Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

I distinctly remember being in Grade 8 when the film came out, and for four major reasons: 1) The excellent TV commercial, with John Carpenter's spooky music and the spider crawling out of the mouth of the mask; 2) The decent book adaptation written for young adults, that I read at the time, and thoroughly enjoyed; 3) Karen Carpenter died of a heart attack from anorexia nervosa; and 4) Major songs on the radio around that time were 'Centerfold' by The J. Geils Band and 'Bette Davis Eyes' by Kim Carnes. Though I had not yet seen the previous two films and wasn't old enough (the R-rating, and my parents were somewhat strict about that kind of thing), I really wanted to see it, but over the years, I never really got around to it, until recently I found used the entire 'Halloween' franchise on a 10-blu ray pack, and no longer have any sort of excuse, really.
I loved Wallace's work in 'Stephen King's It' (except for the last half-hour, but that's probably the book's fault and not the director's) and I thought his 'Vampires: Los Muertos' was rather underrated, so an added attraction for me was to watch his directorial debut here. He impressed me. I enjoyed the film and all of the extras on its blu ray very much. If you like horror films at all, you should watch this.
Protagonists Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin are very good here, and I liked Dan O'Herlihy even better than when I had previously seen him in 'The Virgin Queen', 'Imitation of Life', 'The Cabinet of Caligari', 'Good Against Evil' and the first two 'RoboCop' films, and, as always, Dean Cundey provides excellent cinematographical work and the soundtrack by Carpenter and Alan Hogarth is dependably solid. Don't bother with the negative reviews that came out at the time the film was released: Most people were upset that the film didn't have Michael Myers in it, and didn't give it a chance. Find out for yourself--in my humble opinion, it's worth both purchasing and at least a rewatch.

Wait, what? Halloween? I guess Carpenter had the grandiose idea of expanding the franchise to one movie released around Halloween that was kind of about Halloween...the holiday not the movies.
Mike did die in Halloween II. It was a good idea, one year, one horror movie, all under the same anthology franchise.
Except the audience, after two stellar slasher films wanted Mike, so best laid plans of mice and men and all that.
What we got instead of Mike was a movie that would have been a halfway decent stand alone end of the 70s horror film, one that was atmospheric, moody, and though it was too flawed to be big, it would have been a fair enough start to the franchise...it would have made a bit of money for the seasonal scare fair.
Except....it was called "Halloween III" and all the publicity in the world wouldn't have stopped the public from expecting Mike.
So, "robbed" would be the best phrase to describe how one feels whilst watching this film.
Even now after knowing what it was intended to be...still feel a little robbed. And I am a fan of anthology series, I feel it lets writers and directors tell unique little stories that wouldn't otherwise be made.
Still, Mike was a slasher and after Fred and Jason, you want to see him keep coming back until you vomit.