Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch centers on a warlock using cursed masks to create a mass sacrifice, but how do they actually kill victims? Halloween 3 gets its title from the masks produced by Silver Shamrock, which are dubbed “the Halloween 3” by the toy company. The movie itself was an effort by franchise producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill to move the series to an anthology format. The duo felt the Michael Myers storyline ran its course with Halloween 2, which is why The Shape and his nemesis Dr. Loomis were thoroughly blown up by the end of that sequel.
Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch finds a doctor teaming up with the daughter of one of his patients, who was murdered under bizarre circumstances. The only clue they have is that he was clutching a Halloween mask produced by Silver Shamrock – who may have made Michael’s mask – and they soon uncover a dark conspiracy. Halloween 3 is considered one of the best entries in the series now, but due to poor marketing during its initial release, audiences were left angred by the lack of Michael or connection to the first two outings.
Instead, director Tommy Lee Wallace – working from a script by an uncredited Nigel Kneale – made more of a paranoid thriller that used Halloween itself as a springboard. Halloween 3’s bad reception killed the anthology plan but still resulted in one of the most unique horror movies of its era. Halloween 3’s masks include a pumpkin, a witch and a skeleton, and Conal Cochran – the movie’s villain who is revealed to be the titular witch – plans to use the masks to create a mass child sacrifice during Halloween night. How they actually work isn’t explored in much detail, however.
Early on, its established Halloween 3’s masks come with a large Silver Shamrock button which have microchips inside of them. Inside each chip is a tiny piece of Stonehenge, which Cochran has stolen and shipped to his factory. These fragments contain a special power and the microchip itself is activated via a special signal broadcast during the maddingly catchy Silver Shamrock advert. Once activated, the Halloween 3 masks invoke a spell that causes the victims’ heads to decay and unleash venomous snakes and bugs, so in addition to killing the wearer, the unleashed bugs also kill those unlikely enough to be nearby.
Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch’s plot is somewhat convoluted and silly, but the movie makes these death sequences gory and disturbing. The sequel was based on the idea of combining witchcraft with (then) modern technology, and it can’t be denied Cochran’s sacrifice plan isn’t ambitious, and Halloween 3’s ending is ambiguous about how it turned out. The Halloween 3 masks have since become iconic and appeared in both Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills as prominent easter eggs.
