Brand new factory sealed double feature of Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

HALLOWEEN 2: The movie begins just where the last one left off--with some of the same footage, indeed. As this one opens, he's still on the prowl and shuffling at a maddening slow pace after screaming women. But since most of this movie takes place in a hospital, the killer has lots of props to work with. This movie has a close-up of a hypodermic needle being inserted into an eyeball and a woman's face being plunged into scalding water. Another particularly nasty gimmick is the intravenous tube. The killer uses it to drain the blood from one of his victims.

The film uses the standard horror formula: Cause a false alarm, get a laugh, and then spring violence on the audience. You know how it works. The heroine opens a creaking door into a dark room and peers inside. A hand clasp her on the shoulder. The audience jumps. But whaddya know, it's only the friendly teen-age intern. Laughter. THEN the killer strikes. This can get a bit monotonous.

HALLOWEEN 3: Season of the Witch is a welcome departure from the Michael Myers series and has nothing to do with those.

The central idea is marvellous: at Halloween season, children all over America are clamouring for the toy masks constantly advertised on TV with a habit-forming countdown-to-the-holiday jingle, and which are in fact deadly destructive devices invented by a Druid Irish scientist who intends to restore Halloween to its witch-cult origins.

He has robots manufacture masks containing microchips made from Stonehenge rock. The trick-or-treaters who wear them will blow up in a mass of snakes, bugs, and slime while watching a television broadcast on Halloween night that sends the supernatural triggering signal. The three glow-in-the-dark masks in the film were actually for sale at the time. They were made at the famous Don Post studio, which economically served as the madman's mask factory in the movie. The hero doctor, Tom Atkins ('Fog', 'Escape from New York'), races to save the nation's children from an explosive end.