2) Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Released in 1982, Halloween III represents an attempt to re-start the franchise as an anthology series of films built around Halloween-themed stories. That idea started and ended with this film, but thank goodness Carpenter and Hill gave it a go because Halloween III—directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, a longtime Carpenter associate who’d actually donned the Michael Myers mask for a few key scenes in the first Halloween—is its own weird and amazing creation. This movie, which is unsurprisingly very stylistically evocative of Carpenter, has it all: a sinister plot hatched by an evil witch involving ancient magic stolen from Stonehenge; Halloween masks designed to murder children by making snakes and bugs ooze out of their brains; a catchy-ass advertising jingle that will burn itself into your brain forever; an army of killer androids; and a hilariously implausible romantic subplot that the movie takes 100 percent seriously.
And technically it’s not true that there’s no Michael in this one—in the world of Halloween III, the first movie gets a shout-out (“the immortal classic!”) thanks to a very meta TV commercial, which pops up solely to offer an exaggerated wink to the audience.
