8 More Days To Halloween: Coming To Terms With Season Of The Witch

As we approach All Hallows Eve I’m struck by the annual feeling that Halloween: Season Of The Witch is the most “Halloweenish” of the whole series. It always bothered me on one level at least – it’s a holdover from the ‘robot duplicate takeover’ plots from the 70’s that by the early 80’s was mostly consigned to cheesy TV movies and shows. But when I was a kid, I still accepted it as a new entry.

I didn’t even wonder where Michael Myers was – the 1982 entry continued the premise of the holiday which was as much of a character as Myers himself if you think the way I think. As well, I think one of the cool things about being a kid your fertile imaginative mind tends to fill the holes that require adults to take a leap of faith to cross. So I just assumed this movie was about the factory that made Michael’s mask and therefore why he was evil. Even in my later decidedly less-tender teenage years I was mentally linking up the plot with the cult in Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers – I think it’s a given that Dr. Wynn was based on Conal Cochran.

And now that I’m an adult? I dream of the genius that could result in taking those early Myers-like chase-scenes in the movie and trimming around the whole conspiracy plot to recut the movie into a slasher-centric short that better falls next to the first two.

“Bad Halloween sequel, good standalone movie” seems to be the comment that bridges fans and detractors of Season Of The Witch. For me it’s the reverse sentiment – as a standalone movie the bad taste of Futureworld and the like is a perma-fixture in my moviegoing mouth, and gee wouldn’t that pin-eyed devil (only seen on the poster) have been the scariest shit ever? But as a Halloween sequel, it  passes muster – one of the few in the franchise that actually feels like circa late October.