Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Halloween III

So if you didn't listen to it last year, dive in for the first time. If you listen to it last year, well, hey it's been a year. Time to listen to it again. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick and Rob or Since we started doing Weird How Cinema, I think I knew that one day would be the day we did Halloween three. I've always known it was coming.

It was like destiny. I could see over the mountain ranges of time and I knew this would be waiting for us. It was inevitable. You know. A few years back. I think it was when we were doing a guest spot on movie Crush with Chuck Bryant. Uh, it may

have been somewhere else, I don't know. You and I were having a conversation on Mike somewhere that we were talking about John Carpenter's Halloween, which which I of course cherished as a as a wonderful horror movie, a near perfect horror classic movie that has been copycatted so much and and yet somehow is still never lost its uh it's uniqueness and it and it's thrilling, scary power. And somebody asked it might have been Chuck asking if it

was my favorite John Carpenter movie. And I still remember at the time being surprised by my own response, though I can't deny that I spoke my feelings. Not only is the original Halloween not my favorite John Carpenter movie, It's not even my favorite Halloween movie because they're in the back of my mind always is Halloween three, Season of the Witch? I mean, was I joking? Was I joking and saying that I like Halloween three better than

the original Halloween? Kind of but not really. Uh, you know, the Halloween sequels are largely just dismal, depressing, trash. I dare you to watch Halloween five all the way to the end. It's like, if you can do it, it's it's it's such a miserable experience that fills you with pain. It's like being dared to drink like a you know, a swimming pool full of stagnant water with mosquito eggs

in it. Um So, so, how could it be the case that there's this Halloween sequel that I like at least as much as I like the original Halloween movie. I don't know, but that's what we're going to try to figure out today. I mean, I think you're right to single this out as a favorite John Carpenter film because no matter where the credits end up following, John Carpenter's fingerprints are all over this baby. Well, that's funny.

So I said it was my favorite Halloween movie, I would I don't know if i'd say it's my favorite John Carpenter movie, especially since it was, as you're saying, not directed by or written by John Carpenter. Um well, not officially, but I think on IMDb he gets an uncredited rider credit. Uh so, I mean, I guess it depends on how exactly you shake it out. But officially, no, it was. It certainly was not directed by him, and it was not officially written by him in any capacity.

I think he and Debor Hill at least both get story credits on it, which may be just a thing that's carried over from them, like creating the franchise itself. Yeah, created because John Carpenter wrote the original Halloween and together with Debra Hill, they wrote the first movie and created the characters. Though actually the characters don't recur in this movie.

That's one of the weirdest things about it. So warning that this discussion today, this is a forty year old movie, but we will pretty much be revealing all of the spoilers and plot twists and everything like that in the movie. So don't listen yet if you haven't seen it and you want to be surprised by everything. And this this bonkers cinematic god mode excursion. Um. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one of the weird things about Halloween three, I guess that we're just trying to allude to is so this is a movie that was not directed by John Carpenter was at least not totally written by John Carpenter. He gets some kind of unofficial writing credit. You're saying he may have done a pass on the script or something like that. And it does not feature any recurring characters or plot elements from Carpenter's original movie at all. Nothing.

Uh unless, apparently I think you you your your love of novelizations of strange films at some point led you to the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Season of the Witch, which had something connecting them. Yeah, apparently there's some sort of a tangential connection made between the masks in this film him in the mass worn by Michael Myers. But I have not actually read the novelization yet. I own a copy of it, but it's on my desk. It works so Alan Dean Foster fan poser. I can't even

remember it was Allendine Foster. Oh, surely it was. We got to look this up confirm. I mean, there's there's it stands a chance. There's always a seventy chance that Allen Deane Foster wrote the novelization. But I don't recall who wrote this one. No, we were totally wrong. It's not it's by somebody named Jack Martin. Okay, well there we go. Are you familiar with the works of Jack Martin?

I think I looked him up when I was excited about buying this paperback, and uh, I think it's a it's a pseudonym used by another author, but I was I'm not familiar with that other authors, so I can't really speak to that. Okay, we'll start this off with a big whiff. I was completely wrong about that being Allendine. You had a chance of being correct, though. That's like some Scott Steiner math um. Okay, no, no, no, but okay,

so we said. Not directed by John Carpenter, not written by John Carpenter, and does not feature any recurring characters or plot elements from the original movie. And yet to me, Halloween three feels it doesn't just feel at home in the John Carpenter Halloween cinematic universe. It feels like dead center of that universe. It is the bulls eye of of the target that I think about when when I think about the John Carpenter cinematic style. Uh, this movie

is the Carpaween Nexus. It looks like Carpaween, it sounds like Carpaween. It feels like carpa weeen and it feels good. Now, all that aside, Uh, this movie is largely hated. Uh, it has started to gain a sort of cult following. I think in recent years, I think it's not just us. Other people have started to pick up on and enjoy this film. But when it was first released, it was totally mocked and derided by critics. It was everybody was just like, where's Michael Myers? What is this? So? What

did they miss that we're picking up on? I'm not quite sure, but yeah, I don't know. Maybe we just have a heightened affinity for the this genus of the lowbrow absurd, or maybe this is one of those movies and there are others like that just kind of needed to age for a while, needed to age in the oak barrels of time before it could be appreciated for

the succulently ludicrous concoction that it is. I think it was in talking about this movie that I first articulated the concept of a of a rub the fur movie when we were talking about it with Chuck Bryant on on Movie Crush. There are there are movies where the primary pleasure is not located in story elements that can easily be described in words or you know, like plot or character. There are just these movies that are about

audio visual texture. They there to be experienced in the same way that you would experience the soft fur of a chinchilla, like you just kind of have to put your executive function into low power mode and rubbed the fur. Yeah. I know, I'd have some definite thoughts on this this question though about first of all, the people who are saying where's Michael Myers. Um, I mean, on one level, there is an answer to that. Michael Myers is in the film because you see the Halloween, the first Halloween

movie playing uh in a bar. I think a couple of different times TVs are on and the original Halloween movie is playing. Yeah, there's a great a scene where our protagonists played by Tom Atkins, who is a surgeon I think, is on his lunch break and he's getting drunk in a bar and and Halloween comes on TV. Yeah, so it's um uh so, so he's there if you

really need him to be there. But I think more more to the point, like the reason this this this film Halloween three discards Michael Myers is that we already had Halloween one, which is a I mean, what was a real trend center is an essential slasher film. Uh, it's not one of my favorite films. I feel like

it's it's like a lot of Trailblade. There's other films came after it, and I'm not saying they necessarily did it better, but maybe they did it bigger, and they did it in ways that maybe sort of shocked the zeitgeist a little bit more, you know. Um, but without Michael Myers and the first Halloween movie and John Carpenter's vision for that film, we wouldn't have had all these other things. Um. But then we had a Halloween two and that was the That was the bigger second scoop

of that franchise. And I'm not sure who really wanted or needed a third helping after that. Well, I mean, they kept doing it. I mean, and they're still doing more as we record this. I just found out they're doing another one of the sequel to the recent Halloween movie that came out a couple of years ago. Uh. And you notice how in the Halloween franchise, like they keep trying to do a movie where it's like Okay,

this is definitely the last one. You could not have another one off after this because we chopped off Michael Myer's head, or because Laurie Strode is now dead, or because I don't know, a million different we set him on fire and we watched him become a pile of ashes. Um that they've done that a million different ways, and every time a couple of years roll by and somebody, I guess somebody's bank account is starting to look a

little light and they're like, we need another one. Yeah, because I guess that it comes out of the idea like the name itself is going to be enough to get people in theaters. And that was kind of the idea with Halloween three, right. I mean, it's like, Okay, we've got the name. Why do we have to do this whole Michael Myers thing again. Let's turn it into an anthology um um series. Let's just have each Halloween season we're gonna put out a Halloween film. But it

doesn't have to be Michael Meyer. It can be something entirely different. It can be a weird kind of pagan sci fi um adventure. Uh, and we'll have some of the same touches there, we'll have that that you know, the Carpenter fingerprints will be there, but it will be its own thing. Yes, And so that was the idea behind the movie that became Halloween three, Season of the Witch.

I believe it was by stick On the script of that was just called Season of the Witch, or at some point in the development it was, which was already the name of another movie that had come out years before that had different themes. So I think I don't know that that that whole thing is kind of weird,

but but it's very similar to something we've seen. Another franchise is including the Tales from the Crypt franchise with Demon Night, which we I think we just reran that episode where that was a pre existing script and then someone said, hey, let's make this our first Tales from the Crypt movie, and so they tweaked it a bit and it was good to go. I think they did that a little bit like the hell Raiser franchise as well.

I got this script looks good, Let's throw some cinembytes in there and green light this sucker, right right, So they were saying, Okay, here's just a totally unrelated horror horror script um and we're going to say this is the next in the Halloween movie anthology. Yeah, and every year there's gonna be a Halloween movie that will have nothing to do with the Halloween movies that came out before, except that maybe it would be I don't know, produced

by the same people. They might all be produced by John carr Openter and associates, and maybe directed by people who were part of John Carpenter circle, like Halloween three is wonderfully directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, who was who had worked with John Carpenter on the previous Halloween movies and would go on to do other things, like, you know, he directed the TV version of it and stuff like that.

But um, but so I got I got the feeling that that was kind of the idea, that it would become sort of a thing where the Carpenter Club would let somebody do a new Halloween series horror movie every year. Yeah. And I guess I always just assumed I forget when I watched this for the first time, but I've loved it for a while, and I always just thought it was one of these cases where the idea was maybe

a little ahead of its time the mainstream. I guess still wanted Michael Myers and some of us found things to love about this film, and maybe we just did it too late. I think I aw I'd read before. You know, the carpenter was fond of the film, and you know, he didn't have any problems with it. He didn't think it was a turkey or anything. But it just things didn't line up for it to be the financial success that the studio needed it to be. Um. But I wasn't really sure all that much how it

was received during the day. Uh. But then in the past, you know, a couple of years I picked up the Michael Weldon books, the Psychotronic Film Guides, including the Psychotronic Encyclopedia Film and I have to say, you know, I'm the first thing I did was look up some of my favorite films that were covered in that book and see what what Weldon had to say about them. And so I of course looked up Halloween three, and there's

there is a listing for it. But one of the super interesting things about it is that this book came out in three and Halloween three came out the year before, in two, So at the time of publication, this was the most recent Halloween movie. Um, this so it it seemed like this was the course. Michael Myers had not come back. Um, now, Weldon, I'm not going to read Weldon's hole right up for it, but he he of course digs it, but he ends his review with annual

Halloween features with unrelated plots are planned. So so it's it's kind of an interesting time capsule to go back and think like this was, this was the course, and the idea was like, of course we're gonna get more Halloween movies with weird, walky, non Michael Myers things going on. And I wish that had happened too. I think maybe I love the original Halloween more than than you seem to. But even then, I you know, I I don't thirst for additional Michael Myers movies after after that first one.

I mean I kind of enjoy a few of the sequels, maybe a few, I don't know, Like Halloween h two is cheesy, but it's kind of fun. Um most of them are just direct and so I didn't need more after the first one. And and if it had turned into this, if this had come true, I would be I would be so happy. Yeah, imagine the film, what kind of films would we have received in the future.

I'm not sure that alternate reality is is tempting though. Um, but yeah, at the end of the first hallowe movie, I feel like it's a it's a pretty perfect slasher film. You know. Donald Pleasant's character shoots him dad and he's like, I got him. The nightmares over and then Halloween two kicks off with actually I missed him. We're going to need another picture for me to finish the job. Well, no, you forget the stinger at the end of Halloween one as they go out and they look and the body

is missing. But I don't think that invites a sequel. I mean to me, that's like Halloween one that should have should have been done there. I think it should have gone Halloween one. Then they should have made Season of the Witch and then kept doing anthology stuff forever. But here we are, so let's go ahead and have uh, let's have the Elevator pitch for this puppy, just just to get the official plot points down. Well, okay, here

you go. It's actually pretty straightforward. Tom Atkins plays Dan Challis, a beer chugging surgeon who joins forces with Stacy Nelkin to investigate the mysterious assassination of her father, a humble toy and novelty salesman, and their sleuthing leads them to a strange company town in northern California called Santa Mira, in which all life and culture seems to revolve around the local Halloween mask factory. Now, that would be the

more straightforward pitch that doesn't do any spoiling. But but let me give you the spoiler pitch, because I think that that might get our listeners more interested. And it's that Dan o'hearla. He plays an ancient druid warlock who commands an army of magical androids filled with frozen orange juice.

And the Warlock hates children and hatches a plot to massacre the children of America by manufacturing booby trapped Halloween masks which contain microchips made out of pieces of the stone Hinge magic Rock, which, when triggered by an embedded signal in a TV commercial that will air on Halloween night, shoot lasers that transform the heads of these children into crickets and snakes. You know, I was in in an effort to try and understand how this film was received.

When it came, I looked up Roger Ebert's review. Uh. Ebert said that he did not understand what the villain was trying to accomplish, and subsequently gave it one and a half stars. Boom, Come on, Ebert, I love you, but you missed the mark on this one. Um Man, you should have you should you should have gone into rub the fur mode and then I think you would have understood he was it was certainly capable of rubbing the fur. I mean, that's the weird thing about ebert reviews.

It's like it's half the time it feels like I'm either with him or I'm just completely opposed to everything he's laying down about the film. But yeah, well, I mean, so I as somebody who adores the this this bizarre movie, UM, I get a mixed reaction when I when I show it to people. I mean some people I've recommended it to love it and and they're right there on the Halloween three train with me, and some people are like, I can't believe I watched that. What a piece of trash,

And they're like mad about it. And you know, normally I don't try to argue with people about some jective responses to art and entertainment. I just don't. I don't care. You know, if if you don't like something I like, that's fine, vice versa. For this is like one exception. This is one in which I'm like, oh, okay, you didn't like it. I guess you don't know how to have fun. Huh, all right? The line is drawn in the sand. Regarding Halloween three. Um, there was a thing

I came across. I don't remember where I read this. It might have been somewhere online, but I found a quote where Vincent can Be the movie critic was talking about this movie and he described it as quote anti children, anti capitalism, anti television, and anti Irish all at the same time. Oh, I don't know that if it's really anti all of those things. It's anti at least one of those things. But but I don't think it's particularly

anti children. No, I don't think the movies AIN'TI well, some of the children in it are truly obnoxious, and I think they're supposed to be. But the villain is anti children. Oh well, well, yeah, I guess he Obviously that doesn't mean the movie is anti children. Usually the things that your villain hates doesn't mean that the filmmakers hate them. Now, I just to come back to Michael Weldon, I will read one more quote from his his write up. He said, just to to to weigh against the anti

children uh criticism. Quote, not another Slasher sequel, but a fun you've far fetched new Halloween story with a cheap title. I don't know, is that far fetched? Um? I mean

maybe not. I mean there are aspects of this film that are not that far fetched, and I think that's one of the reasons that that it speaks like it's not it's there's a lot of weird, wonky stuff going on in this film, but at the end of the day, the idea of a a large corporation doing things that at the very least do not have your children's best interest at heart, that you know, I mean, that's I mean, turn on the news, that's that's that's the world we

live in today, and that's the world we're were we've constantly been in. Uh So, I think this film, this film does have an intelligent core at the part of it. To whatever extent that core is able to shine through the other elements of the film, I guess you could

have a discussion there. Yeah, it's funny. So I watched this movie with the commentary track by the director Tommy Lee Wallace, and he talks in this about how he's like, Okay, so I was going out to make a horror movie and and I thought about what am I really afraid of? And he said, well, you know, the thing that scares me more than anything is is like surveillance and and corporate control of things like uh, big big government and corporations and people who want to spy on you and

control your life. And those are the things that really scare him and uh. And he wanted that to come through in the movie. And I say, you know what it it's a kind of a weird fit to try to jam that into some kind of druid magic storyline, But that is the film you made that you succeeded.

So they're commenting about technology in the early eighties and and trying to think about where we're going in a weird way, like how I mean, what we have today is kind of like this weird magical man shop of you know, of of technology and uh and and and and pagan sorcery. So I don't think it's far off the mark, like if you were to explain what we have today to uh to two ancient civilizations, they'd be like, oh, yeah, that's witchcraft. I know what that is. There are indeed

hob goblins in your content recommendation algorithm. Yeah yeah, so yeah, you could really go down the rabbit hole, like making a case for what this picture is saying about the world today. You had a funny note somewhere about the about the catchphrase for the movie or the tagline and the teaser trailer. There are a couple different trailers for this film, and I think we're gonna have some trailer

audio here in just a second. But there's a teaser trailer that came out that I that I love, where it's just a tarantula crawling out of a Halloween mask, followed by a big, just silver logo, like a logo that looks like it would it would be hidden in your children's candy to cut their tongues, with the catchphrase

the night no one comes home. This is like many movie marketing taglines, directly contradicted by the plot in which Rob if you'll follow along with me, the children who would be massacred by the android druid plot in this film would generally be at home when the massacreing happens because they have to be wearing their evil Halloween masks and watching TV at the same time. So unless they're out somewhere watching TV outside the home, they will come home.

They'll just they will just be killed by booby trapped masks in the home. Yeah, I mean, because I guess the message of the film is you should be afraid about what's happening to your child in the home. That's where the media is reaching them. Um. But instead the marketers are like, well, let's just lean into the idea. The kids are out of the house. I hope nobody's hurting them that sort of thing. I hope the monsters

aren't getting them on the street. But even Michael Myers in the first film, Michael Myers comes into your house. That's the problem. Am I wrong on that? Doesn't he come into the house? No? No, no, no, he does I mean something? Yeah, you know he gets you in the houses places where you should be safe. Is uh yeah. This is something that I've often said about the the distinction between the original Halloween and a lot of the

slasher movies that followed. I think that a big difference is in their sort of moral outlook, whereas in a lot of the slasher movies that followed, I think that there is often a kind of hastily thrown together vulgar moralism in them. I mean, this is you know, this

has been observed and everything from Screamed. You know, it is when the when the teenagers do something that is perceived as sinful, they are then punished by the killer for straying outside the bounds of the straight and narrow life. But the original Halloween, I don't think ever, really has that sense of vulgar punishment for sin going on. And it instead there's there's something much more frightening and uh and irrational about it. Is just this threat coming in

from out of nowhere and for no reason. And I think that's one of the things that made it especially scary compared to the the the less scary and more vulgar slasher movies that would copy it over the years. Yeah. I mean, Michael Myers is not cackling as he does anything, uh, in a in a weird way that that is very much in the same spirit our villain here is not cackling. He's maybe smiling a bit like he enjoys his work, but he's not. Ultimately, his whole grand scheme is not

like I gotta make these demons happy. It's about like, this is what the planets require, and this is what must happen, uh, just cosmically for our planet, and therefore I am doing it and it's going to happen um.

And yeah, there's there's not really any celebration beyond that. Yeah, I mean what I was thinking about the most recent viewing of this movie, I realized that the villain of this movie is he's sort of a corporate technological put Christ back in Christmas kind of guy, except instead of Christmas, it's like put the demons back in Halloween. Like he's mad that Halloween has been turned into this, uh, this cheap commercialism where kids just go out and have fun,

when really the hills should be running red with blood. Yes, yes, he's like, time was we just sacrificed all the children on Halloween and now it's just about plastic masks. We're taking Halloween back. Then he's disgusted by how profane our culture has become. Yes, all right, well, on that note, let's go ahead and have a taste of that trailer.

You don't really know much about Halloween. Halloween the body should be done between the red and the un and the dead might be looking in the last great One took place three thousand years ago and the hills ran red. Do you happen to know anything about this? Cochrane? All I can tell you, Mr watch Out, he's watching you, friend. I guarantee you that. Hey, Mr Cochrane, just what is the fun little process bell? I'll just dang it. I had asked you do I haven't asked just when I

hadn't mind view little buddy? Why cocks? Do I need a reason? I don't love a good joke? And this is the best ever a joke of the children. I'm glad you'll be able to watch it. You've got to believe me. At quick kills all start. The world's going to change to night. Doctor Happy Halloween Halloween three, season of The Witch of the Night, No One Comes Home. Okay,

I guess it's time to talk about some people. All right, we've already mentioned, uh, the director Tommy Lee Wallace, but I guess to to briefly describe a bit more about his career. He's the writer director of of this movie, and he had previously worked on other John Carpenter joints. Yeah, this was his first directing credit, but it ultimately kick

started a long list of the films, including Fright Night Too. Uh. I think you already mentioned the original and in many ways quite excellent TV adaptation of Stephen King's It I mean maybe not everything on that one was was was absolutely marvelous, but it had some wonderful and frightful elements to it. I mean, among many other things. Um, Tim Curry's fabulous performance as Pennywise the Clown. Loved Tim Curry.

Let's see. He also directed, uh one of He directed a sequel to John Carpenter's Vampires Vampire Los Mortos in two thousand and two, which I didn't see one. So I did see Vampires, but but but not the sequel. Uh um, let's see. He also wrote the screenplay to Fright Night Too, and of course he was on the screenplay for Halloween three. He also wrote the the screenplay for Amityville to the Possession, which was also in two. So he was really firing on all cylinders in the

early eighties. And like you said, he was a longtime member of the Carpenter crew having a provided art direction on seventy six is assault on precinct thirteen. Now that we were debating earlier to what extent John Carpenter was creatively involved in the story content of Halloween three, I guess we weren't sure if maybe he had done some some kind of uncredited writing, any uncredited work on the script. Maybe he certainly didn't direct the movie. But he was

a producer on Halloween three. And most importantly, John Carpenter did the music on Halloween three. And how have we not mentioned the music yet? I would say, if there's one thing to mention about Halloween three, it's the music. Yeah, the music on this film is absolutely incredible. Now, to be clear, it's it's not just Carpenter on the music here, Um, It's it's John Carpenter and Alan Howorth, both born um. Now. Carpenter alone was a game changer and electronic film scores

and basically helped usher in an entire musical genre. Alan Howorth collaborated with him on scores for Escape from New York, Halloween to Halloween three. Of course, Christine Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness and they Live um, and he um, Howarth also worked on some solo scores, and he's done a lot of work in special effects sound design. For instance. You can pull up various sci fi sound

databases like clip databases. Uh, they're used in various audio and audio video video productions, and you'll find stuff by him. Um And uh yeah, this score, oh man, this This is not an extreme position to take in the slightest, but I'd rank Halloween three as either the best or one of the best scores from these two gentlemen. Um. And I'm torn on that because I also really really love Big Trouble and Little China's score. These are both

scores that I frequently listened to on their own. I've listened to the scores to these films more than I've seen the movies. I I listened to the score for Halloween three all the time. In fact, I just have a big John Carpenter music playlist Carpenter music scores that I listened to, especially around October, but all throughout the year. Actually sometimes it's good productivity or mood music for me. Yeah. I mean, I just cannot overstate how much I love

this score. It is just lead heavy and light as a feather. At the same time, it's got these wonderful swelling bass synthesizers. Uh that that set the tone for a lot of scenes. But then um, there's a real kind of prickling lightness of of the high pitch synthesizer leads throughout it, especially in UH in Chariot's Pumpkins, which probably my favorite track from UH from the soundtrack. But You're just absolutely wonderful. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a tremendous score.

I will say when I do listen to it, I use a playlist version of it where I've taken out the silver shamrock jingle, which is vitally important to the plot. But but it is not great listening on it because it's supposed to be a commercial jingle. Um, we'll have to describe that more in the plot breakdown. Yeah, but yeah, the tremendous score, And I think that the science fiction

elements of the plot. It's I suspect that if Halloween three had been a Michael's Myers movie I'm getting I think it probably wouldn't have been as great of a score, because I feel like the science fiction elements in this film gave them permission to lean more heavily on the scynth, you know, to make it more of an electronic score. Yes, you're right about that, and uh and I think that comes through in visual elements of the movie as well.

There are it is inflected with a bit of a science fiction flavor that's not there in the other visual influences on it, like the earlier Carpenter movies. Um. But actually, in the Tommy Lee Wallace commentary, I think there's one part where he says that the the log line for the movie was witchcraft in the computer age. And you know, I don't know if I would have summed it up that way, but after hearing it, I'm like, yep, that

that's exactly what this movie is. It's like pixels and potions. Yes. Now, I think we mentioned already that the script that Tommy Lee Wallace wrote for this was I think it wasn't a totally original work. It was based on an original script. Yeah. Nigel Neil Uh was an uncredited writer on this. He

lived through two thousand and six. Um last names felled K N E A L E. So I'm not totally sure I'm saying that correctly, but um, but he wrote the screenplay to the incredible nineteen sixty seven sci fi film Quartermass and the Pit a k a. Five Million Years to Earth, which is a is a film we might cover on Weird House eventually because it's it's one of these films that that has, I guess, for the time pretty pretty cool effects, but effects that don't necessarily

hold up as well to modern viewers, I guess. But in spite of those effects, in any shortcomings that might be there, the film is incredible and has some wonderful ideas and is legitimately creepy, and I know influenced a number of of of director of future directors, including John Carpenter. He includes nods to it in films such as In the Mouth of Madness, which is another another one of

his films that I adore. Can I tell you that I've actually never seen In the Mouth of Madness and full I don't know how I made it this far, but I'm planning on watching that this very night tonight. That's yeah, well, it's oh. I love it. I have nothing but but great things to say about it. Spoil nothing. I will spoil nothing but David Warners in it. I will say that it's great, perfect, all right. Speaking of perfect, it's time to talk about our star, Tom Atkins. Tom

Atkins plays the lead of this film. He dr Daniel Challis, who I have before. I think this was on movie Crush referred to tom Atkins as Strawberry. Burt Reynolds. Um, he's he's this got this hilarious kind of masculinity. Um that is put to wonderful effect in this ludicrous movie. And I don't know who came up with the idea for his character to be the way it is, or if it was sort of a an evolving collaborative thing. But this is a protagonist who's just everything is wrong

with him and he never stops drinking. Yeah, he's a hard drinking, hard living um kind of a character. He's. I think a lot of it makes sense when you realize that tom Atkins veteran character actor, born still with

us as of this recording. Um, you know, he's he's been in a ton of films over the years, some very good films, but he's he's often typecast as a cop, and so he kind of plays that cliche, you know, hard living, hard drinking um, you know, you know, tough guy cop character in this But he's not a cop. He's a doctor. So it's kind of like Cop as doctor tom Atkins as Cop as doctor um, And it makes it a little weird, but it works, you know, because this is a type of role that Atkins excelled at. Yeah.

Uh yeah, it's it's it's it's hard to describe how funny this main character is not. And he doesn't tell jokes. I mean, he's just conceptually hilarious. Like almost every scene when he comes into the frame and starts talking or doing something, I start laughing. So if you if you're having trouble picturing Tom Atkins, he's easily recognized by his

hardy mustache and his roused our esque machismo. Um. He shows up in a couple of Key Carpenter films, including Es the Fog, and he has a role in nineteen on Escape from New York, did a lot of TV work, and it appears in some other notable weird movies, including nineteen eighties The Ninth Configuration, which is is quite a fascinating film. Nine two Creep Show nineteen eight six Night

of the Creeps, which is great. In that Night of the Creeps, I think that is his real that's like the tom Atkins movie to see if you want to see him absolutely in his element and and and working to the max. Yeah, he's also in nineteen eighty eight Maniac Cop. Um. You know, I don't think I've ever actually watched a Maniac cop of from beginning to end, but I suspect tom Atkins plays a cop in that film. Not from Maniac Cop because that's that's our man um zadar,

but um, but I assume he plays a cop. Yeah. One thing I want to make clear, despite the fact that I absolutely stand by his his ambient, hilarious nous in Halloween three and some other movies, I don't mean that tom Atkins is a bad actor. He absolutely is not. Like tom Atkins is wonderful. He just has this undeniable comedic aura in Halloween three and and it's it's hard to get under it. To describe exactly how it works, you just have to see it. Yeah, his character is

is quite a mess. Seems to have multiple relationships going on. Um you know as uh you know, has is divorced and also has some very questionable workplace behavior. Oh yet that absolutely inappropriate semi romantic relationships implied with multiple other characters Um, but character that's Daniel chellis not Tomas Now. One of these women that he has a relationship with, though, is our our female lead. Uh, and that is the

character Ellie grim Bridge played by Stacy Nelkin. This, this is also one of the weirdest things about this movie. There is an absolutely baffling and inappropriate romance that goes on between our main two characters, makes comes out of nowhere, makes absolutely no sense. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I can't imagine who looked at the you know, the the dailies and said, yeah, this works great, let's keep it as a real chemistry. Melkin was born in nineteen fifty nine.

She was also in Graham Chapman's Yellow Beard. The following year, she was in Bullets Over Broadway. She was in Tony Danza eight Movie Going eight, and she did a lot of TV work, including Star Trek, The Next Generation and a role on the soap opera Generations. Uh, this is funny. To go back to um Roger Ebert's review, he wrote, the one saving grace in Halloween three is Stacy Nelkin, who plays the heroine. She has one of those rich voices that makes you wish she had more to say,

and in a better role. But watch her too in the reaction shots when she's not talking, she's listening. She has a kind of wrapped yet humorous attention that I thought was really fetching. I mean, no offense to Stacy Nelkin, like she's she's fun in this, but I'm not sure I quite understand what he's talking about in the reaction shots. However, one thing I really do want to give Stacy Nelkin immense credit for in this movie is how she handles the final twist in in the movie, which should we

spoil it, I'll go ahead. Whatever, Okay, so you know, the whole movie no indication of this whatsoever. I mean, not even the slightest clue that this might be coming. Uh. Turns out of the very end our our second lead character is a robot. She's just an android, and it attacks tom Atkins in a car and tries to kill him. And like, she gets her head twisted off and gets torn to pieces and stuff and is still acting and trying squirting out orange juice and and trying to kill

tom Atkins. And uh, and I mean, yeah, thumbs up, thumbs up for this this android killer performance. Now, did you take it to me that she had been in Robot the entire time, because I could findagent that she had been replaced at some point. I didn't know either. Okay, so I've seen this movie tons of times and I have never figured that out. Is she an android the entire movie or does she become an android at some point? I don't know. There's some questions about the programming no

matter which way it falls, though. Yeah. I should also point out that Ebert also singled her out is the only good thing about yellow Beard and quote a fetching performance. So he was a big fan. Well he said fetching twice, well in two different reviews. Yes, okay, Roger Robert has

been fetched. Alright, let's talk again about our villain, our fabulous villain, A villain who really when you start talking about about villains and horror films and ones that become franchising in and of themselves, like this is this is one that they would have worked? Uh if they really wanted to milk this, If this had been a financial success, and they're like, yes, more season of the Witch, Season of the Witch to please, Uh, then you might have

had to bring him back one way or another. Oh yeah, Yeah, it doesn't matter if we chopped his head off off and he burned him into a pile of ashes. He's got to come back, like like Michael Myers. Yeah, this is again Dan o'harla hey playing Connal Cochrane. Um o'erlay was born nineteen nineteen died in two thousand and five. Uh. The Old Man himself an Irish actor and eventual naturalized US citizen who worked on the on the stage and

then on the screen. One of his first big roles was playing McDuff and orson Wells NT eight adaptation of Macbeth. I've seen that one has been a long time, but um yeah, Wells himself played Macbeth and the cast also features Roddy McDowell and Alan Napier. Interesting, I've never seen that one. It's good and black and white, very very atmospheric. Um yeah, I think I took a Shakespeare course in college and we ended up watching a whole bunch of

McBeth adaptations and that was one of them. Yeah. So the main thing I know Dan o'herla he from is RoboCop, in which he plays the Old Man. The I don't know the president or the CEO of OCP, the Evil Corporations trying to buy up Detroit in uh in RoboCop and he's the guy in the board meeting where he

says Detroit has a cancer and the CANSO is crime. Yeah. He, I mean he, especially as an older actor, he really did a great job playing the kind of suit villain and in this he's essentially a corporate suit but with this warlock twist to him. So it's, uh, it stands a little bit apart from these other roles that he was in. But uh, but there's still a bit of the old man there as well. You know, Halloween three

kind of shares a little bit of thematic DNA with RoboCop. Yeah, I mean they're emerging from uh, you know, the same time period basically, so it makes sense. Um now both commenting to some degree on some of the same themes. Yeah, like technology and corporate control or the villains though in weird abstracted sci fire or supernatural ways. Yeah. So the Hey did a wide variety of films in his career, touching on so many different genres. You started looking through

it like this man did Western sci fi. He did true swashbucklers back in the day when like swashbucklers were a dependable thing. He was in war films, and of course he was in red scare movies as well. Uh. He was an Invasion USA from ninety two, which it was actually feature on the NST three K And I know I've seen it, but I don't remember much about it. I think if I went back and watch it again, I would have to. Uh, I would have to. I would have to. I feel like I want to see

it again just to see him in it. Um. Wait, is Invasion USA not also the title of a like Chuck Norris movie where a bunch of communists invade the United States and had scenes shot at that mall in Atlanta. Could be I'm not that I'm not really familiar with that picture. This one is fifty two film that has I think a lot of stock footage in it, like an alarming amount of stock footage. Oh yeah, okay, I

was right. The Invasion USA. I guess it was either either got a remake or there was Another movie of the same name starring Chuck Norris, came out in nineteen five, directed by Joseph Zo also starring Richard Lynch and uh and Billy Drago and I'm sure some other. I bet Billy Drago plays a communist, but yeah, it's like a common written invasion plays a patriot. Ms No, he plays somebody named Mikhail Rostov. Of course he does. Yeah, I've I've it's been a long time since I've seen that one.

I don't know if I've ever seen the fifties version. Dan Oh the Hey played a number of different characters, and note I mean he was. He was the lead in a nineteen four adaptation of Robinson Crusoe. He played Dr klagar A in a nineteen sixty two adaptation by Roger Ka. He played the good guy Alien Grig in Four is the Last Starfighter. He was on PEKS. Sorry, I remember I watched a taped version of The Last Starfighter a lot when I was a kid tough TV.

And uh, yeah, that was him, wasn't it. Yeah? Yeah, I found a hilarious photo online of him and in full like monster Alien uh costume, but also standing in front of a bookshelfs holding a pipe in his hand. I could It's been a long time. It might actually be a still from the movie and I just don't remember it, but uh, it looks pretty hilarious. I don't think that's in the movie. I don't think Grigg ever

comes to Earth that I recall, is it not. It's been so long, Like if you told me, oh yeah, there's like an hour's worth of footage where Grigg sneaks around then the kid's hometown and they like buy fast food and go on an adventure at an arcade. I would be like, Okay, that sounds like something you could see at the time. The basic Forever, the kid, the kid,

the main kid in it. He's like good at the arcade video game and it turns out it's a the arcade cabinet there has been placed by an armada of space fleets that are that are like looking for talent throughout the galaxies for pilots. And he gets kidnapped into space by the guy who plays the music man, and uh then he has to go in space and and uh Grig is his co pilot and they fly around and fight something called the code in armada. I remember having a lot of really cool at the time. Anyway,

really cool evil aliens in it. Oh yeah, totally. Anyway, he has a ton of credit, so we could just go on and on. He worked a lot his Uh he had I think he had a number of children, including a son by the name of Gavin o'harla hey, who appeared in such films as Willow. So if you if you happen to rewatch Willow anytime soon. This is the guy with the blonde beard, the strawberry beard guy. Um. That that is um sort of a minor second level hero in it. Uh yeah, that's that's that's the old

man's son. I had no idea. So, I mean those are the main cast members, but we have there have a few other just to roll through here. Jonathan Carey, who plays Starker, is in this. Uh. This is a guy that just popped up. He played at the Colonel in in both Return of the Living Dead and its sequel. Uh. There's Al Berry who plays the character Harry grim Bridge. This is our our heroine's uh father. Uh. This is the doom and Papa who dies trying to save the

world from Halloween mass pagan gods and robots. He was also in Night five Reanimator and appeared alongside Daniel harla hey in The Less Starfighter. Now there's almost kind of a cameo performance in this movie by by Nancy Kai is also known as Nancy Loomis. You might remember her from the original Halloween, in which she plays Any Brackett as she I think she's billed as Nancy Loomis in

that one. She was born ninety nine. I love her in Halloween, and I always wished she had been in more movies because I don't know she She's just got like a real fun, kind of cool, acerbic attitude. And she only did about a half dozen movies or so, and more than half of those are Carpenter movies or

Carpenter Associate aided movies. So she was in Halloween The Fog Assault on Precinct thirteen, and in this movie she makes a brief appearance at the beginning as tom atkins abrasive ex wife, and she she's funny in the little bit of screen time that she has, very much like you know, oh brother, She's just not very impressed by

tom Atkins um. But the actress Nancy kais. After she mostly got out of film, I looked up her her post Hollywood career, and among other things, I found out she is a sculpture artist, and so I found a gallery of sculpture that she did all in the medium of garbage. So these are sculptures. Images were hosted on the Pomona College Museum website and I think this is from the year nineteen and so you can look up these, uh if you do a Google search for them, and

I think they look pretty cool. There's like one that is a bunch of garbage making what looks like it's some kind of giant leg. It's like a thigh with a calf and a and a big and a big robody kind of foot. And then this this beetle board looking thing. I don't know how really to describe it. It is this uh, I don't know, robot type thing with like an insect carapist body, but it's all made out of trash. Yeah, I had not seen these before, but these are these are great. I love this genre

of sculpture. They're like taking um refuse and our garbage, recycled materials and then recreating something artistically out of it. I was actually at a museum this morning and there was an exhibit where an artist was utilizing things of this nature um in this case, uh, like oil drums, ammunition canisters, barbed wire, and they were you know, created, I think they created this huge snake in this piece called not a Snake where anyway, you know, similar technique

to a certain degree. Uh. So, so I love this kind of work. If I if I had the chance to see this particular artist work in person, I would jump at the chance. Yeah, Sidney Pound snake. Alright, Uh, Dick Warlock is in this, so we have to mention him. Dick Warlock. Dick Warlock is the man. He plays an android assassin, a pretty big role for Dick Warlock. Actually, it's a note one of the more notable android assassins

in the picture. There's a really good scene where Tom Atkins punches him in the stomach and then pulls out his robot, guts a bunch of wires and stuff, and he spits frozen orange juice all over the place. Yeah. The androids are great in this because they're they're basically indestructible, but also entirely they're way too fragile as well, so they're they're hard to kill. They're super strong, but the

least little thing can can actually undo them. Alright. Another actor of note, Patty Edwards, plays a secretary and then she did a lot of TV work and also some very notable voice acting roles later in her in her career, she's the voice of the eels, Flotsam and Jetsam in Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid, and she also plays the fate Atropos in Disney's Hercules Les. Interestingly enough, she also played Bull Shannon's mom on Night Court. So she played

Richard Mole's mom. Oh interesting, taking a specter? What was that? Uh? What was that movie called that he was in as a destruction of of Jared Jared's in Yes, yeah, metal Storm the Oh. Now we mentioned how Michael Myers is technically in the movie, Well, Jamie Lee Curtis is also technically in the movie. She has a fun cameo as both a curfew announcer in the creepy heat company town but also as a telephone operator. Oh yeah, so just a voice cameo. Yeah, in the same way that Michael

Myers only appears on TV. Oh. You know another thing worth noting about this film is the cinematographer. It's Dean Cundy. Of course. Now we don't have to go in great detail on Dean Cundy because we've gushed about Dean Cundy before. I think we probably spent half of the episode we did on without Warning talking about Dean Cundy. Um the The Dean Cundy is a wonderful cinematographer, and I think

he is to a great extent responsible. He's partially or maybe even mostly, the answer to the question of how come even though this movie wasn't directed by John Carpenter, it feels like it feels like the bull's eye for that that John Carpenter feeling, And it's because of the Dean Cundy. Look. Yeah, Candy, um, yeah, you'll remember us praising him on nineteen eighties without Warning, But yeah, he worked on such films later on as Jurassic Park, Apollo thirteen,

So he was a big deal. Yeah, not just horror and John Carpenter stuff. Like he went on to to do some do a lot of mainstream Hollywood work, but always Yeah, he's just got great distinctive visual style. I've got some more thoughts about his influence on on how this movie feels in a bit here. I was kind of surprised to see that Ralph Baksh has a credit on this. This is the in the quote unquote animation

department of this film. Um Box. She of course is a legendary American animator who gave us Fritz, the Cat Wizards, and The Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice as well. But I'm not totally sure on this, but apparently one of the cartoons that's playing on the TV in the bar again along with like a trailer for Halloween one or something. Um, that apparently is one of his cartoons playing, And so maybe that's all he did on this film. That's I can't imagine where else his

fingerprints would be. Yeah, I remember, what does it? It's like there's a plant dancing around and making blink blink sound effects. Yeah, okay, there you go. Now, this is generally the point in the connections where we talk about the score, but we've already talked about the score and the people responsible for it, So instead of talking about it even more, let's just go ahead and hear a little bit from it. This is a taste of of the Chariots of Pumpkins? Is that a take on Chariots

of Fire Chariots? I believe it is. Yes, Okay, not that in particularly sounds like it, but I guess that was the that was the inspiration. They were inspired by evangelists. Well, I think they've surpassed their their inspiration. Vangelis is great. He just put out a new album of space music. By the way, I've been listening to it. It's super great. Not knocking on Vangelists, I'm just saying, like, for me, Halloween three cannot be beat. Yeah, I don't think Vangelis

ever did a horror score though. That's the real kicker. So I guess we Yeah, we should do a sort of full plot breakdown. I think we'll. We'll probably do a little more tightly zoomed in towards the beginning of the movie than than towards the end. But I wanted just to describe the very opening because it cements so much the feel of the movie. So the very first

thing you get is pixels. The first concept suggested by this movie is weirdly computers, which is again not what you would expect given Halloween or the themes of the season or witchcraft or whatever. But the opening credits are sort of filled with pixelated lines of orange on a black void, and it is uh sort of suggestive of the opening of the first movie, which, if you remember, it's it's just this sort of zooming shot of a

jack o lantern. But then you eventually zoom in so far you're like, what are these orange colors I'm looking at? In this case, it starts zoomed very far in, but eventually pulls out to reveal a pixel pumpkin, in fact, a pixelated jack O lantern, which is great because it's like, I'm so close to the technology, I cannot see its true form, it's true intent, and it's only in time that you realize, oh no, this is what the technology

wants and is doing. And it's also so close to the screen the pixels themselves, you can see them almost sort of decomposing into their individual little colors that form the the full pixels. You know, you can see like the little uh, I don't know what you call them, little bits behind him. But the very next thing we see is an empty setting. There's a dark asphalt road illuminated only by distant street lamps, and this is under a roof of a freeway overpass like a like a

concrete cathedral. And you get swelling synth bass, and then titles start filling us in about what we're looking at. We see northern California, then October, then Saturday, they and for several seconds as the titles fade in and out there there's nobody in the shot until a figure emerges from deep in the distance and he's running toward us, and you get the needle pricks of the synthesizer score fading in and he runs closer and closer to the camera and you see it. It's an old man and

he's terrified, like he's running away from someone. And I love this opening. I love the opening shot and the music that accompanies it, and I think it's a perfect example of that beautiful John Carpenter Dean Cundy texture that their movies are full of. Again, even the Carpenter didn't direct this one, the Carpenter Cundy Wallace texture that these movies are full of, uh And and I think it's

it's a very characteristic frame of this cinematography style. The kind of frame I'm talking about is you might remember these from without warning as well, but especially other movies like the original Halloween, there will be a wide shot of an empty, desolate setting which we see in full without a subject before the subject enters it. And I'm just such a sucker for that. I don't know quite so why. It just makes my horse's Winny and I

love it. Um and actually in the in the director's commentary, Tommy Lee Wallace says that he often stole these shots of the empty sets from the tales of existing shots, so after they slated, but before a character walked into frame, he would just sort of like use that, even though maybe it wasn't originally meant to be used. And uh and also along with this, from the very first scene in the musical score is just a ten just love love,

love it. But anyway, so on the screen we see the old man turned back around, look behind him, and he sees what he's afraid of. It's car headlights cresting over the horizon in the dark, and he panics and he keeps on running. Um. One note I made while I was rewatching this was, uh, what year I was thinking, what year was Marathon Man? I think it was sometime

in the seventies. But the opening here reminds me very much of the scenes where Dustin Hoffman is getting chased by the Nazis in New York, like running under the freeway overpass, running on foot with the car chasing him. Yeah, that was I that was I think mid seventies, so you know, it definitely would have come before. Well anyway, so in this movie, we see the old in running into I think it's a junkyard or like a used

car lot. I don't know. There's cars, but then there's also car parts and he's banging on this office trailer door for help, but there's nobody there. He's all alone out here, and the headlights are closing in. And then we noticed that the old man has something brightly colored hanging out of his pocket. It looks like a big floppy piece of orange fabric. What could this be? Well, suddenly he's trying to hide because the car is closing in on him. And as he's trying to hide in

this lot, he bumps into one of his pursuers. He is surprised by a torpy looking guy in a gray business suit and black gloves. Uh. Trying to give you a mental picture. Uh picture a young Adam Scott with slicked down hair. If you worked at Lloyd's of London in the eighties, so you know, very very great gray business suit, black gloves, formal looking, but also uh, that guy. And the old man tries to fight back, but the

business tworp is incredibly strong. He grabs him and he forces him to the ground and he pins him to the concrete under a car's rear fender. And so is this the end of the unnamed old Man? Well, no, because he reaches out and he manages to take hold of a chain that's fastened to a wedge block that's under the tire of a nearby car, is keeping it from rolling down toward them, and he yanks the chain.

The car rolls in and it pins this bespoke attacker between the two bumpers, between two cars, and the business Tworp reacts to this in a strange way, like he doesn't cry out in pain. Instead, he sort of slumps over as if he is a machine that somehow just lost power. So the old Man squirms out from under the vehicles and then he he escapes off into the

night with this bright orange object in his hand. Then we cut to another location, a service station in the rain, another moody, unoccupied establishing shot again of it uh and a few overhead lamps or just sort of like burning against the blue night, and rain is pouring down, and we see the title one hour later, and here's where things for So, like everything up to this point has been has been like, Oh wow, is moody interesting? I

love the music, love the photography. What's going on? This is the first part where I noticed things start getting funny. So the attendant at the service service station is watching a TV and it's a British news feature about how part of Stonehinge mysteriously vanished nine months ago. Uh So, first of all, like, isn't this Northern California? Did they get like the BBC News broadcast in nineteen two? Well, this is the Carpenter universe, so we have to remember.

In the Carpenter universe, Donald Pleasants eventually becomes President of the United States. So uh, very anglophilic. Yeah, so I don't know it works for me, I guess. So okay, they were so in this world they rebroadcast BBC News in Northern California, Okay, um and yeah. At one point the announcer is like, it weighs more than five tons, making its disappearance a mystery indeed. And then on the TV after that that broadcast, we get our very first

silver shamrock commercial. We will be subjected to this many many more times throughout the movie, and it is so intensely annoying that it goes full circle and becomes a gorgeous work of art that induces full body bliss. Uh. I feel like we should describe it in detail, Like Rob what what would you say to describe the Silver Shamrock commercial? I would say, Yeah, First of all, the music is intensely and intentionally annoying. It is it is jingle mania, it is supposed to annoy you, and and

it's calibrated to a child's wants and needs. But then we also have a voice over narration in it that is also ingenious because it is creepy man voice trying to sound like kid appropriate cartoon voye, you know, like like a children's commercial, but it's clearly a creepy guy voice doing it, which gives it this unsettling flare. Yeah. So it's to the tune of London Bridge is falling down,

presumably because that's public domain. But the lyrics are they keep counting down the days to Halloween, so like whatever day in the in the plot you're watching it, it'll be saying eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween and does the whole tune, and then it ends with silver Shamrock and so so while you're hearing this annoying UH tune repeat over and over again, you watch this green clover logo zoom at the screen, and then there's this

demented childhead tilting back and forth. I think the child in that commercial might be Tommy Lee Wallace's son um and uh. And then you see the three Halloween math asks and these are the three iconic silver shamrock Halloween masks. You get the skeleton, the jack o lantern, and the Witch.

And then a voice comes on. I believe also the voice is the voice of the director Tommy Lee Wallace, and he says, yes, kids YouTube can own one of the big Halloween three, three horrific masks to choose from their fun They're frightening and they glow in the dark. And then Robert, I wonder if you noticed this. So right after the commercial plays the in the scene, the TV loses power and it goes dark. So this is

just as like thunder is rolling ahead. I guess the idea is, you know, lightning strikes and the power goes out. But right before that, the last thing we see on the TV, it looks to me for a few seconds like the exact same silver shamrock commercial is starting over from the top. Uh. So I don't know if they're they're looping commercial, they're like paying to play them back to back. But that would be ingenious if that had happened in the movie. You know, one of the great things.

I didn't really think about this, but the silver shamrock um tune here is set to London bridges falling down and there there. This is of course a very old tune, a very old nursery rhyme kind of jangle. Uh. And there are various theories regarding its origin, and at least one of them involves child sacrifice. So it's kind of a perfect, perfect inclusion in this film. Oh, I wonder if that's intentional. I bet it is. I I bet

it is. The thing that feels just silly and you know, and totally the domain of the child's care free world is rooted in blood. We'll have to look that up after this, Okay. So anyway, the power goes out, gas station attendant, he starts looking around. He thinks he hears something and he peers out into the storm and it's wonderful atmosphere. You've got a tower of pins, oil cans inside but then outside it's just rain and dark and distance.

And then the gas station worker is surprised by the old man from before who is running from suits and he's frantic. He says, they're coming, they're coming, And in his hand he's still clutching that orange thing you saw earlier, and oh, we realize it is the Jack O lantern mask from the TV commercial. So already the gears are grinding in your head. Uh and then they hit you with something else. Immediately a new scene. Here comes Tom Atkins.

He's also coming in out of the rain, but he's coming into a domestic foyer wearing a khaki jacket tucked up over his head and a red shirt and he is showing up at his ex wife's house to surprise the kids. Uh. So again tom Atkins character and this has played. His character is named Dan Challis and his ex wife, as we mentioned, is played by Nancy Kais or Nancy Loomis, who played Annie in the original Halloween. And she's immediately very unimpressed by his appearance. She's like, oh, brother,

here's this idiot. But he shows up with presents for the kids. They've got two kids there at her house, and he has brought them Halloween masks. One of the things that I love about this is when when we when we see Atkins character Dr Challis visiting his kids. The kids are not excited about these older hard plastic um you know, plastic Halloween mass where they have the plastic front and a little elastic string that straps into

your face. Um. They're excited about the prospect of these soft latex masks, in this case, the silver shamrock masks. And I remember feeling this way as a kid. You have those old, cheaper plastic masks, and they felt like kind of like kids stuff. You know, you why why would you wear that when you could take this latex mask of pure synthetic flesh and just put it over your entire head. I know exactly what you're talking about.

They're incredibly ungrateful. Like he gives them the masks. He will, by the way to say, he brings the masks in in brown paper bags as if they were liquor bottles, which is appropriate for his character. But then he gives them the masks and they're just like, go to hell, dad, you know. Then they just don't want them at all. It's like the e a lent of the kid being sertainly because you know, he got a police station five from a confused grandparent. You know, this is this is

not what you think it is. This is not cool. And in retrospect, those other plastic masks they were with cool mask. We should have been grateful. Yeah, yeah, you know, and these these plastic masks. If they had warned the crappy masks that that their dad brought them, they would not be killed by the TV commercial. I guess we we know, we don't know their fate at the end

of the movie. But no, they say, well, mom got a silver shamrock masks and and those are the good ones, and so that you know they're they're just like, wow, thanks a lot, dad. But then tom Atkins his beeper goes off. He's he's he's a doctor and he is on call, and so he's like, I gotta go to the hospital and uh and his ex wife says drinking and doctor in great combination, and she is she is

correct in pointing that out. But that won't stop him because I think in almost every scene tom Atkins is either drink king or has been implied to be drinking before the scene. Oh but but right before he leaves the house, they're like, hey, you know, are the viewers not annoyed enough yet? Maybe we should hit them with

another silver shamrock commercials. So we watch another one while the kids watch it with their their faces approximately five inches from the TV screen, wearing their silver shamrock masks.

They are just gunning for Halloween. Uh and and so I don't know if you noticed this too, Maybe there was something I missed about it, but it seems that in the universe of Halloween, three TV commercials are somehow publicly scheduled like TV shows, so that kids are able to deliberately tune in for silver shamrock commercials, which they watch repeatedly and on purpose, even though they already have

the masks. Well, this is of what they call now appointment television, right, the idea that you know, back back in these days, like that you knew what was coming on TV and you watched it. You just watched TV in general. Uh So, I don't know this felt this felt appropriate? Okay? Well anyway, so, uh so Tom Atkins we find out that the call in his beeper is about the old man who is being chased. Earlier, the the gas station attendant who found him has brought him

into the hospital. And at the hospital you see the old man. He's on a gurney and he starts freaking out because he sees a silver sham Rock commercial play on a hospital room TV. So I think this is the third time we're seeing it. And he starts saying, they're going to kill us, all of us. Uh. And so what to do? What to do about him saying that, Well, obviously Tom Atkins says a hundred milligrams thorisin. So they

heavily sedate him. Uh. And then while he's lying there heavily sedated in a hospital room, oh, the suits have arrived. The guys in the gray business suits show up with their with their black gloves, and one of them is here at the hospital to finish the job. Uh. And but but by the way, before that happens, I just want to point out how funny it is that when they show the old man like drugged up in his hospital bed under hospital sheets in his hospital room, he's

still clutching the silver Shamrock pumpkin mask. Uh, just there in his in his room. Well, that's his proof. There's also a funny bit here where tom Atkins. I think because he's drunk. He goes back to his office to sleep on the couch. Yes, yes, and he he briefly opens the refrigerator in his office, and I was trying to look in there and see what it was. It looks like he's got a bunch of cokes and he's got milk, and then huge cans of tomato juice and

then champagne glasses on top of the fridge. And I think maybe a bunch of pieces of chicken. Yeah, I mean a champagne and tomato juice like that. That was his signature cocktail, right, The doctor challis special. Oh man, I'm trying to imagine that. It din sound good. It's like, h yeah, it's it's it's it's a it's a twist on the mimosa and the bloody Mary. Maybe I don't know,

it's called a bloody tom Yeah, bloody chellis. Now I have to say, are our witness here, Harry Grimbridge clutching the mask that the androids do get to him and they just they murder the hell out of him. And this film has some some ultimately some great kills in it because the androids seem to be like that. It's almost like there's a neural network at play trying to figure out how to murder humans, because they do so in ways that that totally work but are slightly illogical.

So they don't just necessarily like stab somebody or choke them. It's stuff like pinching their eyeballs and crunching their skull or or twisting their head off, you know, things that just seem uncanny, uh, in a very very effective manner. Yeah. So, so the the android here kills the old man with

like an eye gouging pinch kind of thing. Uh. And then and then immediately gets rid of the evidence by dousing himself and gasoline in his car and and self immolating, which ultimately ends up becoming a great plot point because they're they're analyzing the remnants of the burn, and they're like, oh, well the body, we didn't get the body, it's just parts in here. What happened to the body is somebody messed up, when in reality it's because Will that was

an android and you you just don't recognize it. But before he does that, he starts some people start screaming, and this rouses Tom Atkins from his his nap on the couch. Um, And so he gives chase. And then I'm wondering, well, does this hospital not have security? Why is it up to the resident physician to chase down murderers? Um, But anyway, he chases the android outside, which again we don't know is an android at this point, but you know, if you've seen in the movie enough times, it's hard

not to refer to them that way. He chases the guy in the gray suit outside but the guy, yeah, he burns himself up and his car explodes. I remember Tommy Lee Wallace in the director's commentary saying, when in doubt, blow it up, blow it up big. We don't know what's power We don't know what's powering that android. That that's true. Yeah, I don't think any of the other ones blow up, but uh, you know, still fair enough. He's gotta he's got an onboard nuclear nuclear vision reactor

or something. Um. Anyway, anyway, next thing we see, Tom Atkins is on the phone with his wife, his ex wife, sorry, and um he is. He's like, yeah, I won't be able to pick the kids up, and she starts yelling at him. You can hear through the phone, and he's like, well, you just relax for a minute. Two men died here tonight. But he gets no respect and uh. And so Tom Atkins picks up the silver shamrock pumpkin mask left behind by the dead guy and he's looking at it and

he's like, what's up with this? And there's good ominous music and and then you get that one of those you know, Daniel plan Lisa needs braces, but it's they're going to kill us. It's the old man saying that over and over in his head. Uh. Then we get another update on the day, so it cuts to Sunday, and here we meet Stacy Nelkin for the first time. She shows up at the hospital and it's revealed that the dead man, Harry grim Bridge, is her father. Her

character's name is Ellie grim Bridge. Uh. So she comes in to speak to the police and she says, yes, that's my father. What happened? And then the sheriff is uh, I wanted to know what if I seen the sheriff in before, I'm not sure, but he seemed familiar, but he's just kind of gruff, and he goes, uh. She says what happened to him? And he's like, ah, I'm crazy man killed himself in the parking lot right after

drugs probably, yeah, drugs probably. Uh. And so she's upset and uh and Tom Atkins sees her, and you think he's gonna go ask her what this is about, but instead he just walks away. And then you get another thing. On Wednesday. You see Tom Atkins goes to visit a friend of his who works in one of the labs. I don't know if this is at the hospital or somewhere else, but uh. Tom goes to visit his friend to say, hey, what was up with this assassin? And uh.

She says, well, we don't know yet. He's just a pile of ashes. Sheriff says he was on drugs, and Tom says, he goes, that doesn't make sense. I've seen people on drugs. This man was in complete control. He looked like a bit this man. So I guess the logic is he looked like a business Did you see a suit. He couldn't have been on drugs. That was no hippie. Yeah. Um, and she says she says he

had to be one strong businessman. You don't just pull someone's skull apart with a without a little lower arm strength. And know what I mean, And I went off, this is subtle commentary to the idea if you're dressed like a businessman in this, in this at this time, and you can you can go walk into a hospital and just murder somebody and people would just be like, I

don't know nothing he can do. Yeah, well, I mean I think that would sort of fit in with what Tommy Lee Wallace was saying about his attitude when he was making a movie. So I guess that checks out. Um. But yeah, But anyway, so tom Atkins is like, hey, do me a favorite check this out yourself. I was having a hard time thinking exactly what he's asking for. I think he's asking her to do lab work on the burned remains of the killer to find out what kind of drugs he may have been on. Do you

do you think that's what it's supposed to be. I think so. And this is a case where we kind of come back to the idea that it's tom Atkins as cop as doctor. So his doctor character ultimately ends up doing a lot of things that are more in keeping with what a TV cop would do. Um, And you ultimately just kind of roll with it because these are things the protagonist does, so you just followed along. Yeah,

it doesn't make a lot of sense. Also that he and his his friend at the lab kiss as he's departing. So yet again, Tom appears to have multiple inappropriate, semi romantic relationships with numerous co workers and other characters. And we we don't seem we're not asked to have thoughts about this one where Yeah, it's just they just presented it happens, okay, And then okay, so we get a new update on the date, so it's Friday the twenty nine,

and then we see Tom Atkins at a bar. And I love this bar because it has this complex mural on the on the wall behind him. It looks like the it's like the hieronymous Bosh bar. Uh. You never get a really close look at it, so I'm not sure what all is in the mural, but it's very busy, busy decorations. Yeah, it's a very gloomy looking bar. This is not it's it's more in keeping with the bar on The Simpsons. Most like a nice comfy bar where

you know, where everybody knows your name. Yeah, so this is the place where he's watching the cartoon on TV. That may have been animated by Ralph Bakshe and then a Silver Shamrock commercial comes on. No wait, no, that this hasn't happened yet. First he says, hey, Charlie, can we have another station? I guess talking to the bartender, and he's like, you got it? So they changed the channel,

and then it's Halloween. Uh the John Carpenter original, and I think the TV announcer says the Immortal Classic, followed by the big giveaway at nine brought to you by and then the Silver Shamrock commercial plays again. So I think this might be the fifth time we hear it in the movie so far. But now it's two more days to Halloween, and when Tom Atkins expresses dislike of the Silver Shamrock commercial, the bartender kind of gets offended.

He's like, hey, man, don't you have any Halloween spirit? But then so while he's at this bar having a drink, he gets approached by Stacy Nelkin. She comes in and she introduces herself. She says, Hi, my name is Ellie grim Bridge. One of the nurses told me I could find you here, which was funny. Okay, so yeah, oh yeah, He'll be at the bar and she asked, did my father say anything to you the night he died? And so first he tries to lie to her and says, oh, yeah,

he told me. Tell Ellie I love her, and she doesn't buy that. She's like, no, you know you're not good at lying U. So instead Tom Atkins fills his guts. He says, I don't know. He came in scared. He was clutching a Halloween mask, and what he said was they're gonna kill us all. And then uh oh. And then after that he says, and in a little while he was dead, and I don't know what the hell is going on. Uh So I guess at this point you can just tell they're gonna team up and find out.

And that's what the rest of the movie is going to be. You know. The thing is that Grimbridge he didn't have the complete truth here. They weren't planning to kill us all. They were only planning to kill most of the children, all the children who watched tv UM in America at least. They actually even more than that. They weren't going to kill all the children. They were going to kill all the like the cool kids, the

kids whose parents bought them the expensive upscale Halloween masks. Uh, not not like the kids who were stuck with the hard plastic masks that tom Atkins tried to give his kids. Yeah, I'm not saying those are acceptable numbers either, but but just saying that that technically what he was saying was not true. So the next thing they do, they go to Harry Grimbridge's closed novelty store and they do some detective work, or I guess Stacy Nelkin has done the

detective work. Tom Atkins doesn't actually do a lot of figuring things out in this movie, mostly like she does. And then he's like, okay, And so she she has done detective work by looking down events from her father's diary and she realizes that that he did everything in his schedule up until he was supposed to go up to a too restock Halloween masks from the Silver Shamrock Factory, which is in a nearby small town called Santa Meira, and that's the last thing from his diary that he

actually did. So they decide they're going to go to Santamira to investigate. Uh. And then I gotta say when they're when they're about to head out of town, there is a really funny scene which always every time I've showed this movie Two People, this is one of the scenes that makes people laugh the most is where Tom Atkins is on the pay phone talking to his ex wife. He's like, you know, yeah, I gotta be out of town. I'll be back soon, look see you later, and then

he hangs up the phone. And when he and like, as he hangs up the phone, somehow he moves and the camera moves to reveal a six pack of Miller. It's been there the whole time, but it was obscured until the until he moves out of frame, and then he grabs the six pack and runs straight to the car. Uh. And then I think we see at this point a TV display in a storefront playing the Silver Shamrock commercials. So at this point we're definitely like six or seven

times of seeing it. Yeah, yeah, And I think we're supposed to be sick of it. Yeah, we're supposed to be sick of hearing the jingle too. But it's also growing more and more ominous because we're we're getting in increasing info, increasing intelligence on on what exactly this is all about. Yeah. So here we have basically the set up to the plot. You know, this is the end

of act one. They're going off to Santa Mira to find out what's going on, and we get some narration while they're traveling at Tom Atkins or one of them is reading about this place. They say it was They say Santimira was founded in eighteen eighty seven, grew up around a large dairy. Around World War two. A wealthy irishman, conal Cochrane converted it into a toy factory silver Shamrock Novelties, now given over to the manufacturer and sale of Halloween masks.

Proud community predominantly Irish. I don't know where they're reading, that is, if that's in like the road Atlas or whatever. Um. But as they're driving up there, I gotta comment on the landscape so green, so green. Maybe that's just how northern California is, but it was beautiful. Yeah yeah. And then ultimately we get you know, the entry into the creepy town, the town where things are not quite right, which is the staple so many horror tales. Uh, and

it is they pulled off effectively here as well. Oh yeah, so they're driving I love these parts too. They're driving around and everybody's just peeping out at them, peeping out through windows and looking around corners as they drive in. And Stacy Nelkins says, wow, I feel like a goldfish. And and Tom Atkins says, yeah, it's a company town. And we see their security cameras everywhere. This is a town under strict surveillance. And there's just technology and and

and it's and it's a panopticon here. And of course, as with a with a with a natural panopticon, uh, the boss, the oversight can show up at any moment. And that's that's one of the things we see here is that there's the there's the limb, that's Conald Cochrane in there. Oh yeah, after this, so they check into a hotel. Yeah, and the the hotel proprietor or motel. I guess it's a place that's got these little like uh rooms that are side by side at one level

that are this garish combination of pink and white. Um. And the proprietor as this this limo cruises down the street, he says, ah, here's Mr Cochrane. Now, he says, he's

a great man, Conald Cochrane, a true genius. And and and it is We We get more information on this later, but he was a maker of toys but also a collector and ultimately a master of automatons because uh, you know, the lines are drawn between you know, old clockwork novelties and these modern android servants that he's created to carry

out his uh, his strange plan. Yeah. Now, so far this movie is a little light on characters for a horror movie, because you know, a horror movie, especially a more vulgar one, it's always got to have some characters who must suffer an ill fate that can't be you know, can't be visited it upon your main characters, at least not until the end. Um. So some other people show up. That's right. We have this family in an RV and uh and and there're a lot there, Yes, they're a lot. Yeah,

they're in a Winnebago. I think they're they're blasting loud music. Uh. They have the most the world's most disgusting redheaded child. Dad's name is Buddy Cup for he's from San Diego, and he's like a big halloween store guy, I think, or costume store or something. He he buys a lot of silver sham rock masks and uh. And then they reveal their child, Buddy Jr. And as Buddy Jr. Is like riding off on his bicycle, he gives his mom

the finger. So very very ill behaved child. And I think I recall from the Tommy Lee Wallace commentary track him saying that the kid who plays the obnoxious child grew up to become like a priest or a rabbi or something. So, yeah, they're in town. Apparently people come to the company town to to buy wholesale masks and other products so that they can sell them at they're like their mom and pop shop or in Wayne, or or a chain they happen to run. How that seems

to be the situation here. Yeah, but it's already like two days till Halloween. It seems a little late for them to be like scoping out sources for Halloween masks. Yeah you think, I mean, it's it seems to be the case at least now like they stopped they start clearing out the Halloween stuff that close to the date, it's time to start selling all that Christmas stuff. Yeah uh oh, but another buyer arrives at the motel. This is like an angry lady who's The character is named

Marge Gutman. She's played by Garden Stevens, who at some point Tom Atkins was her husband. Uh so in real life. But anyway, on the detective front, you get Tom Atkins. He reveals that, oh, Harry grim Bridge was here. He stayed at the motel right before he disappeared. So so he goes and he tells Stacy Nelkin that and she's like, oh, okay, let's go right to the factory and learn more. And

Tom goes, woe, slow down, I need to drink first. Uh. And then here also we get some of the development of the absolutely the just the baffling and totally inappropriate love story. Uh that that makes no sense, makes no sense. And then she's a robot. Yeah, yeah, totally unearned love story. I mean, there are plenty of of, you know, solid tales you can turn to where people in in in

situations of great stress are brought together romantically. You know, it can be earned, but here it is absolutely not learned. It's just it's just as as if someone said, and then we have a love story here, right to sell some more tickets, and they're like, okay, we'll make it happen. Then yeah. Anyway, So so there's like a very WTF kiss and then and then we cut to like more

about the town. So we see the curfew going into effect and uh, and so we we learned that Santamira has a curfew, curfew beginning in the evenings, which is announced over these mounted loud speakers town wide. I think this must be the part that was, um, what's Jamie Lee Curtis doing? Then ouncer voice Jamie Lee curfew if you will, right, And then we get lots of great empty shots of the town. Again it's that it's that wonderful Dean Cundy magic, you know, just the the the

empty settings. Uh, that that he knows how to pick out in frame so well. And then a great scene between Tom Atkins and the town drunk. So tom Atkins is out breaking curfew for some reason. I guess he was going to a liquor store because he is somehow acquired liquor at the beginning of the scene. Yeah, this is a good This is a great sequence though, because this is another staple. You come to the weird town

where something's not up. What do you do, Well, you get some you find the town drunk, and you get him some liquor and then he'll spill the beans. He'll tell you about all the dark, horrible secrets going on here. But this was like incidental, Like tom Atkins clearly he bought the liquor for himself, and then when he meets the town drunk, he's like, yeah, okay, you can have some, that's right. Yeah. In other tales, it's very intentional, like here's the guy. I need to milk this source to

find out what's going on. Here's just a happy accident. But the the guy tells him. He he informs tom Atkins, He's like, okay, here's the deal. Conald Cochrane. Uh, he brought all of his factory workers in from the outside. He won't hire any locals like me, so I I hate him. And he's he's heard strange rumors about uh unsavory of doings at the factory, and he says he's going to make a bunch of Molotov cocktails and burn

the place down. Bad move, because of course, uh, the ears of the corporation are everywhere, so that the androids come from him and they rip his head off. Dick Warlock appears and literally pulls the town Drunk's head off, just pulls it off with his hands. And now somewhere around here we find out that Tom Atkins. He calls his friend back in the lab and he's like, hey, what's the deal with that? Uh with the with the remains, And she's like, somebody got this all screwed up. We

were running tests on parts of the car. Nothing here but metal and plastic. Uh now what was the next I think? After this, it just goes to Marge Gutman, one of the one of the toy store Halloween Store our owners, who starts messing around ill advisedly with her silver shamrock mask. Yeah, the badge comes off and it ends up being triggered. Uh yeah, she messes with the silver shamrock tech and then it gets shocked directly in

the teeth with horrifying results like it like glass. Her face open, and then these big crickets start wandering out of her mouth. And Uh. I had to look this up because I for the first time I was thinking, well, those are not really crickets I'm used to seeing. It turns out their Jerusalem crickets native to the Western United States. Um, they actually have nothing to do with Jerusalem. But um, if you haven't seen those crickets before, Well that's why.

Ah yeah, well there there are some cool looking bugs in this, but I didn't bug wrangling on the film. And she's reading a weird looking book right before she blasts her teeth off. Oh yeah, I had to look at Up to the Eagles Gift by Carlos Costaaneta um quote A challenging foray into the Heart of Sorcery creates a landscape full of terrors, mysterious forces and sites, and landscape of the sorcerer's realm of brilliant visions, lonely task

and human warmth and comradeship. That's the just the Amazon description for that book. I've never heard of it before. But a pan maybe he was, you know, a flash in the pan back in the day. Yeah, I've definitely heard of the author, but I don't know that book. Ye contains sorceress. So there you go, there you go. But of course, white lab coats and a white van arrived to remove the body. Um, and they're like, she's going to get medical care, and so they're they're taking

her out. Uh, and and Tom Atkins and and Stacy Nell can come out. And they're like what's going on? And uh, Conald Cochrane arrives. I think this is the first time we actually see Dan or hardly. He he arrives in person to reassure them. He's like, don't worry, we will be getting the very the very best cared off factory. We have a wonderful facility. Yes, yes, he's

he's very hands on. Uh, it's it's excellent. So the next day they go to the Silver Shamrock factory for a tour along with the Buddy Cup for family, and the tour is given by Connal Cochrane himself. I should say that I know from the commentary that the exterior of the factory was actually filmed at a dairy works that manufactured like powdered milk products. And this is in a town in California. I think that was called Little Lada.

And uh, the interior shop floor where you see them making the masks was actually the legendary Don Post Studios in l A, which is a famous mask making studio. Of course, this was the studio that made the William Shatner mask that was spray painted white to create the Michael Myers mask in the original Halloween. Yeah, that is nnate No that this this sequence is also fun because you know, nothing's good is going to come of any

of this. But the two the the tour of the factory. Uh, it was slightly reminiscent of Willy Wonka's Tour of the factory, you know where he's like, you know, this is where the magic happened. And don't don't worry about what goes on back there behind those doors. It's quality control. You don't need to worry about it. Oh no, no, no,

not qualite. Uh final processing, final processing, yes, right, they get curious about they see these doors labeled final processing, and uh you know, oh one of the Buddy Jr. He tries to grab a mask. He's like, I want this mask, and Conald Cochrane's like, hasn't been through final processing. They are no good until they go through final processing. Uh. So he gets in a finally processed mask instead, which I think that means the ones that have not been

through final processing are not yet lethal. Yeah, they don't have that stone hinge microchip that will fry your head and turn your brains into creepy Crawley's. There's there's another great part at this factory. Tour where um, the factory also includes like a museum of Conald Cochrane's other creations. So yeah, it's a bunch of automata and uh and other kind of toys and things. But also Buddy cut for explains to Tom Atkins, He's like, don't you know

about Conald Cochrane? He says he invented sticky toilet paper, So he's some kind of famous novelty genius who invented like a million iconic toys and practical jokes. He's like the Nicola Tesla of fake vomit. Yeah, but but also get created killer androids and has orchestrated this massive like international plot like you know, like Interpol would be interested in what he's doing here, uh too, in order to bring about like the mass sacrifice of of countless children,

so as to we're not exactly sure. And that's the and and that's the beauty of it. Like we we as normal humans, should not fully understand what a powerful warlock is trying to do, Like is he is he trying to maintain cosmic balance? Is he accumulating um, you know, divine powers for himself? I don't know that's warlock business. That's not human business. The less we understand, the more darkly magical it is. We do get bit of a Bond villain explanation later, but it doesn't seem to explain

everything like he gives. He gives the Blowfeld speech, but it only goes like a quarter of the way to really explaining what's going on. I think he even says something to the effect that a Tom Atkins character. He's like, like, you'll you'll have to figure out the rest for yourself. A magician never reveals his that a magician never reveals

his secrets. Yeah, I love that. Uh But so anyway, later that night, Ellie disappears, and Chalice discovers that she's gone, and he's ambushed by a bunch of the gray suited creeps and he and you get since that he's starting to figure out what's wrong with these guys, you know, could they be not human in some way? So he goes he escapes into the night, and eventually he breaks into the factory to see if he can find Ellie there.

So a bunch of stuff happens there. He comes across this creepy knitting automaton, which I love, and he accidentally knocks its head off, and then he gets into a fight with an android played by Dick Warlock, and uh, well, one thing I like about Dick Warlock in this movie is that he is repeatedly shot from the neck down,

just like Michael Myers in the original Halloween. Yeah. But but anyway, so he fights him and eventually tom Atkins overpowers this this powerful androids, so you know, good on him. He makes the orange juice goop come out of his mouth. But then he gets captured and uh, Conald Cochrane comes out with more androids and they grab him and then uh so he's their prisoner now, and then finally goes to the last day. It's Sunday, October thirty one. Uh and I guess I might skip lightly over the very

last things to happen in the movie. But but of course we're now at the Finnish line, We're at Halloween, and uh and you get to see the whole plot revealed. So there's a great scene where Tom Atkins has led through this big warehouse. I guess this is final processing, and you see the huge slab of stone that is supposedly a stolen piece of stone hinge. Uh. Conald Cochrane says, it is a power in it, a force every even

a particle of it. And he reveals the plot, the one we described earlier, which is that he is using pieces of a magic rock from Stonehenge to put those pieces in microchips that are embedded in each badge that

is on each Silver Shamrock mask. And then he shows via a demonstration on the on Buddy Jr. Of the Cup First Child, that when it is triggered by watching the Silver Shamrock commercial with the special signal embedded, it makes the microchip like shoot out a laser that turns your head into animals, into like snakes and bugs that

run all over the place. Yeah, And we see this go down and like the the in the test room and this this the steel plated kind of bunker version, like a replica of the the American living Room, and it's a horrific scene. Like you know, the boy he studies melting inside that mask and bugs are coming out. He's in this rest. The mother faints, the fathers screaming. It's a it's a rough sequence and we see Tom Atkins reacting to it as well. He does a very

shot and aresque performance of anguish. He is like holding clinched fists up by his face. It's uh, but but the implication is clear, right, So it's that as children all over the country watched the commercial Tonight at nine while wearing their masks, their heads will suffer the same

fate as Buddy Junior's head. And then we get a great montage of like the commercial music playing, and we see scenes labeled as happening in cities all over the USA with kids in their silver sham rock masks throughout trick or treating. Uh. I think it's the kids from Phoenix in the sequence that are used on the posters for the movie. Yeah, yeah, I think we've seen you see New Orleans in there. Um, I don't think we

saw Atlanta. I feel like I would have remembered that more. Um. But yeah, it's implied that this is about to go down and just across the United States. Okay, Well, eventually we get to the part where Tom Atkins is like tied to a chair and Connald cochrane explains his whole plot. So he does the Bond villain speech and uh, and I wrote this down because this is good. So he partially explains that he says, I do love a good joke, and this is the best of all, a joke on

the children. But there's a better reason. You don't really know much about Halloween. You've thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy. It was the start of our year in our old Celtic lands, and we'd be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be lurking in to sit by

our fires of turf. Halloween, the festival of Sawin, the last great One, took place three thousand years ago, and the hills ran red with the blood of animals and children. And Tom Atkins says, sacrifices, and he says, part of our world, part of our craft. Witchcraft to us, it was a way of controlling our environment. Not so different now it's time again. In the end, we don't decide these things, you know, the planets do. They're in alignment,

and it's time again. The world's going to change tonight. Doctor. I'm glad you'll be able to watch it. And Happy Helloween. Yeah, it's it's it's a wonderful villain monologue and maybe one maybe one of the best. I'm a little biased, but it's pretty great because he doesn't reveal everything, but he he he tips his his his hand a bit and

uh and and relishes it. You know, he's this is a man who enjoys his job and and does just paint this the this wonderfully dark and bloody picture, you know, like bringing to mind the idea of the of of the you know, of the fires of turf, you know, and the old festivals and the hills running with blood. Um. Yeah, and the idea that we've invited this thing into our lives without really understanding the deep truth of it, which uh,

you know works on several level. It's kind of like the the the you know, certainly the scary movie thing is like you didn't really think Halloween was was harmless. It's actually harmful. But also the technological side of it. You let this technology into your lives, you gave it to your children, and you didn't think that there would be ramifications for that. Well tonight there are ramifications. Right.

You thought this was just fun, but actually there are real demons in it and your your child's head will be reduced to crickets. Yeah, and uh, I mean it gives me kind of chills to think about it, especially when you think about about the technology today and uh and uh and and the degree to which we've handed this technology to our children and and in many cases thought nothing of it or thought not enough of it.

Really drives it is one of the dozens of ways I feel like, you know, you can't decide like, is this movie great because it's ridiculous and hilarious or is it actually just great? It's it's kind of both. Yeah, I would agree, uh and and uh and you again, we're not gonna get into the ultimate spot others here, but I feel like it maintains this level of quality throughout. It doesn't, you know, totally sell it out in the end.

In fact, it has has a pretty great ending. I think, yeah, well, we did already mentioned that the big twist with with Ellie turning out to be an android at the end, so they escape. He escapes the sort of bond execution trap where Conal cochrane leaves him with a mask on and he's like, you're gonna watch the commercial and it will melt your head, but he somehow gets out of that, he finds a way out, he escapes the factory with Ellie. But then yeah, she turns on him and starts, I think,

trying to choke him while he's driving a car. And uh and yeah, that whole sequence is just if you watch this with friends, people who don't know what's coming, they will be screaming, all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and end it there then, But I have a feeling we're gonna be discussing this one a good bit more on listener mail in the future. So if you have thoughts about the deep truth of Halloween three, right in and talk to us about it. We'd love to

hear from you. We'd love to discussed this more. Really, any any excuse to talk more about Halloween three, we are down. Um, if you haven't seen Halloween three and uh and you would like to see it, well, luckily for you, it is widely available as a digital purchase or rental, and there have also been some really nice blue ray disks that have come out over the years. And who knows, I don't know. As we get closer to Halloween itself, perhaps it will be streaming on some

service or another. Who knows, maybe like the Silver Shamrock jingle, it'll just it'll just suddenly appear on your television and it will be in your life. I wanted to have some pithy Conald Cochrane style saying here, but I couldn't think of one. Al Right. Well, if you want to listen to more Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Corp Science episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday's Artifact on Wednesday's listener Mail

on Mondays in a rerun over the weekend. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can e mail us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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