No, it really wasn't until 2012 when Scream Factory finally gave us what we basically always should have had for years and years, a proper special edition with a solid transfer and loads of goodies - and in HD to boot! And of course, in October of 2018, Scream brought it back for their fancy, new steelbook and again in 2021 for their fancy, new UHD. So I was pretty excited when Sanctuary Visual Entertainment released it on the UK with an audio commentary, but uh, you'll see why I still hung onto my Universal DVD after picking that up. But Halloween 3? How did the heyday of DVD miss out on that one? I mean, at least there were uncut, widescreen DVDs from GoodTimes and Universal (non-anamorphic and anamorphic, respectively), but they were barebones. I mean, I'd love a special edition of The Willies, too but I kinda understand why there will probably never be one. Halloween 3 was one of those titles that frustrated me the most because there was never a special edition for it. And look for an early appearance by Joshua John Miller (that kid from River's Edge, Class of 1999 and Near Dark) as one of Tom Atkins' kids, and a cleverly hidden cameo by Jamie Lee Curtis. Slick anamorphic photography by Dean Cundey, who made the original Halloween so stunning, and a great score (I mean, even besides the hauntingly kitschy "happy, happy, Halloween" theme song) really kick in a lot of atmosphere to a fun, wild and occasionally gruesome story.
And he's got some evil masks, killer tricks, an army of automaton assassins and even a piece of Stonehenge to help him do it. Through a twisted mix of mass marketing and ancient Celtic magic, the president of Silver Shamrock Novelties ( Dan O'Herlihy) has a plan to kill all the children of the world as part of an epic blood sacrifice. So if this is the Halloween without Michael Myers, what is it actually about? How about a Nigel Knealestory where Tom Atkins is a surgeon who stumbles onto a conspiracy by an evil toy company to play the best joke on Halloween night, "a joke on the children" (man, I love that speech). "Were" because in 2021, Halloween 2 & 3 (and 1, 4 and 5) have been released concurrently again, with even newer 4k scans, and now on UHD to boot. So the ones with new scans were noteworthy exceptions. And that continued with subsequent releases like The Fog, They Live, Escape From New York, Assault On Precinct 13, The Thing and Prince of Darkness - all the old transfers. Humanoids From the Deep, Night Of the Demons and Piranhaare getting new 4k scans, and I think the first was the August 2018 reissue of Lifeforce but then concurrent titles like The Howling and Army of Darkness just included the exact same discs from their previous, non-steelbook releases.
I keep making this 4k distinction, because not all of Scream's steelbooks feature updated transfers. Literally, their first two releases, on the same day, were Halloween 2 and 3 special edition blu-rays, and then they were concurrent steelbook limited editions (to 10,000 copies each) with new 4k scans. Interestingly, this is one of Scream's very first releases, Halloween 3: Season Of the Witch.
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