Violence/Gore: This installment ratchets up the gore and the level of viciousness as well, with both adults and children stricken with electronically-enhanced magic and turned into exploding bags of flesh filled with bugs and snakes and all sorts of creepy crawlies. Eww! There’s also a drill to the temple and other assorted mayhem, including a few androids leaking yellow ichor, but nothing beats that early scene of Ellie’s father having his skull crushed. Classic.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a surprisingly chaste sex scene between buxom Stacy Nelkin and the supremely unappealing Tom Atkins, who nevertheless gets to put his beefy hands all over her in a sequence that will give you more chills than any horrific Halloween trick that Cochran cooks up.

Best Line: “Oh and…happy Halloween.” (Jolly old Conal Cochran wishing Dr. BLAH a happy holiday before proceeding to exterminate children across America)

Score:

Wait a minute! Where’s Dr. Loomis? Where’s Laurie? No MICHAEL MYERS?! What the f***!

Ah, the distaff entry in the series. This one has suffered so much over the years, and I admit that even I - Michael Myers fan that I am - have savaged this film in the past for committing the heinous crime of carrying the HALLOWEEN title and numbering system but leaving out the beloved horror icon himself. But with age comes maturity, and I can now evaluate this for what it is - an attempt to tell a completely self-contained Halloween-themed tale while taking the series into anthology territory. It didn’t work, but it was an admirable effort. And it’s actually a damned nifty little chiller with a creepy Carpenter electronic score and a simply superb hammy turn by Dan O’Herlihy as the evil warlock, Conal Cochran. At times, Cochran is so giddy and gleeful at the prospect of murdering millions of children that you just can’t help but root for the guy (well, OK, maybe not), and that’s largely due to O’Herlihy’s delightful performance.

The petite but chest-heavy Ellie Grimbridge, played by Stacy Nelkin, teams up with troubled alcoholic physician Dr. Dan Challis, as played by the very meaty block of wood named Tom Atkins, to investigate the disappearance of her father. There’s a peculiar little toy factory called Silver Shamrock that’s churning out the coolest masks this Halloween, and every kid in America wants one. So why do the strangely emotionless minions of Silver Shamrock founder Conal Cochran seem so hellbent on murdering anyone who tries to uncover the secret behind their special Halloween promotion? And why does a kindly Irishman like Cochran have a full-size piece of Stonehenge circle sitting in a warehouse in his company town of Santa Mira (the name being a nice in-joke reference to the classic ’50s paranoid sci-fi tale, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS)? What demonic fusion of modern electronics and ancient Druidic rites will enable Cochran to resurrect the “true meaning” of Halloween and have a last laugh on the giggling trick-or-treating children of this great land of ours? Ooh, that Cochran! He’s one nasty warlock!

As long as you’re willing to forget that this is part of a series at all, which it really isn’t, then you can enjoy SEASON OF THE WITCH on its own terms. It’s a great homage to some UK-style horrorfests of the sort you might see on an old DOCTOR WHO (which regularly featured small towns controlled by ancient evil back in the 1970s, as did much of British fantasy television), not least because it was actually written by QUATERMASS creator Nigel Kneale, who had his name removed from the project when he realized that the finished film would be too in-your-face with the grue. It also makes good use of Carpenter’s repertory group, musical skills, and talent for staging suspenseful sequences capped by sickening, bloody deaths.

Everything leads up to a surprisingly Bondian final confrontation in Cochran’s factory, and while the warlock’s grand plan for revenge against the modern world crumbles around him, Challis escapes to discover that sometimes saving the world isn’t as easy as the movie heroes make it seem. But then again, he has only three networks to call in the final tense sequence as he struggles to get the deadly Silver Shamrock commercials off the air. Just imagine if Cochran had access to cable or the Internet. And although Carpenter has often been quoted as listing THE THING, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS as his three “End of the World” movies, the conclusion of this dark fairy tale comes damn close to apocalypse itself. Can you imagine the clean-up on November 1st? Ugh. Now let’s all sing along: “One more day to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! One more day to Halloween, Silver Shamrock!” Watch the magic pumpkin…watch…

DVD Extras: Nothing. Shame.

ATB