Product: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Rating: 4.0
Simple science fiction does not make good horror
The only film of the series of five that will not deal with the insane immortal criminal with his kitchen knife. Here Carpenter moves to another theme : some crazy Irishman is going to play a trick on the children of this world and then take over the whole world. The first task will be performed through the millions of Halloween masks he is producing and selling in the world, with television as the trigger to ignite the malevolence of these masks which will turn the kids into wasps and snakes and plainly kill them at the very neat hour of 2100 hours on the 31st of October. The second task will be achieved through the army of robotized mechanical human beings that will just rake over the world and destroy any resistance. We are in science-fiction this time and fear is definitely less important. It may terrorize the audience but with the menace of a mad scientist this time and again. But it does not horrifies the audience because this concept of taking over the world with robots is too gross to be really believable. Many films have done better along that line since then and even before then. The Time Machine and 1984 for the older generation and The Matrix or Cube for the newer generation. In other words it is rather disappointing though it is altogether kept going at the proper rhythm and the end is both predictable and fresh enough not to look too simplistic. But definitely too many allusions to and borrowings from too many films and other works of imagination to be attributed any imagination of its own.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne