Wednesday Horror: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Film: Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan laptop.

When Halloween III: Season of the Witch (hereafter referred to just as Halloween III) was released in 1982, it was a huge disappointment. That’s kind of a shame, because it really is a cool idea. John Carpenter’s original plan was to create a new Halloween movie every year telling a completely different non-Michael Myers horror story. The fans of the original two films weren’t having it, though, making this a box office disappointment and forcing the return of the Shatner mask in subsequent movies.

In that sense, Halloween III was perhaps a little ahead of its time, or perhaps simply the wrong idea that the wrong time. Creating something like an extended anthology that would be a series of unrelated films under the same umbrella name is a pretty great idea. It’s a shame that this underperformed so much and the basic idea had to be scrapped.

Ten Days of Terror!: It (1990)

Films: It (1990) (Stephen King’s It)
Format: DVD from Morris Area Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

There was a time in my life when I read a lot of Stephen King. There were plenty of his books that I didn’t read, but I read probably 80% of his books at one point. There are still some of his books that I think are good, a few that are genuinely great. It (sometimes called Stephen King’s It) is one of his best stories. It’s not a terrible shock that within a few years of its publication that it was optioned for a movie. However, since the book is something like 1200 pages long, “movie” doesn’t quite cut it. Instead, it was created as a television mini-series. That’s good because it means that the huge story is given a little more space. It’s bad, because that means that at best it will be rated PG-13 (1990 television, after all), and a lot of the really nasty stuff from the book will be left out.

Actually, that’s exactly the case here. It keeps the basic story of the book and keeps the really important parts of it, but loses a large amount of the detail that makes the book so good. Fortunately, the story is strong enough that a lot of what needs to be kept here is still here. Some of the more interesting episodes of the book have been left out, but mainly what we lose is a great deal of the detail in the various characters. There are a few changes as well—surface changes that aren’t really that upsetting.