Culturally Significant Presents The Cultural Archives!: Countdown to Halloween Teaser Trailer Tuesday: Halloween III : Season of the Witch (1982)

Being that today is officially the first day of fall I knew that only one film could be featured for our teaser today.

Uh, not exactly. While 'Halloween' is one of the essential films of autumn it wasn't big on teaser trailers. It was a low-budget film and probably didn't have the budget (or prospect) that normally calls for a teaser trailer. Instead I want to focus on the teaser for a film that had a rather large prospect: Halloween III Season of the Witch (1982).

Okay, 'Halloween III' is a pretty decisive film. There's people who love it, people who hate it, and people who want to find every copy to burn while cursing to the gods of old. Most of the hate comes from the fact that Michael Myers, the serial star of the first two films, is not present in the film. You can't really blame the filmmakers, Myers was murdered in the last outing. Why would he suddenly be back alive (says a fan of the Friday the 13th films). 'Halloween' director/producer John Carpenter wanted to go in a new direction with a anthology style series featuring a different plot every Halloween. This was a great idea but it just didn't fly in the end, the fans wanted Michael.

'Halloween III' is the story of a crazed Celtic toy company owner has decided to sacrifice the world's children through the Halloween masks imbedded with pieces of Stonehenge. Now it's up to a borderline alcoholic doctor and his much younger lover to stop the mad Irishman. Throw in killer robots and a driven synth score and what's left if a pretty weird little film about bringing pagan religion to the 80's.

Director Tommy Lee Wallace should celebrated, not vilified, for crafting such a dark yet fun film that over time has become a cult success. A portion of blame for its box office failure should be attributed to the marketers of the film for not making it more clear that 'Halloween III' didn't feature Myers and was instead a new universe. From this teaser trailer we don't gain any insight. Is Michael Myers wearing a witch mask? Did Laurie go crazy and now she's the killer? No plot is given in this teaser but that doesn't change the fact that it is damn creepy. The music, the narrator, the spider, and the sudden appearance of the eyes make one apprehensive about the nature of the witch mask (but, as far as I'm concerned, the pumpkin mask has a more important role). The teaser ultimately did its job, it opened second in theaters, but in the end the marketing machine failed to distance the film far enough away from its older siblings. Six years later Michael arose from the gave and 'Halloween III' was left to find its audience in time.