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Post by dem bones on Jul 17, 2019 23:11:59 GMT
Jack Martin [Dennis Etchison] - Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Star, 1983: originally Jove, 1982) Blurb: DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE TONIGHT?
The streets are quiet. Dead quiet as the shadows lengthen and night falls. It's Halloween.
Blood-chilling screams pierce the air. Grinning skulls and grotesque shapes lurk in the gathering darkness. It‘s Halloween.
The streets are filling with small cloaked figures. They’re just kids, right? The doorbell rings and your flesh creeps. But it’s - all in fun, isn't it?
No. This Halloween is different.
It’s the last one. "This Halloween seemed more oppressive and commercial than ever ...." And for that we can blame Silver Shamrock novelties with their smash hit scary masks - witch, death's head, jack o'lantern- and a relentless countdown-to-doomsday jingle advertising same. Parents despair, but masks and chant are a massive hit with little kids. As the TV blasts out the anthem for the millionth time today, Nurse Agnes voices her disapproval to Dr. Dan Challis. "These masks .... they've gone too far this year - too realistic." Dr. Challis. Super-stressed, hard drinking between double shifts as he struggles to adapt to terminal separation from wife Linda and children, Bella, nine, Willie, seven. Challis only gets to see the kids twice a month and, overworked as ever, has just realised that he's due to call over this evening. Challis stops at the all night store to buy presents, but the masks he chooses are cheapskate rubbish compared to the top notch Silver Shamrock originals Mom charged to his credit card. Such is the hostility between himself and Linda that Challis is relieved when Agnes pages him to return to Sierra Mesa General where they've an emergency case to deal with. A ragged, skinny man collapsed raving in the street. He was clutching one of the ghastly Halloween masks at the time. The patient, a Mr. Grimbridge, briefly revives when the Silver Shamrock commercial plays on the ward TV. "They're ... going to .... kill us! All of us!," he wails, before slipping back into catatonia. That same night Grimbridge is mutilated in bed by a man in grey who promptly douses himself in petrol, flicks his Bic .... Ellie, daughter of the murdered man, tracks Challis to his local bar. She confides in the inebriated doctor that her father, a business trader, wasn't out of his mind until three weeks ago, when he visited the Silver Shamrock factory to collect a consignment of their wretched masks. "If Papa went there, then maybe they know something I need to know." Ellie is driving out there tonight. Challis volunteers to accompany her .... Etchison's Videodrome and The Fog novelisation were slog too far for me, his style didn't suit, but I'm liking this. For all the then modern trappings, it has an almost 'fifties feel to it, or so it seems to me. P.86 of approx 220. Gonna stick with it.
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Post by mattofthespurs on Jul 20, 2019 6:30:16 GMT
' 5 more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 5 more days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock.'
Loved this movie. Mind you I love anything with Tom Atkins in it.
I enjoyed this book too although, unlike you Dem, I preferred 'The Fog' novelisation.
Back in the day, in 1979/1980, when I was just a lad of 10 years old (going on 11) these books were the only I could 'see' these movies. Coupled with stills of the films from the likes of Fangoria they were a pretty good way of experiencing the movie. Well, until I could persuade my Mum and Dad to rent them from the video shop (which they always did).
The only novelisation I struggled with at the relatively early age was 'Alien' by Dean Foster. Luckily a friend of mine had the photobook so I did not have to wade through it after getting stuck, several times, never getting further than page 10.
Good times.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 20, 2019 14:35:41 GMT
' 5 more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 5 more days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock.' Loved this movie. Mind you I love anything with Tom Atkins in it. I enjoyed this book too although, unlike you Dem, I preferred 'The Fog' novelisation. Back in the day, in 1979/1980, when I was just a lad of 10 years old (going on 11) these books were the only I could 'see' these movies. Coupled with stills of the films from the likes of Fangoria they were a pretty good way of experiencing the movie. Well, until I could persuade my Mum and Dad to rent them from the video shop (which they always did). The only novelisation I struggled with at the relatively early age was 'Alien' by Dean Foster. Luckily a friend of mine had the photobook so I did not have to wade through it after getting stuck, several times, never getting further than page 10. Good times. Probably should schedule a rematch with The Fog and Videodrome novelisations. I'm liking Halloween III well enough. One thing that strikes me is that in 1982 surveillance camera's were still something of a novelty, albeit of a sinister kind. "There was a closed-circuit TV camera mounted in the corner above Raul. It panned the register area slowly, making a potential arrest record out of everyone and everything ..." The bride of dem has, or had, a copy of that Alien photobook ... Ellie the inscrutable and Dr. Challis drive out to the Silver Shamrock plant in Santa Mira, book a motel room as 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Their host, Rafferty, a maddening stage Dubliner, so he is, so he is, also tends the neighbouring gas station. Rafferty credits the immaculate Mr. Cochran with saving the town. As does Buddy Kupfer. Buddy and family are staying at the Motel as Mr. Cochran's special guests on account of Buddy's services to Silver Shamrock - he's this Halloween's Silver Shamrock champion salesman. In recognition of this achievement, the Kupfer's are treated to a guided tour of the factory by none other than Mr. Cochran. Also booked in, Marge Guttman, small businesswoman, come to find out why the delay with her consignment of Halloween masks. Marge suspects the factory are rushing out defective goods in the stampede to capitalise on the big day. She's also curious as to why they should have microchips moulded into the fabric, and shows Challis a damaged mask whose small transistor has come loose from the fabric. Challis shares a bottle of Wild Turkey with a ragged panhandler, the one person from these parts Cochran has been unable to buy. The grizzled old timer despises the mask mogul for ruining the town. The Kupfers invite Ellie and Challis to tag along on their guided tour of the Silver Shamrock plant. Cochran isn't best pleased at having Ellie gatecrash the event - he knows she's snooping around for evidence of foul play in connection with her father's death - but suffers the inconvenience with a sickly smile. It's not as if she can go poking around where she shouldn't when his crack security team have her in their sights. Even so, she is just in time to catch a glimpse of her dead dad's missing station-wagon inside a hangar-like garage before the grey-suited guards usher her away. Cochran knows he'll have to fix her ... Marge evidently repaired the transistor as, the next time Challis sets eyes on her she is sprawled on the floor, skull crushed, insects pouring from her mouth. Despite Cochran's insistence that Rafferty call an ambulance, the corpse is loaded onto a van by silent men in identical ill-fitting white coats and driven off to the factory. Rafferty assures Challis there's nothing to worry about. "A small accident. The lady will be given the best of care, I can assure you of that." As the van door opened to admit the stricken saleswoman, Challis caught sight of a second, headless corpse. He'd know that ragged suit anywhere. His drinking buddy of the previous evening. Mr. Cochran sure has a sick sense of humour. [to be continued ....] |
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Post by dem bones on Jul 22, 2019 19:06:01 GMT
"Yes, the children! A plague on them. Now think of that - in fifty million homes!"
In the wake of Ellie's abduction by Cochran's grey-suits, Dr. Challis phones former home, beseeching Linda to destroy the kids' Silver Shamrock masks. His ex-wife accuses him of drunken spite - he can't bear it that they way prefer the masks she bought them to his own cheapskate offering. Challis finally loses his rag with her which does nothing to calm the situation. Unless he can pull off a miracle, his children are doomed as everyone else's.
Challis returns to Santa Mira, somehow evading the sensors and surveillance camera's to access the plant. Cochran is waiting for him regardless. His equilibrium restored now the meddling Ellie is under lock and key the big day almost with us, the silver haired smoothy is happy to spill all. Yes, as Challis suspected, Silver Shamrock is entirely staffed by androids. The best-selling masks are not only micro-chipped, but each contains a fragment from Stonehenge. Cochran is mystified. Why go to all this expense and trouble? What is it all in aid of? It's Cochran's insane belief that the countrywide sacrifice of America's children will appease the Pagan Gods and return the world to a golden age of witchcraft. After all, It's not like Challis will escape, blow up the factory, persuade everyone in America to turn off their TV's and save the World (trans: USA)?
The Kupfer family are spectacularly terminated when Buddy jnr's mask melts around his head. As the kid spasms on the floor, spiders and snakes emerge from his wrecked throat to do in salesman of the year and spouse. Kupfer senior dies cursing his idol.
Ellie, drugged and regressed to infancy, is hooded with a witch mask. Challis, bound to a chair, is forced into the deaths-head's equivalent and propped facing a TV screen as the maddening TV commercial informs the children of America. "NO MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN! TONIGHT'S THE BIG NIGHT, KIDS! WATCH THE HORRATHON WITH YOUR SILVER SHAMROCK MASKS! AND BE IN FRONT OF YOUR TELEVISION SET AT NINE O'CLOCK NO MATTER WHAT!"
It's disappointing, if inevitable, that Halloween III: Season of the Witch builds to a generic Hollywood climax, though, as with the movie, a downer epilogue puts right much of the damage.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 22, 2019 19:51:35 GMT
I always wondered that they didn't made a tv franchise of Halloween. Friday 13th got one, Nightmare on Elm Street got one. Poltergeist got one.
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