The most important thing about Halloween III is that it’s not a “Halloween” movie: Michael Myers does not walk the earth; Jamie Lee Curtis is nowhere to be seen. The producers had in mind an anthology approach centered around Halloween the holiday, similar in some ways to what J. J. Abrams did decades later with the Cloverfield movies. There’s a thin line between doing that and cashing in on the name of an existing property, and audiences in the 1980s didn’t go for it.
That said, there is some commonality with the first Halloween. John Carpenter produced the movie and composed its theme. In tone and concept, it fits well with Carpenter’s subsequent Prince of Darkness and They Live. Halloween masks feature prominently in the main plot. Nancy Kyes, who played Annie Brackett in the first two Halloween movies, has a small role as the ex-wife of the protagonist.
I avoided this movie for a long time because I didn’t care all that much for Halloween and hadn’t seen Halloween II. That’s too bad because it’s fun, reasonably well-made, and stands alone. Plot spoilers follow…
Wealthy Halloween mask-maker Dan O’Herlihy (RoboCop), for reasons that are never satisfactorily explained, plans to immanentize the eschaton enact a mass child sacrifice using modified Halloween masks triggered by a special television commercial. He also has an army of androids doing his bidding; this is never explained at all. Opposing him are physician Tom Atkins (The Fog) and young Stacey Nelkin (Get Crazy), whose father (Al Berry, Re-Animator), a proprietor of a children’s toy shop, is murdered in the film’s opening act. Atkins and Nelkin hook up faster than Roger Moore in a James Bond movie.
There are number of interesting threads that never quite get developed. Shamrock is a company town, populated entirely by Irish people, with a 6 PM curfew? Okay, sure, but why the curfew? We never really see anything nefarious happening in the evening that wasn’t also happening during the day. We only really encounter two “Irish” people–the owner of the gas station/motel, and Dan O’Herlihy. O’Herlihy apparently enjoyed himself and said of the picture: “Whenever I use a Cork accent, I’m having a good time, and I used a Cork accent in [Halloween III]. I thoroughly enjoyed the role, but I didn’t think it was much of a picture, no.” O’Herlihy’s big villain speech includes stuff about Celtic heritage, but it’s never connected.
There are things here I liked. Dan O’Herlihy, as he said, is having a ball. He’s a great villain and he’s fun whenever he’s on-screen. The computers forming the summoning grid in the Halloween mask factory is a fun mash up of old-world sorcery and technology, presaging Charles Stross’ Laundry Files books. The Carpenter score slaps. It’s worth a watch, just don’t think of it as a Halloween movie.