Halloween II/Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Starring:Tom Atkins, Jadeen Barbor, Al Berry, Loyd Catlett, Michael Currie, Paddi Edwards, Nancy Kyes, John MacBride, Norman Merrill, Stacy Nelkin, Maidie Norman, Dan O'Herlihy, Patrick Pankhurst, Brad Schacter, Essex Smith, Garn Stephens, Ralph Strait, Jonathan Terry, Wendy Wessberg
Studio: Good Times Video
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Double Feature)
Starring: Universal 2pak
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000Q66Q2O
Release Date: 2007-08-14

Halloween II/Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Average customer rating:

2 is Very Good. 3 is a Noble Experiment in Celtic, Gothic-Horror Storytelling.
Keep part 2 get rid of 3!
halloween 2 good halloween 3 alright
Use the Halloween 3 disc as a coaster
Watch part 2, skip part 3

Halloween II/Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Starring: Tom Atkins , Jadeen Barbor , Al Berry , Loyd Catlett , and Michael Currie
Manufacturer: Good Times Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Horror | Genres | DVD | Video

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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Divimax Edition)

ASIN: B00005UQ6V
Release Date: 2002-01-22

Customer Reviews:

2 is Very Good. 3 is a Noble Experiment in Celtic, Gothic-Horror Storytelling........2005-07-05

Without question, "Halloween 2" is a very worthy successor to the monumentally groundbreaking 1978's "Halloween." Picking up EXACTLY where the first film ended, it traces and expands the story to withering depths. Donald Pleasance, a Carpenter mainstay (see "Prince of Darkness" for more of this amazing actor), is profoundly powerful as Doctor Loomis, and commands the screen wherever he appears. His death at the end of the movie is an immense tragedy for any sympathetic viewer. Jamie Lee Curtis is always a delight, and once again, Carpenter's brilliant minimalist synthesizer riffs virtually shape The Shape "Itself." Quite arguably, 2 is even BETTER than its progenitor/predecessor (more "thought-provoking" than "1," for those who get off on thinking that is), though obviously - the original "Halloween" stands alone upon its own classic, seminal merits.

Enter 3, which is at once problematic and yet ... brilliant in its creative, imaginative NEW storyline! Understandably, Michael Myers fanaddicts were appalled by the absence of their antihero in this third "installation." And in truth, 3 should NOT have been named "Halloween 3" at all, one because its title is very misleading to Myers fans, and two - because it owes much more to the originality and gothic story-telling of, say, "The Fog" or, "Prince of Darkness."

Yet, if we can get beyond the movie's titling debacle, we have a gem of a horror film here. Carpenter's synth work, in collaboration (as in 2) with Alan Howarth, reaches its apex, and the opening screens alone, with their intriguing computer graphics interlaced and synchronized with magnetic, hypnotic, eerie and magical, staccato sticks and stabs overlaying an ominous chord sequence from Carpenter's keyboard, gradually morphing and panning out to form the pixelated image of a jack-o-lantern, are worth the price of admission alone. So ...

Let's get back to the choice of a proper title for this flick in a moment.

A very real criticism comes NOT from the content of 3 itself, but from its transfer to DVD format which is, in a word, "poor." Especially for the viewer who chooses to watch 3 on his or her 21-inch computer screen. The picture is WAY too thin and whoever transferred it to DVD, just botched the effort badly. To enjoy 3 on DVD, I had to literally MAX OUT the picture (which of course, caused some unavoidable edge-cropping of the frame, though not lethally so) to FULLY FILL my monitor top to bottom, stem to stern. Having done that, I was then able to sit back and relish 3 with the same exuberance I had for it when it was released circa 1982.

But let's back to the title. "Halloween" proper ENDS in 2, with the closeup of the dead Myers, burnt to a toastified crisp after staggering out for his final "curtains call" from the ether/oxygen room, exploded with the help of Pleasance (also killed in the conflagration) and Curtis, who, blessedly - escapes harm and lives out the saga to tell her harrowing dual-part-all-in-one-hellish-night tale another day. Myers is dead. Dead! Dead is dead. Carpenter and Debra Hill want to make this clear as flame. And the audience knows it, applauding the surcease of one genuine, Grade-A "bogeyman." Everyone can sleep a little easier. Myers is no Jason (a very offensive, disgusting (in this reviewer's opinion) Myers ripoff to any true, blue-blooded horror aficionado), nor would Carpenter or Hill have wanted him to be. So how could there even BE a "Halloween 3?"

The fact is, there couldn't be. There can't be - Myers is consumed in the fire; The Ghost is toast. "Season of the Witch" is a clumsy title (the subtitle for 3), uncatchy and uninspired; it's the ONLY (and far insufficient) attempt to clue the audience in beforehand that this is NOT another Michael Myers picture. Too little, too jejune, too late. Plus George Romero had already used this exact same title for one of his very first films. So what SHOULD "3" have been named? Since Myers isn't in it at all (except harmlessly on the TV within the story of 3), and the 3 story is its OWN NEW STORY UTTERLY (Hill's and Carpenter's noble intention), obviously somebody (who is anybody's guess) got really, REALLY careless. The only plausible explanation for why "Halloween 3" got the name it got (much to its discredit) was to encourage box office dollars based on the boffo successes of 1 and 2 (but this effort backfired (so to speak), once initial viewers came away, feeling at once - cheated, perplexed, and ... God only knows).

But "The Fog" did fine on its own story-telling merits, as did "Prince of Darkness." Let's be creative and give 3 a fresh name it can be proud of. Scrap "Season of the Witch." Of course, 3 DOES take place at Halloween time, and has a Halloween theme, so we have to incorporate this theme into the title, WITHOUT conjuring up hopes of seeing Michael Myers resurrected from the ashes of Halliden Hospital.

How about "Druid," "Mask of the Druid" or "Night of the Druid," which encapsulates what 3 is ACTUALLY about - the use of one of the rocks (the legendary "Blue Stone"), confiscated from Stone Henge itself, to create deadly powerful Halloween masks to play "the ultimate trick" (without a treat) upon the children and parents of the world.

Where "Halloween" and "Halloween 2" neatly bookend one another, "Druid" is its own entity entirely, and giving it the leading and miserably misleading moniker "Halloween 3" has to be one of the stupidest, goofiest and downright blasphemous mistakes Hill and Carpenter, as the bonafide creators of 3, ever committed.

What they did was to condemn 3 to eternal scorn from reviewers everywhere, Amazon reviewers notwithstanding, and undercut the fine performances of Tom Atkins and Dan O'Herlihy (a brilliant monster of a Druidic priest cum "Toymaker").

"Mask of the Druid" or "Night of the Druid" or whatever BETTER name you can come up with, Constant Reader, WOULD have stood alongside "The Fog" and "Prince of Darkness" and even "The Thing" as Vintage Carpenter, rather than be condemned as it is now to the punitive denouement of "label libel."

3's soundtrack is definitely some of Carpenter's most outstanding work to date. The story involving Stone Henge is unique and intriguing. The suspense buildup of the incessant "Silver Shamrock" TV commercials is Debra Hill horror (visceral but not "gross-out") yarn-weaving at its finest. And the ending of 3 is TRULY disturbing, most effectively so with its echo-chambered, overwhelming jolt of doom, cut to black. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Tom Atkins screams over and over and over the phone, to no avail as "Channel 3" (ironically), the only remaining channel UNstopped, keeps on airing the horror-generating, televised "evilmercial" to Silver-Shamrock-mask-wearing children around the globe (or at the very least, we are led to believe, the entire United States). What follows next can only be left to the viewer's hypershocked imagination.

If only someone had screamed "Stop it!" when the titlers of "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch" pulled THEIR trick on us. Still, I insist on giving 2/3 five stars (for BOTH!) because of story. Story trumps bad titling every time, end of story. Perhaps one day 3 will be PROPERLY RETITLED, and thus be able to stand up on its own, worthy, Celtic-Irish-Gothic-Horror merits. Such a worthy, clever effort should NEVER be relegated to the dustheap of abysmal, bottom-feeding merchandising/branding. Certainly the Ancient Druidic Priests NEVER would have cottoned to such "shenanigans."

Keep part 2 get rid of 3! .......2005-06-12

Halloween 2 is the best one just don't watch 3 because it ruins the Halloween series sorta and Michael Myers is not even in it. The only scene that Michael Myers is in is the part where the guy is in the bar and the TV is on and Halloween trailer is on but that don't mean it's not a Halloween movie and this is not a Michael Myers movie and made no sense at all. Halloween 3 is a gay sequel of the Halloween series. Please do not watch unless if you have a reason to watch it but it has this annoying commmercial that some of the kids watch in the movie and it sings 8 more days till Halloween and I was about to turn the movie off. Halloween 3 is annoying, dumb, and doesn't belong in the Halloween series. If I were you I would just keep 1,2,4,5,6,7, and 8. Leave out 3 it's the worst of the series.

halloween 2 good halloween 3 alright.......2005-03-31

halloween 2 is an 80s classic its got all the cliches but with good atmosphere. not as good as the original but good. part three had nothing to do with part one and part two but still is alright i am a fan of the halloween series and if youre a halloween fan you will really enjoy this halloween 2 is the best sequel halloween three is the worst sequel but still is alright i wish there would be specail feutures but the movies halloween 2 which is good and halloween 3 which is alright combined is decent even with no specail feutures.

Use the Halloween 3 disc as a coaster.......2005-03-07

Halloween 2 is a great sequel to the original Halloween. It's actually one of the best horror sequels ever.

As for Halloween 3...oh my God, what were these people thinking??? You can't have a Halloween movie without having Michael Myers in it.

This movie has nothing to do with the first 2 movies and therefore should NOT have been called Halloween 3. Even if you look at it as a complete separate entity from the real Halloween movies, it's just not a good movie!

Let's face it: the only reason Halloween 3 is included here with Halloween 2 is because the movie company knows it's the only way they'll be able to sell copies of it.

So, if you're going to buy this, I think you should put the Halloween 2 disc in your player, grab yourself a nice cold drink, and then use the Halloween 3 disc as a coaster for your drink.

At least then the disc will have some value to it.

Watch part 2, skip part 3.......2004-12-06

Ok, This DVD averages out to 3 stars for putting "Halloween 2," one of the most impressive horror sequels ever made, in the same package with "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch," the sequel that's not only bad because it's a non-sequitor, but because it's a load of tripe. The Halloween franchise maintained a steady pace with the second film, and then did a complete nose-dive with the third.

When I reviewed "Tomie: Replay," I used "Halloween 3" as the penultimate example of a horror sequel gone horribly wrong. So I decided the only way to prove my point was to review Halloween 3 and explain why I felt this way. First of all, there is no Michael Myers. Our "story" centers around two people, a man and a woman, who are out to uncover a conspiracy that a company selling children's Halloween masks is really trying to make spiders, snakes, and other icky stuff crawl out of the kids' heads at exactly the same moment. For reasons far to ridiculous to recount here, the masks will cause this to happen on Halloween night when children all over the country will gather around their TV sets for something called "The Big Giveaway."

Now, I know that this movie is trying to make some sort of crappy point about commercialism. But why would a corporation even want to do that? They got theirs when they convinced the kids' parents to shell out the money for those trendy masks. Is it some sort of human sacrifice for the God of Corporate Greed? I suppose it could be seen as a lousy metaphor for the negative influence of advertising on children, but they couldn't come up with anything better than this?

Now what really burns me up about the anti-commercialism message is not the fact that it's a poorly constructed metaphor, but the blatant hypocrisy of it all. This is called "Halloween 3" because it takes place on Halloween. Clever, huh? Well, "Halloween 3" is not just a clever title. They used that title for this movie so that all the idiots who loved the first two Halloween movies would rush out and see this craptacular travesty of cinema, believing it to be the next in the series. (Idiots like myself, perhaps?) Exploiting the success of a popular horror franchise with a third-rate sequel? That is commercialism at its worst!

At one point, the man and the woman have to check into a hotel. The man says something that I will roughly translate here as, "Hey, we're both pretty unattractive, and there is zero sexual tension between us, and more importantly, we have to get moving to stop all those kids from having spiders and snakes crawl out of their heads. But since you're a woman, and I'm a man, and we're in a hotel room right now, can we have sex?" Now if this were a REAL Halloween movie, Michael Myers would come and kill them. As we know from watching the first Halloween film, the source of Micheal's angst is that he knows that sex must only be enjoyed within the confines of the sacred bond of holy matrimony. And these two tramps are breaking his rule! But alas, this is a faux Halloween movie, and you will find yourself hoping against hope that these two one-dimensional characters will be killed off.

It occurs to me that Micheal's mask is so much cooler than any of the dorky masks the kids are wearing. If they tried to make this an anti-commercialism movie by mass marketing his image as a serial killer, and selling kids masks that looked like HIS, it might be a little more interesting. But of course, that is like saying that watching paint dry on an artist's canvas is more interesting than watching paint dry on a white wall.

A lot of people think this movie sucks because Michael Myers isn't in it. But if this garbage never purported to be a Halloween movie in the first place, and was released under a completely different title, it would still suck! (What title would that be anyway? "Season of the Witch"? I'm not exactly sure where that came from. I know it's a rather odd George Romero movie about a bored housewife, but this movie doesn't have anything to do with that movie, or witches, for that matter.) "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch" is bad for reasons that having nothing to do with how good the Halloween series was before this godawful entry.

If you buy this DVD, watch part 2, but forget about part 3. Pretend it's not even on the disc. Don't worry about watching part 4 later, and not knowing what's going on, because it won't matter. If you rent the Halloween movies, just pretend that the video store clerks left a crappy, unrelated movie in between part 2 and the next in the series, which they did. I am doing everything I can to repress the memory of this movie, but you can stop it before it starts.

Halloween 2 -- 5 stars. Probably not as good as the first, but as a sequel, it had everything stacked against it, and it still managed to deliver.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch -- 1 star. Not even bad in that good way. No malevolent children, no gory fun, no relation to the rest of the series. Just don't watch it.

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