I'm not a big fan of the phrase "guilty pleasure" when it comes to movies. Nobody should feel bad about enjoying a film just because others do not or because a general consensus might be negative. The same goes for the "so bad it's good" designation. If you're watching a movie and getting enjoyment from it, then I'd argue the movie is working on at least one level and is a partial success for it. It may not be exactly how the filmmakers originally intended, but it's not uncommon for an audience to find value in a movie that its creators didn't even consider. It still counts.
Still, if I HAD to use those labels on a film, Halloween III: Season of the Witch might come closest to qualifying. There are things here that I'd say are objectively a mess. The plot, involving killer robots designed by Irish toymakers and deadly Halloween masks hiding microchips powered by magical pieces of Stonehenge, borders on the nonsensical. Almost every supporting character is non-entity, especially the women who are around only to die a horrific death and/or flirt with Tom Atkins' heroic doctor. I rewatched the film last week at a special IMAX showing at the Rangos Giant Cinema here in Pittsburgh, and there was plenty of slightly nervous laughter during the movie's more egregiously misogynistic moments. Some of this stuff had to feel silly even in 1982. Today, it plays like a movie that could only have been made on a dare.
And yet I like Halloween III. And that last observation is part of the reason why. It must have been daring for producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill to drop Michael Myers from the franchise and press on ahead with the goal of turning it into a spooky-season-based anthology. The plot's dumb but it takes a kitchen-sink approach that makes it feel more ambitious than maybe it really is. And honestly? If your lead character is going to flirt with everything in sight, have sex with a decades-younger female lead who really should only be preoccupied with her father's murder AND attempt to take down an evil Irish techno-coven that's intent on killing millions of children then you'd be wise to cast Atkins, possibly the only 1980s actor with enough charm and big-dick energy to make the whole thing seem not just inoffensive, but downright reasonable!
Atkins is great in everything he's in, from Night of the Creeps (an absolute cult masterpiece) to more mainstream affair like Lethal Weapon, but I'd argue Halloween III is his only movie that absolutely does not work unless he's in it. Somehow he's able to elevate all of this ridiculousness in a way that makes it's not just fun to watch but okay for us to admit that we're having fun watching it. He's amazing. We want him to win. We want him to get the girl. We want him to thwart the evil scheme so he can just get back to the bar for another drink. He deftly straddles a line between camp and macho earnestness, and the end result is incredibly appealing.
Something else Halloween III has going for is a sense of Carpenter-esque dread that director Tommy Lee Wallace is able to imbue the movie with that keeps it close in tone to the other good Halloween movies, even if The Shape never shows up. Carpenter and Alan Howarth's unsettling synthesized score no doubt helps, but Wallace should be given credit for assembling a film that makes you feel uneasy. Men in suits who turn out to be ill-defined mechanized automatons aren't inherently scary, but for a while Wallace is able to turn them — and the eerie company town they patrol — into a creepy menace. Plus, there's something satisfying about white guys in business clothes being the literal villain in a film that can pretty easily be read as an anti-capitalism screed.
Season of the Witch also has an absolute all-timer of a final scene. I'm a sucker for movies that feature an ambiguous ending that's thematically strong enough to not feel like a needless cliffhanger. Atkins screaming "Stop it!" into that telephone and the film cutting to credits before we know for sure whether or not he's succeeding in foiling in the villain's nefarious plan is the ideal capper to a movie like this. Great line readings from Atkins there and great editing from the production side to make the whole thing feel intense and desperate.
The Pittsburgh screening was followed by a Q&A with Atkins, and he clearly enjoys holding a unique spot in the Halloween mythos. Here's a short clip from the beginning of it.
