Halloween 3 - Season of the Witch

Dr Challis & Ellie Grimbridge stumble onto a series of murders when her father (who sells Halloween novelties) is killed in his hospital bed. This leads our heroes to a small predominately Irish community watched over by cameras & curfews.

Here they uncover the truth behind the 'Silver Shamrock' Halloween masks and the owner Conal Cochran, whose evil plan is to return the festival of the druids 'Sam Hain' to the night when the hills ran red with the blood of children !

OK, I'll admit this was one of the main reasons I bought a dvd player, to finally see every inch of this Panavision fright fest! The main idea behind 'H3' was for John Carpenter & Debra Hill to produce a standalone Myers-less movie every Halloween, unfortunately It's North American box office failure nixed their brave plans.

Despite a critical bashing upon the original US & UK release in '83, I loved seeing Tom Atkins strut his stuff in any town USA to the comforting beats of Carpenter's minimal score. But to this day I'm in the minority liking this radical departure from the Halloween series as much as I do. It's a mix of horror & science fiction with the notable absence of slasher superman Michael Myers, which was a relief after the gorebore 'Halloween 2'.

The UK theatrical release was BBFC stamped with the relatively new 15 certificate (remember the previous AA cert?) without cuts from the R rated print. But killjoys 'Thorn EMI', paranoid about the video nasties outbreak decided to pre-cut H3's more intense moments for it's tape release (The nose in the brain, head rip, split lip bug crawl & off screen head drill ) to avoid any trouble further down the line.

Fans had to wait until pan & scan UK tv airings restored a couple of the pointless edits, followed by Universal's R rated but cropped NTSC laserdisc. Now 15 years later we can witness Conal Cochran & Dr. Challis battle It out for the lives of every American child, uncut in every way!

GoodTimes once renowned for the naffest quality slow speed bargain bucket tapes in the US, have dipped into the dvd market with a selection of bare bones dvd's, their cover artwork is laughable, the cardboard snapper case is even thinner than Warner's & don't even think about extra's. But once you slide 'H3' into your player the biggest Halloween treat you'll have in ages will unfold before your very eyes.

Transferred from a D1 master (Many of 20th' Fox's dvd's are from D2's masters) the non anamorphic 2:35:1 picture looks stunning, there's no print damage, clean colours and a strong distortion free mono soundtrack.

Rumour has it Anchor Bay are trying to obtain H3's rights, they plan on adding 16x9 enhancement, 5:1 remix & with the help of the Halloween movies web site several extra's - theatrical & tv trailers.