[HorrorScience] Halloween III (1982)

On October 22, 1982, the third film in the saga premiered in US theaters. halloween started in 1978 by the now famous John Carpenter who was, along with Debra Hill, the creator of this successful franchise. The criticism that has rained down since then on this third film continues to be the subject of debate to this day., and despite being called Halloween III Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, and Dr. Sam Loomis, the most important characters in the film, do not appear in the film at any time. halloween and Halloween II. But this is not the only thing, but also the story has nothing to do with that of the first two installments, and if you now look at all the films that make up this saga you will see that This third installment is the only one that does not have the presence of Myers and that has an absolutely independent history.

Why would they make such a different film belonging to a saga that had become famous precisely because of its murderous protagonist? And why, furthermore, would it be its own creators now working as producers who would decide to film a film radically different from the first two, given that these two had been a commercial success? I will comment on it later.

It is Saturday night, October 23 in Northern California, and a man, who we later learn is Harry Grimbridge, owner of a mask and costume store, is running down the street desperately searching for help while being chased by a vehicle. The man arrives at a kind of car salvage yard and hides there, hoping that they will lose sight of him, but when the vehicle enters and parks near him he decides to escape and is immediately intercepted by an expressionless man dressed in a black suit, who throws him to the ground and begins to strangle him. Harry takes some chains that are on the ground and pulls them, thus releasing a stone that was tied to the chain and acted as a brake for a nearby car, which causes this car to now rush towards them and ends up colliding with the man in the suit, leaving him crushed between two vehicles, who also with a slightly ridiculous movement and without making a sound or making any expression remains unconscious or dead, we do not know exactly. Harry then escapes, and another man in a black suit gets out of the vehicle that was chasing him.

An hour later, a gas station attendant is watching television (a documentary about Stonehenge and then an advertisement for Silver Shamrock Halloween masks are playing) and reading something, and when he hears some noises he decides to investigate. Suddenly Harry arrives, very upset, and pushes the employee and asks for help, as he falls to the floor, shakes the pumpkin mask he is wearing in one of his hands, and faints. The employee then helps him by loading him onto his crane and immediately taking him to the hospital.

In the next scene we see who will become the protagonist of this story, Dr. Daniel Challis, who arrives at the house where his ex-wife lives to visit his children and give them some masks. The children are disappointed, because they already have masks that their mother gave them, and they are also of better quality, manufactured by Silver Shamrock. The children put on the masks and start singing the Silver Shamrock commercial song, and then turn on the television, where a few seconds later that advertisement begins to air. The Dr. receives a message and calls the hospital, where apparently they inform him that there is an emergency and he must go there.

Once at the hospital, Daniel treats Harry, who is passed out on a stretcher, still holding the pumpkin mask tightly in his hands. The gas station employee tells the doctor what happened, and asks him if he can leave now, to which he answers yes. At that moment, on the TV in one of the nearby rooms, the Silver Shamrock advertisement begins to play, and Harry wakes up when he hears it, looks at the doctor and says, "They're going to kill us. All of us. All of us." and faints again. Daniel asks to inject him with a sedative, and they take the patient to a room. Meanwhile, outside the hospital, we see that one of the men in black has arrived.

Once Harry is asleep in one of the hospital beds, Daniel asks the nurse if he has anyone else to attend to, and when she answers no, everything is very quiet, the doctor says that he could use a nap and goes to the doctors' room ready to rest.

The man in black is already inside the hospital, and he takes advantage of the fact that there is no one in the hallways to go to the room where Harry is sleeping. When he arrives, he covers Harry's mouth with one of his hands, and with the other he sinks two of his fingers into Harry's eyeballs and pulls out. breaks his nasal septum and part of his skull, causing Harry to die instantly. Then he begins to wipe the blood off his glove with one of the curtains in the room, and at that moment the nurse arrives and asks him accusingly, “What are you doing here?” The man dressed in black does not respond or gesture, and simply decides to walk out of the room.

The nurse then screams, waking up Dr. Daniel, who runs to see what is happening and sees in the distance the man in black coming out of one of the doors, and the nurse who is in the middle of that hallway babbling "A man... a man ends up... a man..."

Daniel continues running, chasing this man in black, and when he reaches the parking lot He sees how the man gets into his vehicle, pours gasoline on himself, and uses a lighter to set himself on fire, which also causes the vehicle he is sitting in to explode.

Later the police arrive to investigate what happened, and Daniel calls his ex-wife to let her know that he will not be able to go look for the children, which causes an argument between them even though he tries to explain to her that he has to stay because two people have died in the hospital and it was not by accident. When Daniel hangs up the phone, he sees that next to the device is the pumpkin mask that Harry refused to let go.

In the morning, on Sunday the 24th, a young woman arrives at the hospital to recognize Harry's body. This young woman is Ellie Grimbridge, her daughter, who will then begin to investigate what happened together with Dr. Daniel and will also serve to create the immediate romance with the protagonist, so unnecessary but fashionable at that time, although in this case it is even more forced than usual if we consider that Daniel is not a heartthrob and is at least twice as old as Ellie. I suppose the fact that he is a doctor has made him irresistible to the young woman.

Halloween III was the first and only film in the saga that respected Carpenter and Hill's original idea about this franchise. They both decided that after the second part the story of Michel Myers would be finished, and they would turn halloween in an annual series of films in which each one told a story independent of the others, with different actors, other settings, set in different times, all based on legends about Samhain, the Celtic festival that gave rise to the celebration of Halloween. They wanted to make films dedicated to this holiday, and Halloween III It perfectly meets that premise.

Although this film generated profits, they were not in the same amount as the first two parts, and in addition, both popular and professional critics were generally very negative, with the majority complaining that they had gone to see Halloween III waiting to see Michael Myers again and in the end not only did they not see him but the film had nothing to do with his story. It is an absurd criticism, since the subtitle of this film is “The Season of the Witches” (in Spain it was known as Halloween III: The Day of the Witch) and the advertising phrase was “The Night Nobody Came Home”, in addition to the fact that in the trailers both in theaters and on TV nothing that has to do with Myers was shown or hinted at, so the confusion can only be understood if we take into account that Myers had very quickly become an icon and had become so strongly associated with the name of the franchise that people were going to see this third part because it was a movie about the killer with the mask and not because of the name of the saga itself.

Fue por este “fracaso” comercial y de crítica que se decidió dar por acabada la idea de hacer películas distintas cada año, y sólo se retomó la franquicia 6 años más tarde recuperando a Michael Myers y prostituyendo su historia cada vez más, como se hizo con otras sagas de asesinos famosos como Friday the 13th (Friday the 13th) either A Nightmare on Elm Street (Nightmare). Algunas personas a día de hoy siguen quejándose de que esta tercera parte no tiene nada que ver con la historia de las demás, sin tener en cuenta que “las demás”, con excepción de las dos primeras, son obviamente posteriores a esta. Otros en cambio la consideran como el camino correcto que esta saga debió haber seguido, y se lamentan por las secuelas que se fueron produciendo luego metiendo a Myers en todas ellas hasta el cansancio.

En todo caso, Halloween III es una película infravalorada por la crítica. Y coincido en que las actuaciones son terribles, pero la historia en sí, si bien no la hace la mejor de la saga sí la convierte en una buena película con temática de Halloween. En esta película se trata el tema del bombardeo publicitario, de las grandes corporaciones a la que no les importa causar daños a la sociedad, y hasta se matan niños, un tema bastante tabú para el cine y más aún teniendo en cuenta que se filmó en 1982. La violencia y las escenas gore en esta película son menos en comparación con la anterior, pero están bien realizadas y una en particular, la muerte de una mujer por culpa de una especie de rayo láser que le pega en la boca, ha causado que más de uno que la vio en cines en esa época no haya podido dormir bien esa noche.

Halloween III es una digna película de la franquicia, la visión original de lo que sus creadores querían hacer con esta saga, y tiene una historia entretenida y un poco siniestra. Vale la pena darle un visionado, especialmente si es 31 de Octubre y te gusta el Halloween.

Some curious facts:

• Las máscaras de Silver Shamrock fueron vendidas como merchandising de esta película y han tenido bastante éxito. A día de hoy se puede conseguir una reedición de las máscaras por parte de la compañía original que se llama Don Post Studios y que fue lanzada en 2012, a precios bastante altos.
• Si esta película hubiese resultado un éxito, Halloween IV hubiera sido una historia de fantasmas.
• La gasolinera que vemos casi al principio de la película es la misma que aparece en otra película de Carpenter, llama The Fog (La niebla).
• El guión original de esta película fue escrito por Nigel Kneale. Luego éste se quejó diciendo que el productor Dino de Laurentis no había entendido su historia y porque decidieron modificarla, así que solicitó que no se lo nombre a él como escritor. Lo cierto es que quien modificó el guión fue Carpenter, a quien tampoco se le da crédito en la película por esto, y luego también se metió el propio director Tommy Lee Wallace a modificar cosas para agregar más escenas gore y simplificar la historia. Es Wallace finalmente el único que sale acreditado en la película como guionista.