Scream’ (1996) series has nostalgically deconstructed the formulaic structure of these films and revived them for a new generation of viewers.  The Scream and Halloween franchises have, so far, proved resilient; in keeping with the cliché of the killer that won’t stay dead Ghostface and Michael Myers come back to kill again and again. Most slashers offer instantly forgettable thrills but it’s unfair to dismiss the genre out of hand, on occasion they become something more than a cynical attempt to make money from old rope: Alfred Sole’s ‘Alice, Sweet Alice’ (1976) with its cloying, tainted Catholicism and the small-town industrial angst of George Mihalka’s ‘My Bloody Valentine’ (1981) combine a vivid sense of place with a memorable twist of social commentary despite the stifling constraints of the form.

Having produced a weary sequel to ‘Halloween’ with director Jack Rosenthal in 1981, John Carpenter planned to ditch the endless return of Michael Myers and instead invite writers and directors to create seasonal horror and supernatural films to be marketed under the Halloween brand. As a starter, he opted to produce a screenplay by veteran English writer Nigel Kneale.  Professor Quatermass, created by Kneale for British television and radio in the 1950s, provided the template for Doctor Who and crossed readily into American culture where he found a sympathetic response from audiences of television series like Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone’ and Leslie Steven’s ‘The Outer Limits’. These shows had, in turn influenced Carpenter’s own magpie approach to genre by mixing science fiction, the uncanny and the macabre in a short-story format that inspired series like ‘Torchwood’ (Russell T Davies, 2006-2011) or Chris Carter’s ‘The X Files’ (1993-2002).  Kneale’s screenplay for ‘Halloween 3’ addressed the meeting of modern technology and ancient supernatural forces, a favourite theme that recurs in the Quatermass stories and ‘The Stone Tape’ (1972). Unfortunately, Carpenter’s plans for the Halloween series foundered with the commercial and critical failure of ‘Halloween 3’ but viewed in hindsight this film seems ahead of its time: Kneale’s interest in haunted technology predates Lesley Manning’s ‘Ghostwatch’ (1992) and Mark Pellington’s ‘The Mothman Prophecies’ (2002) and ensures that ‘Halloween 3’ has aged more gracefully than the repetitive watch and wipe kill-sprees of slasher cinema.

Tommy Lee Wallace’s unobtrusive directing style deftly combines Kneale’s writing with Dean Cundey’s photography to give ‘Halloween 3’ a strong degree of visual continuity with the first (and best) of the Halloween series. Cundey invests the settings with the same sense of brooding unease that he brought to the suburbs of the original film. Long establishing shots are charged with tension; the stalking camera suggests that something sinister lurks behind the neat front doors and homely shop fronts. An uncanny stillness holds sway over of Santa Mira, which snoozes in the flat plains of rural California. The streets of this stifling company town seem only a shade removed from our own, constantly monitored by closed-circuit cameras with the tacit approval of frightened, conservative citizens. Silver Shamrock’s blank-faced enforcers recall the unfeeling menace of the original ‘Halloween’ killer, but also feel completely at home in our world of privatised, corporate security.

Slasher cinema often has an uncomfortable moralistic edge as teenage victims are punished for ‘forbidden’ adult pleasures like having sex or taking drugs. Instead, Kneale takes aim at adult folly: Our hero is a divorced doctor with a drink problem; the inevitable, gratuitous eighties sex scene plays on grown-up anxieties as Challis’s age catches up with him. ‘Halloween 3’ mercilessly lampoons commercial culture that turns every celebration on the calendar into a retail opportunity. Silver Shamrock masks are the must-have Halloween accessory, and the viral advertising of their infectious jingle is a horribly effective means of generating pester power. Parents will recognise overworked Doctor Challis’ sense of failure when his kids discard the ordinary Halloween masks that he offers them as a poor substitute for branded Silver Shamrock product. The climax of ‘Halloween 3’ may echo Don Siegel’s ‘The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ (1956), but here the menace here is not McCarthyism or the Communist fifth column but the all-conquering wiles of the marketing department. Here, as in ‘The Stone Tape’ Kneale particularly enjoys puncturing the self-important pettiness of business. Buddy Kupfer (Ralph Strait), Silver Shamrock’s top salesman is absurdly flattered when Cochran asks for his opinion on marketing strategy. Marge Guttman (Garn Stephens), a hard-nosed local businesswoman from San Francisco (complete with hip Carlos Casteneda paperback) bemoans slipping production values in the Halloween novelties business. These provincial shopkeepers seem ridiculous when set against the grander vision of Silver Shamrock’s chairman. Dan O’Herlihy effortlessly steals the film as Conal Cochran, whose old-world charm and gentle Irish brogue mask deadly intent. His lyrical description of the ancient rites of Samhain eloquently illustrates the gulf between ancient and modern culture, recalling a time when ritual, no matter how terrible, had a more sombre purpose than profit.

The build-up to Cochran’s eagerly awaited Halloween Giveaway is beautifully achieved with a montage of sacrificial red sunsets across America, Carpenter supercharges his signature synthesiser score to maximum effect and relentless repeats of Silver Shamrock’s jingle holds hapless consumers in thrall. There is a little physical violence which is staged with explicit eighties glee; Kneale was so appalled by these sequences that he asked the producers to remove his name from the film’s credits. The outcome of Cochran’s plans remains mercifully unseen.  Suffice to say his desire to return the festival of Samhain to its roots is utterly monstrous and drips with pitch-black irony.  Cochran is a practical joker, and he savours his opportunity to play ‘trick or treat’ on a colossal scale.

Unfortunately, ‘Halloween 3’ runs out of steam once Cochran’s grand scheme is revealed. The final act degenerates into a rehash of tired slasher cliché and predictable plot turns that includes animated body parts and corpses that won’t lie down. Despite its faults ‘Halloween 3’ displays a sense of ambition and healthy cynicism that has helped it to endure, like the festival it celebrates and subverts. This is essential, witty Halloween viewing and you’ll catch yourself singing that jingle for weeks after seeing the film…

Quotes

“It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we’d be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down you see, between the real and the unreal. And the dead might be looking in to sit by our fires of turf. ”

Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy)

Connections

Film and Television

‘Quatermass and the Pit’ directed by Roy Ward Baker (1967)

‘The Stone Tape’ directed by Peter Sasdy (1972)

‘Beasts’ episodes by various directors (1976)

‘Halloween’ directed by John Carpenter (1978)

‘Ghostwatch’ directed by Lesley Manning (1992)

‘Scream’ directed by Wes Craven (1996)

Music

John Carpenter, ‘Halloween: 20^th Anniversary Edition’, Varese Sarabande, 1998, VSD-5970

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, ‘Halloween III Season of the Witch’, Varese Sarabande, 1982, VSD-5243

Reading

Andy Murray: Into the Unknown -The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, Headpress, 2006

Nicholas Rogers: Halloween – From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Oxford University Press, 2003