Halloween III: Season of The Witch

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 American science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis, Stacey Nelkin as Ellie Grimbridge, and Dan O'Herlihy as Conal Cochran. The story focuses on an investigation by Challis and Grimbridge into the activities of Cochran, the mysterious owner of the Silver Shamrock Novelties company, in the week approaching Halloween night.

Halloween III departs from the slasher film genre which the original Halloween spawned in 1978, instead featuring a "mad scientist" theme. The frequency of graphic violence and gore is less than that of Halloween II (1981), but this film's death scenes remain intense.

Produced on a budget of $2.5 million, Halloween III grossed $14.4 million at the box office in the United States, making it the poorest performing film in the Halloween series at the time. In addition to weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews. Where Halloween had broken new ground and was imitated by many genre films following in its wake, this third installment seemed hackneyed to many: one critic suggests that if Halloween III was not part of the Halloween series, then it would simply be "a fairly nondescript eighties horror flick, no worse and no better than many others." Some cultural and film historians have read significance into the film's plot, linking it to criticism of large corporations and American consumerism.