Every week, we spotlight a kill that we just can’t get enough of. This is Kill of the Week.
The story of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is a pretty incredible one. Made with the intent of launching a new anthology franchise in the wake of Michael Myers’ “death” just one year prior, the Tommy Lee Wallace-directed third installment in the Halloween series, to say the very least, did not go over well with fans at the time.
But remarkably, Halloween 3 has become a beloved horror film in more recent years, as fans have come to accept it for what it is rather than hate it for, well, what it’s not. It was no doubt a disappointment to anyone who went into it expecting to see the return of Michael Myers back in 1982, but as its own film, it’s a total ’80s gem.
I mean come on. Halloween 3 pits Tom Atkins up against an evil mask-maker who aims to kill ALL the children on Halloween night. What’s not to love?!
Of course, the standout kill scene is the insanely cruel death of little Buddy Kupfer, who is used as a test subject for Conal Cochran’s master plan; the young boy’s head literally melting into a pile of bugs and snakes is an image I will certainly never scrub from my brain. But Halloween 3 is also home to several other gnarly kills.
The death of Harry Grimbridge is particularly disturbing, as well as highly unusual in the realm of ’80s slashers. One of Cochran’s robot henchmen comes to Grimbridge’s bedside early on in the film… but he’s not there to bring good tidings. To describe what he even does to poor Harry isn’t easy, but goddamn is it nasty.
Essentially, the Michael Myers-like henchman reaches into Grimbridge’s eye sockets with his fingers, literally pulling apart the old man’s skull with his bare hands. The practical effects work combined with the nasty “nose breaking” sound design makes the kill incredibly hard to watch, despite being far less gruesome than many ’80s kills.
Rarely are (relatively) bloodless kills as effective as this one.
