‘It will be morning soon. Halloween morning…’
A horror sequel is not traditionally a place to take risks. Any attempt to trade the killer we know and love with a new broom always ends in disaster (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning being notable examples. But to move away from every element of a beloved franchise all together? Surely such a thing would be madness?
When a man is killed under mysterious circumstances, Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins), the doctor who treated the deceased, and Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin), the man’s daughter, join forces to investigate a nearby toy factory and it’s enigmatic owner Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy). You’ll notice that a certain Michael Myers is not mentioned here at all…
…And nor should he be. Because, inexplicably, franchise creators John Carpenter and Debra Hill (plus writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace) decided to jettison Myers and Haddonfield all together and move on to to an anthology format. The idea being that a different, unconnected story would be released every year under the Halloween banner. Naturally, what followed was a huge critical and commercial failure, hated by the fans of the original two movies, that succeeded in burying the franchise, give or take a few ropey sequels, for two decades.
In recent years however, there has been something of a reappraisal for Season of the Witch. Indeed, the story is darkly sinister, the cast do a sterling job in lieu of any kind of acceptable script (with O’Herlihy and horror icon Atkins particularly excelling as sparring partners), and the many death scenes are actually just as gruesome as anything the other films in this franchise have churned out over the years. The issue is that this a Halloween movie and it doesn’t feature Michael Myers. At all. And nobody wants that. Absolutely nobody. Had Season of the Witch been released as an independent project it’d probably be looked back on with fondness now rather than disdain. Seriously… what were they thinking?
And so, with that, the traditional Halloween viewing of a Halloween movie, we come to the end of the second annual 31 Days of Night project. We laughed. We cried. We cringed at shadows forming outside of our bedroom windows. Thanks everyone for reading and I’ll see you again for round three next year. Unless Michael, Jason or Freddy get you in the meantime…