Will Rob Zombie remake Halloween 3? And yes, I liked Season of the Witch

Season of the Witch movie poster

With Rob Zombie's tastes towards artistic violence it is doubtful he will remake Halloween 3 after successfully redoing the first two films in the series. When asked, he told MTV "Never." But then I "never" trust those answers because it probably means his agent is wrangling for more money which will eventually change his mind.

Right now it looks like he's on to do a "Blob" remake which I guess makes sense when you can explore the possibilities of using CGI, but I thought the last remake with Kevin Dillon in 1988 was sufficient and quite satisfying. Zombie's films are also a bit of a mess upon first watching them and so it's hard to say if he can remake a fun horror film that will remain fun to watch.

Zombie wouldn't probably even consider remaking the original Halloween 3 anyhow. Halloween 3 was not about Michael Myers, but a completely new story intended to spawn a series of creepy movies with Halloween themes. Unfortunately, it simply pissed off audiences because they kept asking, "Where's Michael?"

I never cared that Michael Myers was not in Halloween 3. At the time that it came out, I hadn't even seen the original Halloween all the way through because my parents didn't let me see R-rated horror movies and when I tried watching the edited version on TV I could only get to see the opening before being told to go to bed. I was able to rent Halloween in my late teens finally and then also saw Halloween 2. From there, I don't know if there was much more to tell going forward with the series. What they needed to do was make a movie about the entire backstory--Michael's childhood. Instead, with Halloween 4 they kept the slasher mode going and there wasn't much interesting going on.

So when I saw Halloween 3 on TV as a kid (shown as a matinee feature on channel 12), it creeped me out. I didn't have that disappointment of a missing Michael. A maniacal Irish toymaker wanting to kill kids on Halloween night with masks that make your face ooze nightmarish bugs and snakes was plenty to scare me.

I've always liked 80s films that had a conspiracy plot and Season of the Witch is just that. In fact, I would call it a kids' horror film. Yes, there's some very, very brief nudity (a nipple shot from a distance, what a shame), a couple of cuss words and some gore scenes, but this movie is exactly what fascinated us when we were young--at least in the eighties. Kids these days with the internet, I don't know? Without the net and all of the available knowledge I think life presented more opportunities to make us feel uncomfortable with the unknown.

Back then there possibly could have been a factory town out in the middle of nowhere with intentions on killing us all. I mean we always drove past those places on our family vacations and I would wonder who lived there in such an isolated area?

So if you detach Halloween 3 from Myers you have a perfectly entertaining B-movie with some nods to a couple of horror cliches here and there. My only complaint about the picture is really that Stacey Nelkin who played Ellie Grimbridge wasn't shown completely nude. I mean one nipple? Come on. Either give us the full beauty shot or keep her out of bed. Eighties horror nudity was always the best--no fake tits!

The creepiest part of the movie though is that damn commercial which counts down the number of days to Halloween. It has such a familiar feel like all of the kids commercials of the early eighties, especially the narrator's voice. Apparently the film company did put out the actual merchandise and sold a jack o' Lantern mask, a skull mask and a witch mask. I wonder if anyone bought one?