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35 Years of Silver Shamrock: 5 Reasons You Should Stop Giving ‘Halloween III’ All the Grief

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It was 35 years ago today (October 22, 1982) that Halloween III: Season of the Witch was released, a film that most fans and critics alike initially dismissed as an atrocity, but one that is finally getting the amount of love and admiration it rightfully deserves. It’s taken quite some time and endless arguments with fellow friends and family members on my end, but goddammit if it ain’t a beautiful thing when they finally see the bigger picture here… Halloween III: Season of the Witch isn’t just a Halloween film with the absence of Michael Myers, but actually a great stand-alone movie completely removed from the horror of Haddonfield.


During my adolescent years and well into my twenties I encountered a seething hatred for the unconventional third film in the Halloween franchise anytime it was brought up in conversation. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I really studied the film for which I now adore. There are still many people who are stubbornly unwilling to even give this movie a chance, always exclaiming, “It has nothing to do with Michael Myers.” I’ve heard it so many times that it’s prompted me to give you five damn good reasons to stop giving it so much grief.

For those that may not be hip to it, John Carpenter intended for the Halloween sequels to continue as an anthology series. After enduring bullet wounds, blown-out eyeballs, and then being fully engulfed in flames like a Halloween yule log, Michael was dead at the end of Halloween II. It was a fitting finale to the Haddonfield Halloweenie and was fully expected to stay that way. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the later sequels just as much as the next Halloween aficionado, but I always wonder what could have been had the franchise stayed the alternate course throughout the years.

Anyway, here are five reasons why Halloween III totally rules.


5. The Murderous Magic Pumpkin

The Silver Shamrock commercial will have you dancing an Irish Halloween jig of glee. It has become a Halloween anthem for the month of October as we count down the days until the big giveaway of tricks or treats. However, the possibly seizure-inducing strobe light pumpkin is not just a jingle that will run around like a cracked-out hamster on a wheel for 72 hours, but a forewarning of the doom, and the messenger of death that lies ahead on Halloween night for literally millions watching it. The Magic Pumpkin is a murderous bastard, guys. Not just an annoying flashing jack-o-lantern, but an underrated horror icon.


4. That Beautiful John Carpenter/Alan Howarth Score

I realize this is a bold statement, but the score to Halloween III is one of the greatest horror movie soundtracks ever produced. It’s brilliantly synthesized tone of impending terror and haunting sounds set a perfect background for a 1980’s Halloween film. (The duo of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth also paired for both Halloween II and Big Trouble in Little China‘s score.) If you can’t get on board with the movie itself, the soundtrack on its own is a masterful piece of composed horror art that will put any Halloween Scrooge in the mood for some trick or treating.


3. That Brutal Death Scene… With a Kid!

Very few horror movies have the balls to kill off a child. The kill is so unique and brutally done, and also sets the stage for the grand finale: Halloween III’s main target is the children and this is the fate for ALL OF THEM. That’s pretty gnarly.


2. Tom Atkins: The Man, the Myth, the Mustache

I don’t really think I need to persuade the lot of you that Tom Atkins is a goddamn national treasure to the horror community. With other films like Creepshow, Night of the Creeps, and The Fog, I really feel like he shines his brightest in Season of the Witch. In the film, he plays a booze-lovin’ doctor that takes on Cochran and his army of android henchmen with his bare manly hands. I know that sounds cheesy as hell, but hey, if anyone can save the world from a Pagan madman, it’s gotta be Sir Tom of Atkins, am I right? So, grab a Miller High Life and watch Tom Atkins save the world, won’t ‘cha?


Conal Cochran: The Most Underrated Horror Villain of All Time

I don’t use the word “underrated” lightly, however, I feel it’s quite appropriate here. Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy), the proprietor of Silver Shamrock Novelties and sworn allegiance to the dark arts of Witchcraft make him for a dangerous enemy to have indeed; especially if you’re a kid. Cochran, presumably has way more kills under his belt than not only his film predecessor Myers, but the holy trinity of slashers themselves – Freddy, Jason, and Michael. And think about this: The ending is open-ended and leaves us to speculate whether the final commercial ran its full course. If it did, then Cochran would have succeeded in committing mass genocide of children across the United States.

What a dick, eh?

Cochran, who uses his success of his company to coordinate the largest Samhain sacrifice to appease the Celtic Gods on the glorious night of Halloween, is as evil and terrifying as they come. As if his ominous staredowns weren’t creepy enough, his monologue alone is chilling to the bone (the thrill and absolute madness in his voice sells it completely). Cochran is hardcore. I’ll give you all the credit you twisted bastard…


I hope these ramblings have persuaded you to take another look at Halloween III on its 35th anniversary.

Oh, and that whole “Michael Myers isn’t in it” thing? He’s totally in it…. same mannerisms and all, just without the mask, and in the form of an android.

Dick Warlock just wants to hand out throat hugs?

Editorials

‘The Fog’ 19 Years Later: There’s a Reason You Don’t Remember This John Carpenter Remake

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The Fog remake
Pictured: 'The Fog' (2005)

John Carpenter’s illustrious catalog of horror and non-horror classics has already seen three remakes (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, and this column’s focus), with at least one more kinda-sorta confirmed on the way (Escape from New York). If you consider 2011’s The Thing enough of a remake, notch another on the bedpost. It makes sense; Carpenter turned his no-bullshit attitude into a masterful filmmaking style, and those listed titles harbor nostalgic admiration. We’re probably closer than we think to seeing Bryan Fuller’s Christine remake for Blumhouse or a contemporary They Live, while Dwayne Johnson’s Big Trouble in Little China sequel project fades away. Imagine Julia Ducournau’s Christine should Fuller exit, or what about if James Gunn booked a brief horror vacation away from the DCEU for his take on They Live?

Carpenter’s brand of down-and-dirty storytelling mixed with societal commentaries make his works perfect for generational updates, but they can’t all be winners.

Take 2005’s woefully tragic The Fog, for example.

Rupert Wainwright’s disastrously shallow remake lacks the finesse of even a crusty barnacle attached to the underbelly of Carpenter’s original. During a period of horror cinema inundated by remakes, The Fog asserts itself as one of the worst. The 2000s had a very “show, don’t tell” approach to horror filmmaking and leaned on grisly violence popularized by Saw, all exploited in their lowest forms throughout The Fog. Bless both Carpenter and the late Debra Hill for serving as producers, but Wainwright and writer Cooper Layne do their salty source shanty zero justice.


The Approach

‘The Fog’ (1980)

Carpenter’s The Fog is successful because of the auteur’s influence. Between his stronger emphasis on churchly greed, eerie musical score, and abilities as a simplistic yet impactful visionary, viewers get plenty of “bang for their buck” in 90 minutes. Wainwright doesn’t possess those qualities and relies on archaic horror templates without any investment. In an era where computer graphics were still advancing, and some producers only valued horror as gory inserts within a lax narrative, Wainwright’s direction equates to background noise. There’s nothing spectacular or signature about the filmmaker’s approach, as recyclable as the plethora of 2000s horror films plagued by the same churned-out doldrums.

Smallville heartthrob Tom Welling follows in the footsteps of fellow WB/CW stars like Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki to shepherd his own horror remake, playing Tom Atkins’ role of fisherman Nick Castle. He’s a descendant of Norman Castle, one of the founding fathers of Antonio Island, which is located off the Oregon coast. It’s been over 100 years since the island’s bustling Antonio Bay community was established, and to celebrate an upcoming anniversary, a statue is commissioned that displays its founders as a dedication to their contributions. Mayor Tom Malone (Kenneth Welsh) wants everything to be perfect, but little does he know Antonio Bay is about to have an undead problem to confront when a mysterious fog rolls in thick as sauna steam.

The bones of The Fog are all there, but both needlessly overcomplicated and disparagingly unkempt. Carpenter introduces his film with an eerie ghost story told around a campfire that becomes a grave truth for Antonio Bay — Layne’s remake screenplay does backflips to try and explain the unexplainable. Nick’s charter fishing vessel unleashes the curse when second-mate Spooner (DeRay Davis) rips open a burlap bag concealing curse items with the boat’s anchor because the film doesn’t trust audience comprehension past any viewer’s eyesight. One of the biggest scourges upon 2000s horror cinema was creators believing their audiences were as dumb as algae-covered rocks, causing them to spell the obvious out in even more blatant and less captivating methods.


Does It Work?

The Fog remake carpenter

‘The Fog’ (2005)

The adjustments Wainwright oversees in 2005’s remix are a bungle of what out-of-touch producers presumed horror fans wanted to see at the time. Carpenter’s quaint coastal atmosphere is eradicated by Spooner’s Girls Gone Wild behavior or the need to belabor flashbacks that lay out every grim detail about Captain Blake (Rade Šerbedžija) and his lepers. Antonio Island’s tainted history is still prevalent as a driving force behind the weather-based haunting, but where Carpenter leaves us to imagine the atrocities founding fathers committed, Wainwright and Layne lean on time jumps that detract from overall moods for cheap betrayal thrills. The remake retains less reflection, whereas Carpenter’s original better depicts a town reckoning with its horrifying heritage — an example of hollow vengeance versus frightening introspection.

Maggie Grace co-stars in Jamie Lee Curtis’ hitchhiker role, except she’s no longer affable nomad Elizabeth Solley; she’s Kathy Williams’ (Sara Botsford) daughter, Elizabeth Williams. Her ties to Antonio Bay are supposed to represent how we can’t escape our fates, fair enough. What’s unfortunate is Layne’s need to shoehorn relationship drama because she’s (apparently) the love of Nick’s life despite his handful of hookups with KAB radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair) while Elizabeth fled her hometown for six months — a love triangle situation that adds no special sauce and is practically forgotten. Carpenter is fantastic when letting his characters exist without bogging their arcs with fifty reasons why they’re exactly where they are in any given scene. Wainwright is no mimic, nor does his film’s desire to tangle characters together as friends, lovers, or family members add further intrigue. If anything, it adversely tanks character development because there’s no resident we intimately care about.

Which brings us to the “fog” of it all. Carpenter’s maggot-ridden swashbucklers from the deep are memorable and creepy, while Wainwright pulls his haunted visuals from a grab-bag. Sometimes, they’re atrocious see-through animations made of mist — other times, indiscriminately human entities. One victim contracts leprosy as his punishment, another fried to ash upon touch, and yet another is dragged underwater by invisible hands — there’s zero continuity to Wainwright’s justifiably antagonistic forces. They become a Mad Libs gaggle of props fitting whatever scare-of-the-hour The Fog decides is necessary at that moment, none of which ever collaborate in unison. That includes Captain Blake’s parting climax, in which he abandons his group’s attack on Antonio Bay because he claims Elizabeth as his ghost wife after it’s clear she’s the spitting image of Blake’s 1870s lover [insert seventy thousand question marks].


The Result

The Fog remake tom welling

‘The Fog’ (2005)

The Fog remake is everything I despise about thoughtless horror outputs rolled into a briny clump of seaweed and misbegotten reinventions. It’s hardly scary, unable to let audiences invest in atmospheric spookiness, and so wildly incompetent. Each scene gets progressively worse, starting with the reveal of evil personal belongings stamped with identifiable “Hallmarks” that become pieces of a puzzle that never gets finished. Carpenter makes you feel the offshore breeze rolling in with his fog, sending chills up your spine as these scurvy-soaked scoundrels start stabbing and hooking Antonio Bay residents. Wainwright doesn’t ever grasp what his iteration of Blake’s demons should look like or how they should cause havoc, so he starts throwing basic horror visuals at the screen out of desperation.

Revolution Studios’ The Fog downgrade sinks thanks to primarily messy effects, hampered by the early millennium’s digital capabilities. That’s not exclusive to awful ghost illustrations that look like someone just decreased the “Transparency” slider in Photoshop. The fog, the TITULAR FOG, doesn’t even hold up to Demon Wind standards (in which the wind is essentially fog, roll with it). Wainwright and his team brainstorm ideas that sound rad on paper — an older woman gets barbecued, a ghost outline appears in fog like Imhotep’s sandstorm face, a younger woman is attacked by seaweed — but execution almost exclusively whiffs. The remake’s drunkard generalization of Father Malone (which is such a slap in the face to Hal Holbrook’s fantastic original performance) should meet an epic death when Captain Blake levitates glass shards as a containment circle, but three pieces fly through Malone’s body, and it’s over. That’s the level of SFX disappointment that festers throughout 2005’s The Fog, all buildup with no reward.

The film’s finale feels like a prank; the rest of the conflict’s resolution is lost at sea. Carpenter’s much heavier scolds against organized religion’s dirty dealings help give his film an identity down to the glimmering golden cross, while Wainwright goes as generic as they come and abandons ship when the well runs dry. Nothing justifies the kind of conceptual excitement that comes along with worthwhile remakes, whether that’s copycat role replications (I love Selma Blair, but her Stevie doesn’t match Adrienne Barbeau’s presence) or storytelling reductions that choose numbing violence over folkloric sensations of dread. We love a horror movie that’s critical of early America’s disgusting colonization tactics, but The Fog doesn’t know how to turn those frustrations into a compelling genre production. Whatever’s kept from the original holds no candle to Carpenter’s version, and whatever’s added — like Nick and Elizabeth’s awkward shower sex scene set to softcore porno music — brings nothing of value.


The Lesson

‘The Fog’ (2005)

Just because your remake starts with a banger like Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Going Down Swinging” doesn’t mean the film itself is a banger. There’s no world where I’d recommend Wainwright’s The Fog over Carpenter’s titanically superior original, and I say that as a leading Aughts horror remake champion. It’s another Nu-Horror approach that strips away commentary crucial to the plot’s intrigue since all Layne musters is a non-creepy and waterlogged story that feels like an unwieldy CW episode — not meant as a compliment. Not even the chiseled beauty of an early 2000s Tom Welling in a wool turtleneck can save this travesty from becoming another forgotten wreck.

So what did we learn?

● Not all CW figureheads have a hit horror remake in their blood.

● Less is so often more when it comes to horror movies, as long as you’re selling scares and confidently telling a story within your means.

● Some movies from the 2000s horror era will always suffer thanks to dodgy digital effects because while it was the shiny new toy everyone wanted to play with, golly, the technology was rough to start.

● Horror fans can be easy to please, but they’re also first to call out your bullshit — get out of here with these ghosts and their inability to pick a lane.

Wainwright’s film never knows what kind of horror movie it wants to be, and that’s the kill shot. Is it a slasher flick? Zombie movie? A large-scale haunted house blueprint? There’s never any indication that Wainwright or his screenwriter conceptualize a path forward, so they barrel on, praying there’s enough horror familiarity to appease the masses. There isn’t, it’s a boneheaded slog, and that’s that. Horror fans deserve better than to be fed the equivalent of table scraps for 100 minutes. To each their own and all, but now that I’ve finally seen 2005’s The Fog, the only times I’ll think about this movie again will be if someone interacts with my Letterboxd post.

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