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
...

My Rating: B+

Halloween II (1981) Novelization (By Jack Martin) - Review

Based On: Halloween II (1981) Film - Sequel to Halloween (1978)
Screenplay: John Carpenter & Debra Hill
Author: Jack Martin (Dennis Etchison)
Release Date: November 1st, 1981
Pages: 256
My Rating: A-

                                                                     

"It was that time of year when the days are short and the shadows are long, when the earth tilts still further on its axis and the seasons hang suspended between autumn and winter."
                                                             - Opening line of prologue.

From the opening, Dennis Etchison thrusts the reader ino the world of Halloween (AKA Samhain). The author excels at illustrating the pageantry and atmosphere of that dark, murderous night in Haddonfield in 1978.

For the most part, the novel adheres closely to the plot and dialogue of the film, but tune-in as I expound on the additional info and scenes that were crammed inside this adaptation to intensify the mayhem.

Just like in the film, a brief recap of the ending to Halloween is included early on. After firing six bullets into the Shape,  Loomis discovers he has fled the scene, back into the dark streets of Haddonfield.

Throughout the book, Etchison refers to Michael Myers' as The Shape. We never get to hear his thoughts, but he's extremely creepy and perpetually lurking in the darkest shadows of most every scene. In fact, there isn't much introspection into any of the characters' thoughts, save for the traumatic episodes that jolt Laurie throughout.

The death scenes are painted graphically with a macabre, creative hand. You can even argue that more blood saturates the pages of this haunting tome than the first two films combined. But we must remember that the original film features only a modicum of gore in Its death scenes. Each kill is elaborately described to crave gore-fiends, and you can tell Etchison had fun writing them.

By far, the most riveting scenes involve a panicky Dr. Loomis roaming the bleak streets amid hideous glowing Jack-'o-Lanterns. Trick-r-Treaters and other lively denizens of Haddonfield flesh-out the authenticity of the holiday, as they trek the iridescent lawns blanketed by candy wrappers and withered leaves.

The longest additional scene has a female reporter sent on assignment to Haddonfield to cover the murders and try and get an interview with Laurie Strode. On her way to Haddonfield Hospital, she fell into a series of mishaps--pulled over by the cops, flat-tire incident, and sexually harrassed by a hick on the side of the road. After the series of ill-fickled fortune, she incurs her own death by lifting up a sheet in her trunk. Myers slashed her to death before hijacking her car to drive the rest of the way to the hospital. Logically, this scene doesn't make much sense and is ultimately extraneous to the story, so i can see why it was expunged from the film. The woman came from rather far away and Myers was already stalking between bare shrubs and moldering pumpkins in Haddonfield

Personally, I think the set of hospital characters in the story are bovine and weak. By creating a suspensful and dark tone in the hospital, Etchison still keeps the reader engrossed. Unfortunately, a gigantic chunk of the script takes place there, neglecting Loomis' hunt while doing so. The Bud character is made even more obnoxious and oafish in the book.

Early on in a flashback, a few paragraphs are dedicated to a trio of boys--Richie, Keith, and Lonnie--partaking in pranks late into the night. While Loomis is skulking in the bushes, Lonnie tries to break into the old Myers house. Loomis scares the boys away. Loomis then thought about Halloween and why Michael chose this night. He knew the bloodlust addiction of Myers was that of an ancient pagan curse wreaked upon his soul epochs ago in the age of Celtic Druids and reverence for nature. Loomis is confident he can thwart 'The Lord of Samhain' because his vessel is that of a mortal human. He even quotes a Shakespearean phrase: 'If you cut him, does he not bleed?' -- while fingering the cold metal of his pistol. Also, he claims Michael's father dwells in Hell, and vows to repress The Shape's terror spree.

The ONLY enthralling shred of Laurie Strode's inner misery occured about 85% of the way through the book. Emotionally, Laurie's mind ventures way back to a time when she was four years old. While the Strode's babysat her, her parents had visited Michael that day.

 I don't know if this is official canon but that was the day the Myers parents died in the Car crash. Laurie theorizes Michael influenced the events of that tragedy; Her logic being that Mr. Myers was a superb driver.

How she was qualified to judge a person's driving skills at the age of four is incomprehensible. Anyway, she slips in and out of an illusory realm of trauma, which was engendered by medication administered by the Hospital.

As for the Finale, there came an incredible Shocker!!!

Ignited by airborne Chemicals and an Efflivium release triggered by the inaccurate bullet of Laurie's shot lodging into the pipes,  Loomis torches himself and Myers in a double pyre, mirroring the ancient fire sacrifices of Samhains long ago.

Myers collapses after being wrapped in a wave of orange flames.

In the final scene, One of the bodies was carted out and described as being "Burnt to a french fry." The other body was said to have been "Blown to Kingdom Come."  Furthermore, not a single body fragment was found of the second victim. It isn't established as to which one is which.


In conclusion, I'll touch on the prose of the Novelist: Etchison's adeptness with obscure metaphors and complex analogies enriches the simplicity of the film. After rewatching the film, the story seemed to have flown by without elaborating on the storyline. Because the film was released in the heart of the slasher boom of 1981, a strong emphasis was placed on the body count to satisfy newborn voracious slasher fans. Also, I hail Etchison for his innate skill of dropping in the perfect adjective when necessary.

P.S. Hands down, the highlight of the book was the fiery death of Ben Tramer. The prose in that scene was so potent, you could feel the blaze of the deadly conflagration.


Coming Soon: Halloween 3: Season of The Witch (Novelization)