For our Classic Trailer Park series, we’re going to highlight effective genre movie trailers.  While these clips are highlighted, this doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of the film itself, only the effectiveness of the preview.  Some films have excellent trailers but the film is terrible like The Nightmare on Elm Street remake, while for others, the opposite can be true like the original Friday the 13th.

While we’re in the dead center of the Halloween season it’s only appropriate to celebrate one of the most historically misunderstood and underrated gems that celebrates the holiday. In 1982, after scaring audiences with the story of The Shape chasing down babysitters, John Carpenter and Debra Hill felt it was time to rebrand the HALLOWEEN franchise and tell a new a new story. Their idea was to turn HALLOWEEN into an annual anthology franchise with a new story each year. With the release of HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH they shifted the story from a boogeyman slashing his way through teens in a quiet town to a druid cult hellbent on murdering children on Halloween night. Fuck that’s dark. Unfortunately, HALLOWEEN III wasn’t greeted warmly fans nor critics and we never got the rumored HALLOWEEN IV that was supposed to be a ghost story. While HALLOWEEN III eventually found its fan base with modern audiences it’s still a polarizing film for many of the franchises fans. The shift in focus for this new era in the franchise is evident from the marketing of the movie. The ominous, award-winning poster features costumed children in the backdrop of an orange desolated hill with an evil skull overlooking them. The trailer, which you can see below, sets a suspenseful tone that evokes classic movie horror as a spider crawls out of the mouth of the masked figure. I love HALLOWEEN III, and while I agree it’s not for everyone (then again the same can be said most of the franchises sequels) it’s a fun watch. I can’t help but wonder what the HALLOWEEN series would look like had this film been successful enough to bring Carpenter and Hill’s anthology plan to fruition.