Halloween III: Season of The Witch [1984] - Novelization - Review

Based on: Halloween 3: Season of The Witch (1982)
Genre: Horror_Sci-Fi_Witchcraft_Halloween

The night no one came to the theater.



Backcover Plot: 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.

Throughout the novelization, an exorbitant amount of ink is spent in the malaised mind of Dr. Challis. In the beginning, he constantly stresses over his alcoholism, the turbulence of his divorce, and the disconnection he has with his kids. Moreover, the unremitting hype for Halloween this year has him scorning the world everytime that irking jingle rang. No need to get into detail, but the book needlessly expands upon his misfortune to the point of frustration. It almost felt like I was the one paying his child support.

 

It seems as though Challis constanly went over his misery on a daily basis, counting his troubles and woes.  After getting called into the hospital, I was amazed he didn't blow off his head before chapter 3.

 

One additional scene has him shopping for the masks that he eventually gives to his kids; where as in the film, he just shows up and gifts his kids with silver-shamrock knockoff masks, only to have them shun them in favor of the ever popular silver-shamrock ones.

Now that i've read the novelization, I notice the undertone of Challis' aversion to children mirroring that of Conal Cochran. And I only needed Dennis Etchison to hammer it in my head for a series of paragraphs to accomplish this.



'Get me childproof everything.'

Once again, Etchison delivers a savory death-by-fire scene.  I'm, of course, referring to the scene where an android torches himself in the hospital parking lot. It's as though Etchison was born to describe fire and light. NASA needs to attach this guy to a rocket and have him prose the cosmos on a looping voyage. Frankly, It would be much better than the blurry images they provide.

Excerpt Time: "Challis rocked back and shielded his face as the entire car exploded and an enormous mushroom cloud erupted into the night sky. A fire ball rolled heavenward, orange at the center and then deep red, veined with black smoke, seering trees and lighting up the night with the terrible beauty of an unearthly glow." - Jack Martin's Android death scene in parking lot.

One thing Etchison Nails is the jolly, daft attitude of the Kupfer family. Ostensibly, Challis is affable to the bunch. Inside, their annoyance scrapes at the last remaining nerves the Man's got.

After arriving in Santa Mira, Challis' suspicions are on high alert from the start. A lot of small extra info is revealed about the town; a number of businesses are talked about, and how Cochran supports them all. It appears as though Cochran led a massive Irish Exodus to the town, forcing all the locals out of employment and involvement. 

For the last two acts of the story, much of the dialogue is additional or altered. By that, i mean it's additional drivel spoken by the silly clowns that have embarked at ground zero for samhain sacrfices on halloween.

The most noticeable omission from the film was the absence of the autopsy scene in which Challis phones the female doctor in regards to the results. Remember, She was then executed by an android? Yeah, that was expurgated entirey and replaced with a frantic phone call by Challis to his surly ex-wife, warning her of the dangers of the Silver Shamrock masks. She blows him off curtly, calling him a drunk, jealous fool. She was only half right in her claim, though.

Upon busting into the toy factory, Challis stumbles into Cochran's mancave; a tinkerer's paradise as it's described.

Instead of getting background narrative on Cochran, they make him more garrulous in the final act.

In comparison to the nefarious performance of Dan O'Herlihy, this approach diminishes his evil presence. Like i stated before, we're only viewing the story from one perspective--Challis'.

At one point he expresses how his ancient ancestors (Irish Celts) would be astonished by the technical progress he and his team of docile androids have accomplished. He admits they lacked the ability to harness their power.

In Cochran's epic speech revealing his intentions and motives, Cochran has several additional lines, although I think it came off much scarier in the film. He gets pretty brash when he maligns humans and the christian religion. When Challis inquires about which Pagan God Cochran worships, he even directly profanes Jesus!

So much of the dialogue is altered (slightly) throughout his polemic on the blasphemy of the contemporary Halloween. Also, he mocks mankind's inability to understand the rudimentary workings of their own anatomy.

Here's a good one: When Challis asks him why he's targeting the children, Cochran tells him it's because they are less defiant, wretched, and come out of the dirtiest part of women

Finally, a gray suit is present, three masks in hand, for Cochran to choose a skull mask.

Jumping to the finale, Challis and Ellie escape the exploding factory just in time. Challis cogitates on the magnitude of the situation, knowing that the ancient evil they had just destroyed was only one manifestation of evil. Knowing that Evil will endure forever in many forms for many Halloweens to come.

Overall, I was disappointed with the narrow-sighted narration of the novel. It seems as though Etchison was instructed by John Carpenter to not expand upon Cochran's origins or background. Due to its pagan subject matter, Halloween III: SOTW happens to be one of my favorite horror films of all-time. In the end, the film is far superior to the novelization.

Screenplay: Tommy Lee Wallace (Nigel Kneal & John Carpenter)
Author: Jack Martin (AKA Dennis Etchison)
Release Date: October 1st, 1984
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My Rating: B+