Watched this for the first time recently and quite enjoyed it. Definitely a strange film, feels like it could've been a Twilight Zone/Outer Limits episode with the Sci-Fi aspect. Good atmosphere and some surprisingly gruesome moments, and Tom Atkins is awesome as always. Conal Cochran is a very sinister, chilling villain. I dug the refreshingly bleak ending.

I agree with the general consenesus this movie gets these days, that it should've been released as a stand-alone film un-connected to the Halloween/Michael Myers saga which is what doomed it. I could've seen it being the beginning of a Halloween-themed series of Horror films.

Halloween III is a damn good movie! Everything about it is just moody, eerie, and unsettling. The Halloween spirit is much better represented in this entry, and like it or not, this is still John Carpenter's team working on it, with Dean Cundey's excellent framing, Alan Howarth and John Carpenter's awesome score, and Tommy Lee Wallace's effective direction. So it's automatically awesome by default.

The cast is solid too, but the ultimate aspect of Halloween III is and always will be... Tom Atkins. Thrill me!

This is the only movie I have seen where the audience threw stuff at the screen. It should have been called The Halloween Mask.

I love the film and the music. Definitely has that Halloween feel
and it's a shame we didn't get more different Halloween stories
Carpenter intended.

No argument here. It really is a shame that it was torpedoed by audience expectations of seeing Michael Myers. The Halloween series would've been far more compelling if the filmmakers had been able to follow through on their plan to release different Halloween themed movies for each of the series' installments, but as is often the case, audiences didn't want "new" and "different," they wanted rehash after rehash and beginning with Halloween 4 the producers were happy to oblige them.

I mean Carpenter had the right idea to kill Michael off with part 2 as his eyes were shot and he was burned to death in the end.

This series could had been like Are you Afraid of the DarK (Remember that show?), Tales from the Darkside and Twilight Zone with different Halloween tales.

I know this movie was made long before the Tales From The Crypt show and the TFTC Presents line of films, but this really has the feeling like it could've been a TFTC Presents movie. The weirdness of it and also the ending, definitely has an EC Horror flare to it.

I've always been a supporter of this film, since childhood. It is the best movie in the series after the first. Still gives me chills to this day so I'll be seeing it as part of the challenge.

There is a tentative link with Halloween 6, both feature a character called Minnie Blinkenship. It would have been a nice touch in 6 if Wynn in pt 6 had a picture of the toymaker or a silver shamrock on his wall.

It's a great movie. It's got two of the best gross-out moments I can even recall -- the kid's head turning into bugs and snakes and the woman getting her face blasted open. Just a fun, truly mean-spirited flick. It's the equivalent of a piece of Halloween candy with a razor blade inside.

That's essentially how I feel about it, it works just fine on its own.

Now while I didn't become a fan of the series until I saw parts 4&5, an annual Halloween movie could have been cool.

My standard answer to this observation:

DA MAN ATKINS!! a catchy little ditty , scary masks, The Druids and Stonehenge , and best of all, The BIG GIVE-A-WAY!! what's not to like??

It's easily my least favorite of the Halloween movies, because it has no Michael Meyers in it.

Its my third favorite film in the series, right behind the original and Halloween 5. I don't mind Michael isn't in it, and love the fact it tried to be different (much like Freddy's Revenge and Friday the 13th part 5: A New Beginning). Tom Atkins is great to watch, as is O'Herlihy as Cochran, who is charming and sinister and easily one of the best villains ever put to screen. Loved the ending as well, as it was refreshingly bleak and nihilistic. For those who have read the novelization, that really twists the knife even deeper, imo.

I've never actually seen it aside from the clip of a kid with a pumpkin head mask watching the TV. I really need to watch it soon, seems like it's a really cool film.